Nietzsche As Egoist and Mystic

Nietzsche as
Egoist and Mystic
Andrew Milne
Nietzsche as Egoist and Mystic
Andrew Milne
Nietzsche as Egoist
and Mystic
Andrew Milne
University of Western Australia
Perth, WA, Australia
ISBN 978-3-030-75006-0 ISBN 978-3-030-75007-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75007-7
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For W.K.
Acknowledgements
I have benefitted greatly from the support and feedback of Nin Kirkham,
Iain McGilchrist, Christian Lee, Michael Levine, and Michael Schrader.
This book developed out of my doctoral dissertation, and I wish to thank
my examiners, John Carroll, John Richardson, and Manu Bazzano, for
their appraisals. I would also like to thank Mage Publishers for permis-
sion to quote from Dick Davis’ translations of Hafez, and Professor Davis
for his encouragement.
vii
References to Nietzsche’s Works
I have made extensive use of the electronic version of the G. Colli and
M. Montinari critical edition of Nietzsche’s Werke and Briefwechsel avail-
able under the editorship of P. D’Iorio at <http://www.nietzschesource.
org/eKGWB/>. I have referenced this source rather than the print ver-
sions for ease of access. The notes are prefixed NF (Nachlass Fragment)
and the letters BVN (Briefe von Nietzsche). The references offered in the
footnotes can simply be pasted in front of the URL above.
* * *
Nietzsche’s works are referred to in the footnotes using the following

abbreviations:
BT The Birth of Tragedy, in The Birth of Tragedy and the Case of

Wagner, trans. W. Kaufmann, Vintage Books, 1967.
UM Untimely Meditations, trans. R.J. Hollingdale, Cambridge
University Press, 1997.
HH Human, All Too Human, trans. R.J. Hollingdale, Cambridge
D Daybreak, trans. R.J. Hollingdale, Cambridge University
Press, 1997.
GS The Gay Science, trans. W. Kaufmann, Vintage Books, 1974.
ix
x References to Nietzsche’s Works
Z Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. W. Kaufmann, Penguin, 1978.

BGE Beyond Good and Evil, trans. W. Kaufmann, Vintage
Books, 1966.
GM On the Genealogy of Morals, in On the Genealogy of Morals and
Ecce Homo, trans. W. Kaufmann, Vintage Books, 1989.
CW The Case of Wagner. See BT.
TI Twilight of the Idols, in The Portable Nietzsche, trans.
W. Kaufmann, Penguin, 1976.
AC The Antichrist. See TI.
EH Ecce Homo. See GM.
NCW Nietzsche contra Wagner. See TI.
PPP The Pre-Platonic Philosophers, trans. G. Whitlock, University of
Illinois Press, 2006.
PTAG Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, trans. M. Cowan,
Regnery Publishing, 1962.
TEN Writings from the Early Notebooks, trans. L. Löb, Cambridge
TLN Writings from the Late Notebooks, trans. K. Sturge, Cambridge
WP The Will to Power, trans. W. Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale,
Vintage Books, 1968.
SL Selected Letters, trans. C. Middleton, Hackett Publishing, 1996.
References to Goethe’s Works
Nothing comparable to the scholarly English translations of Nietzsche’s

writings currently exists for much of Goethe’s work. As a result, many of
the translations offered are, for better or worse, my own. This also helps
to negate some of the rights difficulties arising from the many quotations
from Goethe’s poems. References from extant English translations of
works by Goethe are, however, used where possible. Those cited infre-
quently are given directly in the footnotes, while those which are used
frequently are referred to using the following abbreviations:
GF Goethe’s Faust, ed. and trans. W. Kaufmann, Anchor Books, 1963.

WED West-East Divan, trans. M. Bidney, Global Academic
Publishing, 2010.
D&W Truth and Poetry: From My Own Life, trans. J. Oxenford, Hendry
G. Bohn Publishers, 1848.
SS Scientific Studies, ed. and trans. D. Miller, Suhrkamp, 1988.
M&R Maxims and Reflections, trans. E. Stopp, Penguin, 1998.
CWG Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret, ed. and trans.
J. Oxenford, George Bell & Sons, 1875.
C&E Conversations and Encounters, ed. and trans. D. Luke and
R. Pick, Oswald Wolff, 1966.
xi
Contents
1 The Sanctification of Nietzsche 1
2 Ancestors, Part I 13
3 Ancestors, Part II 35
4 Mysticism from Birth to Breakdown 65
5 Against Mediation 93
6 The Great Hospital121
7 On Being Enamoured147
8 Hafez Shrugs the Cloak171
Index205
xiii
1
The Sanctification of Nietzsche
It is hardly anything new to present Nietzsche as a religious figure. While

Nietzsche was still in some sense of the world alive, spiritual seekers
descended on his corpse. His odious sister Elisabeth—whom Nietzsche
regarded as his “greatest objection” to existence1—ushered the pilgrims in
for darshan. Rudolf Steiner was amongst those permitted to kneel at the
master’s feet, and he declared that Nietzsche was “radiating the peace of
the sage”.2 But of course, by this late stage in his mental decline, Nietzsche
was no longer radiating anything more than the tranquillity of a turnip.
It is not only cranks and crackpots who have sought to canonise the
Antichrist. One serious scholar of Nietzsche’s work has claimed that
Nietzsche was “above all a religious thinker”,3 and many others would
agree. In the now expansive literature on the subject, one can find
Nietzsche’s thought situated in a wide range of religious contexts, ranging
from Pietism and Communitarianism through to Neoplatonic mysticism
and Mahayana Buddhism.
I understand, and to a great extent share, the initial dismay that some
people feel when they encounter scholars expatiating on Nietzsche’s phi-
losophy of religion. After all, was Nietzsche not by his own lights an
instinctive atheist4 who saw religions as “affairs of the rabble”5? Nietzsche
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 1

A. Milne, Nietzsche as Egoist and Mystic,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75007-7_1
2 A. Milne
plainly was committed to sounding out the hypocrisy of the holy, who he
saw as mendacious decadents motivated by the desire to revenge them-
selves on the world and on the healthy.
Despite this, I think that there is some truth to the view that Nietzsche’s
thought has a distinctly religious character. But it is a religious character
with some striking and at times perplexing features. To begin with, there
is nothing pious about it. Nietzsche said, “I do not want to be a holy
man; sooner even a buffoon”, and that he’d rather be a “satyr than a
saint”.6 Indeed, Nietzsche claimed that “ingenious buffoonery” was the
“highest form of spirituality”.7 This sense of humour was not born of an
otherworldly detachment—of the sense that this life is not to be taken
seriously. On the contrary, it came from a sense that taking this life seri-
ously demands a playful spirit.
Nietzsche thought that the value of a man or race could be deter-
mined by their incapacity to “conceive god apart from the satyr”, and
claimed that a kind of “divine malice” was necessary to perfection.8
Nietzsche’s consistent praise of enmity, and his claim to have “spiritual-
ised hostility”9 must not be forgotten. “The peace of the sage” was never
Nietzsche’s aim. He was a volatile figure who saw in the embrace of his
own internal torment the possibility of a great fecundity.10 Nietzsche did
not seek a way out of the “wicked game” of life and suffering, but wanted
an affirmation of life as a whole, including its most questionable and
unpleasant aspects.
Of all religious contexts in which to situate Nietzsche’s thought, many
scholars have found one or other mystical milieu to be the most appro-
priate. It is not difficult to see why: the stress is typically not on following
a given code of values, or on orthodox professions of belief, but rather on
the individual’s direct experience of identity with the whole. But this
identification typically has an altruistic upshot: if the other is, in
Schopenhauer’s words, “I once more”, then what reason do I have to
prioritise me over him? And it is at this point that the attempt to draw
comparisons with Nietzsche’s thought becomes extremely strained.
Nietzsche derided all “moralities of unselfing”, and mounted a striking
defence of self-preferencing as a part of his project to “give egoism a good
conscience”.11
In The Gay Science, Nietzsche wrote that “those who want to mediate
between two resolute thinkers show that they are mediocre; they lack eyes
for seeing what is unique. Seeing things as similar and making things the
same is the sign of weak eyes”.12 Yet this has not stopped certain scholars
from concluding that Nietzsche was quasi-Buddhist whose brooding
walks were really a form of meditation, and that this unrepentant egotist
was truly a renunciate of self and an “advocate of the Bodhisattva ideal”.13
Nietzsche did claim an identification of part and whole, speaking for
example of all humans as being “buds on a single tree” and of the need to
“experience cosmically!”14 But in Nietzsche’s mature thought, this identi-
fication did not lead to a depreciation of the self in favour of the Self.
Rather, it led to a sense of the “tremendously great significance” of the
individual.15 To see why, it is necessary to understand Nietzsche’s concep-
tion of the relation of the one to the many, the part to the whole. Unlike
most mystical thinkers who imagine a ground—or groundlessness—
beneath manifestation, an unmanifest aspect to existence, Nietzsche alto-
gether denied the existence of a beyond, a whole apart from the parts. On
such a view, to deprecate the individual would be to deprecate the whole:
where the whole is wholly in the parts, the only way to affirm the whole
is through the parts.
This way of conceiving of the one and the many owes a great to the
philosophical lineage to which Nietzsche claimed to belong. In a note,
Nietzsche wrote “my ancestors: Heraclitus, Empedocles, Spinoza, Goethe”.16
It is my view that a focus on Nietzsche’s engagement with these thinkers
can be of great help in making sense of Nietzsche’s religious thought. Yet
these ancestors have not proved common focal points in existing studies,
with scholars preferring to draw comparisons with Christian and Buddhist
mystical traditions. My aim in the present work is to show that these
attempted mediations are basically misguided, and to offer a more prom-
ising context for situating Nietzsche’s religious thought.
* * *
Each of Nietzsche’s self-proclaimed ‘ancestors’ may be regarded not only

as monistic but also mystic, with each stressing a sense in which all things
are one. But those senses certainly are not one, and I use Chaps. 2 and 3
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for unpacking their varying conceptions of the one and the many. Chapter
2 I devote to Goethe alone, and in Chap. 3, I discuss Heraclitus,
Empedocles, and Spinoza. One reason for granting particular attention
to Goethe is that his influence on Nietzsche is not only unparalleled, but
has been largely overlooked by scholars of Nietzsche’s philosophy of
religion.
Of these ancestors, Goethe is easily the least well studied by philoso-
phers. It certainly doesn’t help that Goethe’s religious thought has been
rather radically misrepresented by all manner of Christers and Shysters.17
Thus, I spend part of Chap. 2 attempting to get Goethe out from under
his worst exegetes. I then go on to discuss Goethe’s original and challeng-
ing conception according to which the one is symbolic of the many. I
explore the nature of symbolism in Goethe’s thought, and show how this
conception of the one and the many is developed in both Goethe’s poetic
and morphological work.
In Chap. 3, I discuss Nietzsche’s reading of Heraclitus, Empedocles,
and Spinoza. Nietzsche emphasised the unitive nature of each ancestor’s
thought. For instance, he offered a striking interpretation of Heraclitus
on which “the one is the many”. Nietzsche claimed that the view that “all
living things are one” to be the essence of Empedocles’ philosophy, a view
he directly associated with Goethe. I show that Goethe once again plays
an important role in Nietzsche’s engagement with Spinoza. Nietzsche
expressly contrasted Spinoza’s “anaemic” philosophy with Goethe’s
“paganism”, and I argue that Goethe’s model of a sensual spirituality is
central to Nietzsche’s transformation of Spinoza’s amor dei intellectualis
into his own ideal of amor fati.
Chapter 4 demonstrates Nietzsche’s sustained interest in mystical
experience throughout his philosophical career, and shows the marked
development of his attitudes towards these experiences. I begin by put-
ting the discussions of unitive phenomena in The Birth of Tragedy into the
context of Nietzsche’s reflections on his own experiences from that period.
I then explore Nietzsche’s discussions of mystical experiences in an impor-
tant 1881 notebook which surrounds his first discussions of the eternal
recurrence of the same. Finally, I take up Nietzsche’s mature discussions
of mysticism, many of which have never been addressed in the literature
on Nietzsche’s religious thought.
Previous scholarly attempts to mediate between Nietzsche and mystics

from religious traditions of both the East and West are discussed in
Chap. 5. I argue that the principal inadequacy of these studies has been
their failure to take cognizance of Nietzsche’s egoism. Sometimes these
studies conclude that Nietzsche was—in the words of one scholar—a
“Zebra”: half mystic, half egoist.18 That is, Nietzsche was at odds with
himself—and there is no doubt about which is the better half. Here we
get the claim that, to adapt Chesterton’s quip, Nietzsche and Buddhism
are very much alike, especially Buddhism.19 Against such views, I argue
that there is a consonance between the egoistic and mystical aspects of
Nietzsche’s thought which has not generally been understood. I also con-
sider in some detail Nietzsche’s engagement with the thought of mystics
such as Meister Eckhart, and show that Nietzsche criticised the lack of
“self-esteem” that came from their mistaken conception of the relation-
ship of part and whole.20
Nietzsche spoke of the possibility of standing in a “Dionysian relation-
ship to existence”,21 and defined this Dionysian state as the “temporary
identification with the principle of life”.22 I argue that Nietzsche saw
these transitory unitive experiences as facilitating an embrace of all aspects
of life, including egoism and hostility. Nietzsche conceived of his
Dionysian spirituality as “the religious affirmation of life, life whole and
not denied or halved”.23 Contrary to several scholars of Nietzsche’s reli-
gious thought, I contend that Nietzsche’s criticism of the nihilistic ten-
dencies of religious traditions extends even to the apparently this-worldly
mystical traditions, so long as those traditions seek to make to make the
individual subordinate to the whole. I show that, in Nietzsche’s view,
those who think they are “getting back to wholeness”24 by rejecting indi-
viduality are deluded, and that their one-sided affirmation actually
denies life.
Nietzsche described egoism as the “law of perspective” according to
which what is nearest appears largest.25 In Chap. 6, Nietzsche’s defence of
egoism as self-privileging is taken up with respect to his claims of the
identification of part and whole. In this chapter, I clarify what Nietzsche
meant in speaking of a “whole and holy” selfishness. I show that Nietzsche
considered the task of certain individuals to be to enrich the whole in
themselves. To this end, these individuals must feel the “inner certainty
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of having a right to everything”.26 They must also be willing to look away

from the suffering of others in order to undertake their own projects,
from which pity acts as a constant seduction. I argue that Goethe is
Nietzsche’s model for a whole and holy selfishness. Goethe’s capacity for
selective attention is discussed, as are his concerns about the transforma-
tion of the world into a great hospital in which each man is the other’s
humane nurse. With the claim that a society of mutual care-givers and
palliators would lead to a diminution of the whole, Nietzsche’s infamous
criticisms of pity are seen in a new light.
Chapter 7 takes up Nietzsche’s conception of fate. I show that these
discussions offer some of Nietzsche’s most startling claims about the
identity of part and whole. I pay particular attention to Nietzsche’s con-
ception of the self as fate. On such a view, the individual is not conceived
of as something fated—something on which fate acts. Rather, the indi-
vidual is conceived of as a “piece of fate”. I argue that this identification
with fate should not be conceived of as an ultimate identity, as opposed
to a relative, egoic identity. Nietzsche claimed, “fate is an elevating
thought for one who understands that he belongs to it”.27 With reference
to the conception of the one and the many articulated in the foregoing, I
show how this Nietzschean conception of fate engenders the “self-esteem”
which he found sorely lacking in certain mystics.
Finally, in Chap. 8, I discuss Nietzsche’s reception of the Persian poet
Hafez. Throughout the 1880s, Nietzsche sung the praises of Hafez. Yet
this relationship has gone almost entirely unstudied in the immense sec-
ondary literature on Nietzsche. This neglect is particularly important to
address here, as Hafez is example of a mystic with a good conscience in
everything sensual and egoistic. My approach is to first make clear the
intellectual context in which Nietzsche encountered Hafez. Hammer,
Daumer, and Goethe all interpreted Hafez’ songs celebrating love and
wine in a fairly straightforward manner, as opposed to the sufisticating
tendency to turn Hafez into just the kind of “pious prig” that he most
abhorred.
I then consider each of Nietzsche’s discussions of Hafez in some detail.
Far from finding in Hafez the model of piety, I show how Nietzsche posi-
tioned Hafez amongst great satirists like Aristophanes, Petronius. Lauding
the “blissfully mocking” nature of Hafez’ poems,28 Nietzsche found in
Hafez an example of that “ingenious buffoonery” that he called the high-

est form of spirituality.29 Nietzsche considered Hafez an “artist of apo-
theosis”, setting him in the rare company of Rubens and Goethe. I argue
that Nietzsche placed Hafez beside Goethe as a prime example of how
“the most spiritual men… are sensualists in the best faith”.30 Speaking
explicitly of Hafez and Goethe, Nietzsche spoke of how the best consti-
tuted and most joyful mortals embrace the “unstable equilibrium” of
their conflicting inward forces.31 Rather than finding the tensions between
their ‘animal’ and ‘angel’ an argument against life, they find them another
‘seduction to life’. I argue that in Hafez, Nietzsche found an exemplar of
the Dionysian “religious affirmation of life” in even its most questionable
aspects.
* * *
In closing this introduction, and by way of briefly addressing my

approach, I would like to say something about this book’s dedication.
While Walter Kaufmann’s studies of Nietzsche have been improved
upon in many non-trivial respects by subsequent scholars, it seems the
destiny of anyone wanting to undertake a general treatment to fall rather
short of the standards he set. Yet if one has taken Kaufmann at all seri-
ously, one cannot help wanting to situate a study in a broad context—his
criticisms of an excessively narrow specialisation are simply too incisive to
ignore. One of Kaufmann’s common themes was that there are many
things which must be seen together if they are to be seen at all.32
Nietzsche said he deserved readers who read him “the way good old
philologists read their Horace”.33 His writing certainly repays careful
attention, but it is also true that features that are very striking at an ordi-
nary scale can easily disappear under the microscope. In Zarathustra,
Nietzsche mocked narrow specialisation in the figure of the pedant who
proudly declares “the brain of the leech: that is my world”.34 Those who
would rather “know nothing than half-know much” might present this as
conscientiousness, but Zarathustra knew better.
I hope that my debt to Kaufmann will be obvious throughout, though
I can’t help feeling that I have short-changed him. My dedication seems
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bound to invite unflattering comparisons. It is not merely the poverty of

my German—it’s my English, too. Kaufmann’s deft touch is bound to
make my every attempted pizzicato sound ham-fingered. This is doubt-
less a feeling that many writing about Nietzsche feel. Many have sought
to cast it off by affecting an all too heavy seriousness that can never do
justice to their topic. To write about Nietzsche in the manner of Kant
should be a satirist’s conceit, yet that conceit has become the norm. It is
again to Kaufmann that we owe some of our most penetrating analysis of
the disastrous model set by the perennially constipated Kant.35
It should also be borne in mind that it is largely due to Kaufmann that
English speakers have caught a sense of Nietzsche’s wit. Most transla-
tions, including the ever growing numbers that have followed Kaufmann’s
and benefitted from their example, can’t touch his for style. And yet this
was a man whose earliest scholarly efforts were in saving Nietzsche from
the then widespread view that while he was a great stylist, he was no great
thinker. Kaufmann saw very clearly that understanding Nietzsche’s
humour is quite inseparable from understanding his seriousness.
Kaufmann did not suffer from the pervasive Perennialism that makes
scholars see all things as one. He treated the task of comparison as one of
differentiation.36 I find this approach to be the most intellectually honest,
and also the most interesting. If the differences between, say, Nietzsche
and Meister Eckhart strike us as less fascinating than their similarities,
something has gone quite wrong. It is not because I think that Nietzsche
is generally right that I try to bring out these differences. I hope to have
learned a lesson from Kaufmann’s concerted railing against what he called
“exegetical thinking”—the process by which a reader confers authority
on a text before projecting his own ideas into it, only to get them back
“endowed with authority”.37 This process might seem inevitable when the
texts are Nietzsche’s since they are so crowded with voices that at least one
will resonate with one’s own voice—and thus, be heard the loudest. But
this is to make a necessity, if not a virtue, of one’s weaknesses. I find much
in Nietzsche to disagree with. But it is not by focussing exclusively on the
agreeable aspects that we benefit. Rather, I have found that much of the
enduring reward of engaging with Nietzsche’s thought comes from
regarding oneself as the target of his assaults, and not safely in the camp
behind him.
Finally, I am indebted to Kaufmann for my belated realisation that

understanding Goethe is indispensable to a deep appreciation of
Nietzsche’s thought. Not only did Kaufmann argue convincingly for a
view which Nietzsche simply took for granted: that Goethe was a model
of autonomy.38 He also had a great ability to bring Goethe to life. To get
a sense of this, one should read Kaufmann’s translation of the great dia-
logue between Mephisto (posing as Faust) and the student in the first
part of Faust.39 Read against Kaufmann’s, even the translations of very
accomplished poets, like Jarrell, tend to drag. Kaufmann’s version has all
the agile impetus of Wilbur’s Tartuffe.
The claim that Goethe can be enjoyed in the way that one enjoys
Molière might strike some as plainly false, even indecent. It is my view
that those who dismiss Goethe as a stuffed shirt have plainly not caught
the tone of the ‘presiding personality’. But I think that the same is true
for many who take themselves to be Goethe’s heirs. That is, some who
take Goethe seriously take him far too seriously. Jung claimed that Faust
was too great a book to be enjoyed, but was to be studied for its arcane
meanings. I will presently argue that such an esoteric approach to Goethe
is fundamentally misguided. But it is Kaufmann I must thank for first
opening my eyes to the abundant rewards right there on the surface.
Notes
1. EH “Why I Am So Wise” §3. This and related comments were sup-
pressed by Elisabeth, and consequently cannot be found in all editions.
See: F. Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and
Other Writings, ed. A. Ridley and J. Norman, trans. J. Norman,
Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 77–78.
2. In his journal for Jan. 22, 1896, Steiner wrote that Nietzsche was “Friede
des Weisen um sich verbreitend”.
3. J. Young, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Religion, Cambridge University Press,
2006, p. 201, p. 35, p. 142. On Young’s reading, Nietzsche affirmed “a
form of pantheism” (p. 35) which involved the “ecstatic identification
with the totality of things” (p. 142). One will find much in what follows
to support such a view. But one will also find strong reasons to regard as
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fundamentally misguided Young’s contention that Nietzsche advocated

a kind of “communitarianism” according to which “the good of the
organic, social whole takes precedence over… the good of each and every
individual” (p. 165).
4. EH “Why I Write Such Good Books” UM§2, p. 279.
5. EH “Why I Am A Destiny” §1, p. 326.
6. EH “Preface” §2, p. 217. Nietzsche speaks of his “terrible fear” that he
would be “pronounced holy”, and says that he wrote the book to “pre-
vent people doing mischief with him”. This fear was quickly proven well-
founded, with his close friend Peter Gast making just such a
pronouncement at Nietzsche’s funeral.
7. NF-1888,18[3].
8. EH “Why I Am So Clever” §4, p. 245.
9. TI “Morality as Anti-Nature”, 3, p. 488.
10. C.f. GS§283 on how living at war with oneself is the secret to “harvest-
ing from existence the greatest fruitfulness”.
11. NF-1883,16[15].
12. GS§228, p. 212.
13. Parkes writes “Nietzsche was able to practise a vigorous form of walking
meditation (corresponding to the slower kinhin in the Zen tradition)
that allowed him to hear the “inner voices” of his thoughts rather than
the chatter of his I”. See: G. Parkes, “Nietzsche, Panpsychism, and Pure
Experience: An East-Asian Contemplative Perspective”, in A. Rehberg
(ed.), Nietzsche and Phenomenology, Cambridge Scholars Publishing,
2011, p. 98. Parkes’ claim that Nietzsche advocated a “Bodhisattva ideal”
is taken up in Chap. 5.
14. NF-1881,11[7].
15. NF-1887,9[30] (WP§785, pp. 412–413).
16. NF-1884,25[454]. This is not to deny that there are other influences of
comparable importance, or that Nietzsche made other such lists. For
example, Nietzsche wrote that “I have a lineage… that which moved
Zarathustra, Moses, Mohammed, Jesus, Plato, Brutus, Spinoza, and
Mirabeau is the medium in which I live…” (NF-1881,15[17]) and
“When I speak of Plato, Pascal, Spinoza, and Goethe, I know that their
blood flows in my veins” (NF-1881,12[52]). It is worth noting that both
of these fragments occur in the notebooks shortly after some important
discussions of mystical experiences, which I discuss in Chap. 4.
17. This borrows Kaufmann’s divinely malicious translation of Goethe’s

rhyme on “Laffen” und “Pfaffen” at the beginning of Faust. See: GF, p. 93.
18. See B. W. Davis, “Reply to Graham Parkes: Nietzsche as Zebra: With
both Egoistic Antibuddha and Nonegoistic Bodhisattva Stripes”, and
G. Parkes, “Reply to Bret Davis: Zarathustra and Asian Thought: A Few
Final Words”, both published in Journal of Nietzsche Studies, vol.
46, 2015.
19. G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, The Bodley Head, 1909, pp. 238–239:
“Students of popular science, like Mr. Blatchford, are always insisting
that Christianity and Buddhism are very much alike, especially
Buddhism.”
20. NF-1884,26[442].
21. NF-1888,16[32] (WP§1041, p. 536).
22. NF-1883,8[14] (WP§417, p. 224).
23. NF-1888,14[89] (WP§1052, p. 542).
24. NF-1888,15[113] (WP§351, pp. 191–193).
25. GS§162, p. 199.
26. NF-1887,10[128] (WP§388, p. 209).
27. NF-1884,26[442].
28. GS§370, pp. 329–330.
29. NF-1888,18[3].
30. NF-1886,5[34] (WP§1045, pp. 537–538.).
31. GM.III§2, pp. 98–99.
32. For example, W. Kaufmann, The Future of the Humanities, Reader’s
Digest Press, 1977, §72.
33. EH “Why I Write Such Good Books” §5, p. 266.
34. Z “The Leech”, p. 250.
35. W. Kaufmann, Goethe, Kant, and Hegel, Discovering the Mind, Vol. I,
Transaction Publishers, 1991, §31.
36. This comparative approach is evident in virtually all of Kaufmann’s
works, but see in particular W. Kaufmann, Religions in Four Dimensions,
Reader’s Digest Press, 1976.
37. W. Kaufmann, The Future of the Humanities, op. cit., §21.
38. See especially W. Kaufmann, Goethe, Kant, and Hegel, where the com-
parison of Goethe’s model of autonomy with that of Kant forms a
major theme.
39. GF, pp. 194–207.
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Bibliography
Kaufmann, W., The Future of the Humanities, Reader’s Digest Press, 1977.
———, Goethe, Kant, and Hegel: Discovering the Mind, Vol. I, Transaction
Publishers, 1991.
Parkes, P., “Nietzsche, Panpsychism, and Pure Experience: An East-Asian
Contemplative Perspective”, in A. Rehberg (ed.), Nietzsche and Phenomenology,
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011, pp. 87–100.
Young, J., Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Religion, Cambridge University Press, 2006.
2
Ancestors, Part I
Kaufmann claimed that “immersion” in Goethe is “precisely what is

needed” to understand Nietzsche.1 Although Kaufmann said that
Goethe “was not a philosopher”,2 he insisted that we take Goethe’s
thought, and especially his way of thinking, seriously. In one sense, it
is obviously true that Goethe was no philosopher. Goethe himself
acknowledged, “I had no organ for philosophy in the strict sense [Für
Philosophie im eigentlichen Sinne hatte ich kein Organ]”.3 What Goethe
lacked was an organ for abstraction. Even his thought, as we shall
shortly see, was predominantly visual. Goethe had little time for the
philosophical speculation, which he described as “injurious to the
Germans”, tending to promote a style that was “vague, difficult, and
obscure”.4
But Nietzsche did see Goethe as a philosopher in another, less strict
sense. In fact, Nietzsche compared Goethe favourably to the “one-sided”
modern philosophers and claimed that Goethe “stood well” amongst the
Pre-Socratics that he most admired.5 In this chapter, I begin to develop
an account of Goethe’s philosophical influence on Nietzsche. I pay

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75007-7_2
14 A. Milne
particular attention to Goethe’s conception of the one and the many. In

subsequent chapters, I will argue that this conception proves crucial to
Nietzsche’s religious thought.
* * *
In English-language scholarship, there are a fair number of quality liter-

ary analyses of Goethe’s work, but few philosophers have given Goethe
serious attention. Where Goethe’s religious thought is considered, it is
common to view his work through the turbid media of his most unscru-
pulous exegetes, including Rudolf Steiner and Carl Jung.
The mature Goethe is sometimes presented as a kind of Daoist sage,
tranquil and detached.6 The comparison is stretched, but there is one
aspect of it that is right. Just as later Daoists claimed to base their super-
naturalist and alchemical speculations on the sceptical and down-to-earth
writings of Laozi and Zhuangzi, so Goethe’s proclaimed descendants
would found esoteric systems on the writings of a master who disdained
metaphysical speculation. Both Steiner and Jung turn Goethe into a
“mystic” in one sense: they read Goethe as esotericist. But, as will become
increasingly clear, “esoteric” is exactly the wrong word to use to describe
the tendency of Goethe’s thought generally, and his religious thought in
particular.
Even in Goethe’s work on a fringe topic like physiognomy, there is
nothing esoteric. Goethe gave anatomical instruction to Lavater to
assist his physiognomic research, but the two men could hardly have
been more different. For Goethe, his interest in physiognomy was
linked to his sense of the connection between inner and outer: our emo-
tions are revealed on our faces. Lavater, however, was convinced that
physiognomy could reveal the moral character of a person, and that it
would allow us to recognise Christ in his second coming. But Lavater’s
powers of observation were weak, and he was a perpetual dupe. For
example, Lavater was so taken by Cagliostro that he continued to insist
on the legitimacy of the holder of the Arcana Arcanorum’s powers even
after Cagliostro’s impostures were exposed.7 Lavater couldn’t read
Goethe’s face, either. Goethe told Lavater plainly that “I am not
un-Christian, nor anti-Christian, but am a committed non-Christian

[Ich bin kein Unchrist, kein Widerchrist, aber doch ein dezidierter
Nichtchrist]”. But Goethe’s tolerance was mistaken for susceptibility,
and more than a decade later still saw Goethe as a Nathanael, a sceptic
whose conversion would come. On the other hand, Goethe wrote in a
poem that Lavater wouldn’t need to keep vehemently repeating his
Christian mantra “thou art!” “thou art!” unless he was trying to con-
vince himself of this doubtful proposition.8 For Goethe, Lavater was a
good-hearted man, but subject to “enormous delusions” and a victim of
self-deception9 whose “weak mysticism [schwacher Mystizismus]” had
limited the flight of his genius.10
The interpretations of Steiner and Jung are still quite influential in
Goethe studies. Indeed, it is not uncommon for scholarly research on
Goethe to cite such sources more than Goethe’s own works.11 This may
be considered major obstacles to scholars operating outside of those cir-
cles. It is worth bearing in mind, however, that a similar situation once
prevailed with Nietzsche’s work, and it was a major achievement of schol-
ars like Kaufmann to wrest Nietzsche’s legacy from such hands. Steiner
and Jung were colossal windbags, and both could expound endlessly on
Goethe. I must, therefore, be selective if I am to show briefly just how
widely their readings miss the mark.
For Steiner, Faust reveals Goethe’s “esoteric world conception”. We
must look beneath the external appearances to find the “inner, spiritual
meaning”. Steiner tries to head off the criticism that it is “inadmissible to
turn living figures of artistic imagination into dry allegory” by saying he
will not quarrel people who think that way, for their eyes simply cannot
see that “totally different element which is perceptible to us”.12 Steiner
then quotes Goethe, telling Eckermann that Faust’s “higher significance
will not escape the initiate”.13 The remark needs some context. Eckermann
had just told Goethe he had concerns for the comprehensibility of the
second part of the work, given that it is so rich in historical references that
are made with a light touch. Goethe responded that people needn’t catch
these allusions to enjoy the work, but that certain readers will. The state-
ment, then, certainly does not indicate that there is some esoteric mean-
ing behind the work.
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Goethe did say that his works are “not written for the masses” but for
those whose tendencies and desires are similar to his own.14 Nietzsche,
too, saw himself as writing for the few. But of course, many are willing to
imagine their tendencies and desires as aligned with such men, and there
is no guarantee that those who count themselves among the elect have
any real affinity for the work.
Steiner wrote that Goethe stopped at the natural “lest he should lose
his hold upon reality”.15 This is quite right, though of course Steiner saw
this as a fault. Steiner saw himself as just the man to go on where Goethe
had halted. He certainly had no such inhibitions about losing touch with
reality, offering a “path of initiation” to “knowledge of higher worlds”.
But that the Augenmensch didn’t make eyes at the beyond is no shortcom-
ing. Far from fulfilling the promise of Goethe’s vision, Steiner represents
rather its basic betrayal.
In his autobiography, Goethe wrote that in his youth, he concocted his
own religion, a witches’ brew of Neoplatonism, hermeticism, mysticism,
and kabbalah.16 But Goethe’s mature thought is decidedly lacking in
speculation about unseen worlds, spiritual forces, and so on. In the his-
torical section of the Farbenlehre, Goethe presents alchemy as dishonest
and demeaning, and posits that it, like all other forms of superstition, is
believed in only because it flatters our hopes and desires. The image of
Goethe as occultist is fanciful. Indeed, a major aspect of Goethe’s
Weltanschauung can be summarised in his advice to “seek no secret initia-
tion / beneath the veil”. Nature is not hidden, but rather “man is star-
blind”. The treatment Goethe suggests for these cataracts is not some
kind of spiritual ‘second sight’, but to develop a capacity to remain with
sensory reality without looking beyond or behind it. Unlike Lavater,
Goethe never had an interest in Gassner’s “exorcism” or Mesmer’s “animal
magnetism”. When sent a book on related topics in 1820, Goethe
responded very politely that he had a natural aversion to any sort of prac-
tice that required him to close his eyes.17
Those who would move from alchemical or other occult imagery in
Goethe’s literature (particularly Faust) to some hidden occult meaning
behind the texts would do well to remember Goethe’s criticism of
Creuzer. In Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker, Creuzer had specu-
lated on the origins of religions and given a theory of myth and symbol.
These two aspects were closely intertwined. Creuzer was a Neoplatonist,

and he claimed the primacy of Indian religion, saying that it was from
this perfect monotheism that all other world religions had emanated and
degenerated. For Creuzer, we had to turn away from “the distractions of
the many”, getting beneath the particular to discover what is universal.
Goethe described Creuzer’s theory as a “dark-poetic-philosophical-
priestly error [dunkel-poetisch-philosophisch-pfäffischen Irrgang]”. In one
of the Xenien epigrams—which in one version is expressly addressed to
Creuzer—Goethe describes as “foolish” whoever searches after symbolic
meanings, describing them as “always searching in caves / and missing
the world’s riches”. None of this has stopped intellectual successors of
Creuzer from often being mistaken for Goethe’s heirs; and nor has it
stopped Goethe’s readers from crawling under his works and missing
their riches.
Goethe’s rejection of Creuzer has sometimes been misunderstood.
One recent scholar, Frederick Amine, claims that Goethe’s “public state-
ments” against Creuzer are misleading, and that “Goethe’s recorded pro-
nouncements on his own works and others’ are not the last or best word
on the subject”. As evidence for this, Amrine points out that Goethe’s
explicit rejection of alchemy in the Farbenlehre “did not hinder him in
the slightest from suffusing Faust with alchemical imagery”.18 But there
is no tension here. The themes in Faust no more reveal Goethe as alche-
mist than the themes of The Merchant of Venice reveal Shakespeare
as usurer.
Amrine claims that Goethe’s criticisms of Creuzer are “belied” by his
“later artistic practice”, but this simply isn’t so. Goethe continued to criti-
cise Creuzer, including in Faust II. Unfortunately, Amrine misinterprets
scenes with mocking references as acknowledgements of the Symbolist’s
influence. For example, following Creuzer’s claim that the Cabiri were
originally worshiped in earthenware forms,19 they are represented in Faust
as misshapen clay pots. When the Homunculus seems surprised that
‘wise’ men would butt their thick skulls over these old things, Thales
responds that it is rust that makes the coin valuable, and Proteus con-
cludes that this view is bizarre therefore respectable. But Goethe was far
more explicitly critical of Creuzer in a discarded scene in which Mephisto
speaks of the myth of Euphorion, and says that some believe it should not
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be straightforwardly interpreted. These men think that “there is some-

thing behind it [dahinter stecke was]”: they can “smell mysteries”, perhaps
even Indian and Egyptian mystifications. Mephisto says that to brew up
such concoctions and engage in an etymological dance is the mark of the
right man, and declares himself a “loyal disciple of the new Symbolism”.20
The passage is typically mocking, and one might think this would be
plain to any attentive reader. But an exegetical thinker can always cite the
devil to his purpose, and this is exactly what Steiner does. Quoting this
passage, Steiner says that “it is expressly pronounced that someone who
understands Faust in the sense of Goethe also sees something deeper hid-
den behind it”21 Steiner looks behind Goethe’s works for a mirror in
which he could find his own views reflected. As we shall shortly see, Jung’s
approach was much the same, though his readings are perhaps even more
incredible.
Goethe did not hope his works would be decrypted by some future
generation. In fact, he mocked his contemporaries’ attempts to do so.
Goethe told Eckermann that Faust is “incommensurable” and said all
attempts to make it comprehensible to reason were in vain. But he saw
that the work’s “darkness” makes it appeal to certain readers, who would
tire themselves out on its insoluble problems.22 To Falk, Goethe joked
about those who had spent 30 years trying to make sense of the broom-
sticks of the Walpurgis Night and the monkeys’ conversation in the
witch’s kitchen. These exegetes’ attempts at “interpreting and allegoris-
ing” all of the “dramatic humorous nonsense [dramatisch-humoristischen
Unsinns]” had come to nothing. Those who cannot delight in play will
sniff about behind it for profundities. Jung was one such behind-sniffer.
In a response to a questionnaire about Goethe’s influence, Jung wrote,
“the only thing of Goethe’s that is alive for me is Faust”. For Jung, Faust
was not a work to be enjoyed, but rather it was “a study [ein Studium]”
over which one must labour because it is so “cryptic [hintergründig]”.
Jung claimed Faust to be “the most recent pillar in that bridge of the
spirit” that spans from the Upanishads to Eckhart, and said that one can-
not meditate on the work enough, particularly on the “mysteries” of part
II.23 Jung made rather a lot of these mysteries. For example, in an essay
on his “psychological approach to the Trinity”, Jung cites the same scene
from Faust II mentioned above, where the Nereids and Tritons return
from Samothrace with three of the Cabiri in a turtle shell, saying that
“the fourth refused to come, / he said he was the best / who thinks for all
the rest”. Goethe’s satirising of numerology in this and other scenes is
taken in Jung’s unhinged analysis as evidence that Goethe had an “intui-
tive grasp” of some profound mystery.24
In a letter to Lavater, Goethe said that if one needs to find divinity in
the Bible, then, as “a very worldly man [ein sehr irdischer Mensch]”, para-
bles such as the unjust steward and the prodigal son seemed to him “more
divine” than the Revelations blather about the “seven golden candlesticks,
trumpets, seals, stars, and woes”.25 Against the arcane significance of all of
these sevens, Goethe declares to stand firm to the “truth of my five senses”.
The witch’s arithmetical nonsense in Faust mocked just this kind of
numerology: five and six make seven and eight, “and nine is one / and ten
is none”.26 There was no meaning behind any of it, but try telling that to
his esoteric followers. Jung invests so much significance in Goethe’s 4s
and 7s and 8s as to constitute a kind of exegetical alchemy, transmuting
poetic logic and playful nonsense into grimness and sheer irrationality.
In his autobiography, Jung says. “I regard my work on alchemy as a
sign of my inner relationship to Goethe”.27 Jung claimed that Goethe’s
“whole life was enacted within the framework” of the Faust drama and
that Goethe was in the grip of a “suprapersonal process”. Jung then
immediately goes on to say that “my entire life has been permeated and
held together by one idea and one goal: namely, to penetrate into the
secret of the personality. Everything can be explained from this central
point, and all my works relate to this one theme”. Presumably, his “inner
relationship” to Goethe enables him to explain Goethe’s life and work by
reference to this theme, too. But somehow, despite this ‘inner relation-
ship’, Jung consistently shows an amazing insensitivity to Goethe.
Jung’s interpretation hits its high point in a letter in which he writes
behind the character of Gretchen “stands the Gnostic sequence: Helen-
Mary-Sophia”. Here, Jung claims, “Goethe divines the fact that uncon-
scious, undifferentiated functions are contaminated with the collective
unconscious, with the result that they can be realized only in part ratio-
nally”28 Jung goes on to say that the rest of Faust II is “closely connected
with Goethe’s alchemical knowledge, which no one should underesti-
mate”. This claim is not made any more plausible by the fact that Jung,
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following Herbert Silberer, gives a psychological interpretation of

alchemy. Alchemy was Jung’s obsession, and it is plain that he vastly over-
estimated Goethe’s interest. Jung’s habit was to “think for all the rest” and
find his own ideas everywhere confessed.
Jung contrasted himself with Steiner, declaring that unlike the latter, “I
am not interested at all in what can be speculated about without any
proof ”. But this is simply the goose honking about the duck’s quackery.
Both men had scientific pretensions, and both made a virtue of dropping
their guard against the possibilities of self-deception.
It is not just that these interpretations of Goethe are far from defini-
tive, but that in the case of both men, deafness to irony is combined with
an exegetical method that transmutes everything foreign into more of the
same. It is understandable that Nietzsche scholars have largely avoided
wading into such waters. But it is a mistake to think that one needs to in
order to understand Goethe’s thought. Just as most scholars feel that they
need not read Nietzsche through Heidegger, let alone Jung or Steiner, we
should feel quite free to approach Goethe directly. It is just this that I
propose to do.
* * *
One final word before we move on. Given what I have said in the intro-
duction about ‘mediators’, I would like to make it very clear that it is not
my intention to mediate between Goethe and Nietzsche. These two men
were very different in many ways. Goethe was a poet, a naturalist, a lover
of women, music, food, wine, and wit. Nietzsche, on the other hand, was
a talented improviser and a much more accomplished poet than English
speakers tend to realise. It is undeniable, however, that while Nietzsche
had the full measure of Goethe’s wit, he had hardly a whit of Goethe’s
“worldliness”. Goethe thought that whoever spurned drinking wine and
making love was “as good as dead”.29 But alcohol didn’t agree with
Nietzsche, and he had no significant sexual relationships. Nietzsche’s
health was always frail, and he was eternally seeking comfortable external
circumstances. His eyesight was weak, and his world was not predomi-
nantly visual but conceptual: he found abstract thought “a festival”.30 But
Nietzsche knew himself to be a decadent and, constantly wary of self-

deception, did not allow himself to resent health. Unlike those who
would simply appropriate Goethe as a champion of their own worldview,
Nietzsche found in Goethe a constant goad towards a “fuller” life.31
* * *
That Goethe was no mystagogue does not mean his views are easily stated.
The difficulty is not only that he never develops them systematically, but
also that they are highly original, and thus easily misinterpreted. This is
particularly the case with Goethe’s conception of the relationship of the
one and the many, to which we now turn.
In The Problem of Knowledge, Cassirer writes that Goethe’s writings
reveal a conception of the universal and the particular that “can hardly be
found elsewhere in the history of philosophy or of natural science”.32
Cassirer warns that Goethe’s radically original conception is bound to be
misunderstood when cast in terms of familiar philosophical positions,
such as the contrast between nominalism and realism. Cassirer describes
Goethe’s conception as one in which the universal and particular are “not
only intimately connected” but “interpenetrate” each other. Cassirer
makes clear that there is “no question which of the two is of greater value,
or whether one is superior or subordinate to the other”. Rather, “a per-
fectly reciprocal determination holds.”
In Goethe’s thought, this relationship between the universal and par-
ticular is equivalent to that of the one to the many, and of the whole to
the part. Cassirer points out that this relationship is “not one of logical
subsumption”, but rather of “symbolic representation”. To help us to
bring this conception into focus, I will begin by briefly examining the
nature of the symbol in Goethe’s poetry.
In the second part of Zarathustra, we read “everything permanent—
that is only a parable [Alles Unvergängliche — das ist nur ein Gleichniss!]”.
This is of course an inversion of the beginning of the chorus which con-
cludes Faust: “Everything impermanent/ is only a parable [Alles
Vergängliche / ist nur ein Gleichnis]”. Nietzsche often played with these
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famous lines.33 In the “Blessed Isles” of Zarathustra, they are used to dem-
onstrate his preference for becoming over being. The section reads:
Evil I call it, and misanthropic—all this teaching about the One and the
Plenum and the Unmoved and the Sated and the Permanent. All perma-
nence—that is mere parable! And the poets lie too much. It is of time and
becoming that the best parables should speak: let them be a praise and a
justification of all impermanence.
Whether Goethe was lying and taking sides with being over becoming
depends on how we understand Gleichnis, a term which English transla-
tors have variously rendered ‘allegory’, ‘metaphor’, ‘parable’, ‘simile’, and
‘symbol’.
Discussing differences between Schiller’s approach to poetry and his
own, Goethe writes, “there is a great difference whether a poet looks for
the particular that goes with the universal, or sees the universal in the
particular”. The first approach gives rise to allegory, where the particular
only functions as an “example” or “illustration” of the universal. The sec-
ond approach, which constitutes the real “nature of poetry”, expresses
something particular “without any thought of the universal”, and with-
out “pointing” to it. He concludes that whenever one has a “living grasp”
of the particular, without realising it, one is “at the same time in posses-
sion of the universal”.34
Elsewhere Goethe makes a similar point by contrasting the allegorical
with the symbolic. Allegory transforms a percept into a “concept [Begriff]”,
and the concept into an “image [Bild]”. Symbolism transforms a phe-
nomenon into an “idea [Idee]”, and the idea into an image. It does this in
such a way that the idea remains “unattainable” and “inexpressible”.35
In the case of allegory, then, the universal is seen through the particular
whereas, in the case of symbolism, the universal is seen in the particular.
In allegory, the particular is instrumental: it is to be looked past to the
concept which it points. In symbolism, the particular is looked into at
the inexpressible idea that it contains.36
This distinction between allegory and symbol could be important in
understanding the Chorus Mysticus37: “Alles Vergängliche / Ist nur ein
Gleichnis; / Das Unzulängliche, / Hier wird’s Ereignis; / Das Unbeschreibliche, /
Hier ist’s getan; / Das Ewig-Weibliche / Zieht uns hinan”. The term Gleichnis
can be read either as allegory / simile or as symbol / metaphor. If it is
allegorical, then it is conceptual and points away from the particular to
the universal. If it is symbolic, then it does not point to the universal but
contains the universal inside the particular. It seems that the latter is what
is meant, for where the concept pointed to by an allegory is “circum-
scribed”, “reachable”, and “expressible”; the symbolic is transformed into
an idea that captures what is “unreachable” and “inexpressible”. And this
is just what follows, with the symbol making fully apparent “the insuffi-
cient [das Unzulängliche]”, and of doing “the indescribable [das
Unbeschreibliche]”.
Goethe conceived of the part as symbolic of the whole, and the many
as symbolic of the one. But what is the nature of this symbolism? It is not
the representation of a type, which would be to confuse Goethe with the
Platonic conception of the individual as an imperfect representation of
an ideal form. For Goethe, contrary to Plato, variation is basic—his
thought is essentially morphological. Moreover, the whole does not exist
apart from the parts, or the one apart from the many.38 “If the whole is
ever to gladden thee, / That whole in the smallest thing thou must see
[Willst du dich am Ganzen erquicken, / So mußt du das Ganze im Kleinsten
erblicken]”.39 This couplet, in Bowring’s fine translation, neatly describes
Goethe’s conception.
In the historical part of The Theory of Colours,40 Goethe claims that
some particulars are more effective symbols of the universal than others
are. I read this not as denying that each part contains the whole, but as
asserting that not all parts reveal it as clearly. This was a part of Goethe’s
criticism of Bacon’s inductive methodology, where each individual case is
considered of equal value. For Goethe, “one case is often worth thou-
sands” and “encloses all inside itself ”. These cases are the Urphänomene,
which Goethe describes elsewhere as “symbolic” because they “include all
instances”.41
In true symbolism, Goethe writes, “the particular represents the uni-
versal… as a live and immediate revelation of the unfathomable”.42 On
this view, the symbol does not point away from itself to something else,
but rather that the particular reveals itself as the universal. As Goethe
writes, “the universal and particular coincide: the particular is the
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universal manifesting under different conditions [Das Allgemeine und

Besondere fallen zusammen: Das Besondere ist das Allgemeine, unter ver-
schiedenen Bedingungen erscheinend]”.43
Goethe’s conception of the one and the many is given perhaps its clear-
est and most thorough treatment in a cycle of poems titled Gott und Welt.
The poems explore not only the relationship of God to World, but equally
that of one to many, and whole to part.
Before I go on to pull at the threads of these poems, I should like to
make plain some reservations I have about my tin-eared approach here. I
don’t think that yanking propositions from poems is a model of exegetical
sanity. A poem is not pure context, but it is close enough. This criticism
is not avoided by the observation that Goethe’s poems are often didactic.
They are still poems. Nor is the criticism avoided by the fact that the
poems in the Gott und Welt cycle are very short, and so lines do not need
to be wrested from a much broader context. To quote from a poem is
always to quote out of context. A poem is a self-contained thing, and
there is certainly more than a touch of barbarism in treating it as if it
weren’t.
I must be up front in acknowledging that my interest here (and
throughout) is not with poetry as such. My concern is with prosaic trans-
lation. It is a concern that misses the point that meaning in poetry arises
under formal pressure, and that a poem done into prose is a poem done
out of existence. But to translate a poem as poem is to enter into those
formal pressures oneself, and what emerges from the process is something
that is familiar yet new. Frost’s famous definition of poetry as “that which
is lost… in translation”44 tells an uncomfortable truth. There are plainly
better and worse translations, but equivalence is an impossibility. It is
foolish to hope that the full measure of sense can survive translation,
when the sense of a poem has the relationship to its expression as that of
mind to body.
The individual poems in the Gott und Welt cycle are not only complete
worlds, but also express complete world-views, and it is with the latter
that I am interested here. Nietzsche didn’t have much to say about trans-
lation, but claimed to admire it when its theft was perpetrated with the
best conscience.45 I do not feel so easy about the smash-and-grab which
follows, and can only hope that the crime pays.
In a monograph study of the Gott und Welt cycle, Sachers compares the
ideas expressed by Goethe to those of Leibniz, Spinoza, and others.
Sachers discerns a kind of “philosophical indecisiveness” in Goethe’s
views, and speaks of him as “awkwardly poised” between other thinkers’
positions.46 There are two responses to such an interpretation. The first is
to agree that Goethe offers no coherent account, and the second is to
argue that Goethe’s ‘idiosyncrasy’ with respect to his philosophical prede-
cessors’ was his intention, and that the poems are expressing an unfamil-
iar conception. I think both responses are to some degree right.
That Goethe doesn’t commit himself to a single fixed conception is a
part of what makes it easy to overlook his influence on Nietzsche and
others. But often it is just this wariness of conceptual ossification that was
influential. Goethe once wrote to Jacobi that given the “manifold tenden-
cies” of his character, a single way of thinking couldn’t suffice: “as a poet
and artist, I’m a polytheist, as a natural scientist, however, a pantheist,
and I’m the one as decisively as the other”47 Goethe recommended hold-
ing conceptions with a loose grip lest we become ensnared in our own
“inadequate theoretical pronouncements”.48 This allowed him to see
from many perspectives—or in Nietzsche’s phrase, with “many eyes”.
The Gott und Welt poems were written over a period of decades, though
most were fairly late. Given the plurality of perspectives represented in
the cycle, it might seem that no consistent view can be drawn out. This
seems especially true given the way the cycle was amended posthumously,
where the lines of “Eins und Alles” are seen as in a mirror in the added
poem “Vermächtnis”. While the former concludes “The eternal goes
forth in all / And all to nothing must fall / If in being it would persist
[Das Ewige regt sich fort in allen, / Denn alles muss in Nichts zerfallen, /
Wenn es im Sein beharren will]”, the latter begins “No being to nothing
can fall / The eternal goes forth in all [Kein Wesen kann zu Nichts zerfallen!
/ Das Ew’ge regt sich fort in allen]”.
Eckermann, who was responsible for the posthumous inclusion of
“Vermächtnis” in the cycle, reports a conversation in which Goethe says
that he wrote this poem in order to contradict the “stupid [dumm]” final
lines of “Eins und Alles”, after his irritation at these lines being set up in
gold letters by a group of his naturalist friends in Berlin.49 This need to
stress contrary views is not uncommon in Goethe’s work, and we should
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not therefore expect to find that a single, definitive expression of Goethe’s

Gott- und Weltanschauung. Having said this, Goethe’s position is hardly
one of simple incoherence, and more attention to the poems in the this
cycle will help us to understand what holds these perspectives together.
In “Epirrhema”, we read, “Nothing living is one / it’s always many
[Kein Lebendiges ist ein Eins, / Immer ist’s ein Vieles]”. German grammar
should not confuse us into thinking that this is a denial of a whole, which
we might call a “One” as opposed to a “one”. Rather, the claim is that
what is “One” is never “a one [ein Eins]”, but is always “a multiplicity [ein
Vieles]”. The same view is expressed in Goethe’s scientific writings, includ-
ing in On Morphology where we read that “no living thing is unitary in
nature; every such thing is a plurality. Even the organism which appears
to us as individual exists as a collection of independent living entities”.50
Nietzsche would later develop a similar view, claiming that “all unity is
unity only as organisation and cooperation”,51 and that what is “simple”
is imaginary: “whatever is real… is neither one nor even reducible
to one”.52
Still in “Epirrhema”, we read that in nature, “nothing is inside, noth-
ing is outside / because what is inner, that is outer [Nichts ist drinnen,
nichts ist draußen; / Denn was innen, dass ist außen]”. This understanding
of the relationship of inner and outer means that we need not unveil
nature to get at the “truth”, but rather we should rejoice in “the true
appearance [des wahren Schein]”, for nature is an “open secret [öffentlich
Geheimnis]”.53
A similar view is developed in the poem Allerdings, where Goethe criti-
cises the “philistine” claim, made originally in a poem by the Swiss natu-
ralist Haller, that no creature’s spirit can enter into the heart of nature.
On the contrary, Goethe says that “we’re on the inside [Sind wir im
Inner]” at every place. This is because “nature has neither core / nor shell
/ she is all at once [Natur hat weder Kern / Noch Schale; / Alles ist sie mit
einem Male]”. We could say that the inner is “seen in” the outer, but we
should not imagine that this means the outer is a reflection of the inner.
The connection is more intimate, for the inner is not independent of the
latter and only manifest or revealed in it.
For the Neoplatonists, the one has ontological priority over the many:
the whole is independent of the parts, but may be reflected in them. This
can, for example, be seen in several of Michelangelo’s poems, which

express the sentiment that there is often no better stair for the soul’s eleva-
tion than to let the eye wander over beautiful things, and where the
earthly desires there inflamed are a means of rising above all earthly
things.54 But explicitly Goethe rejected the Neoplatonic view.55 Goethe’s
conception of the symbolic is not ‘transparency to transcendence’—not,
that is, seeing through to something else.56 In “Parabasis”, we read of “the
eternal one / that is multiply manifest [das ewig Eine, / Das sich vielfach
offenbart]”. This suggests that there is not an ontologically prior one that
manifests as the many, but rather the “perfectly reciprocal determinism”
that Cassirer mentioned—the whole does not exist apart from the parts.
* * *
To understand what it means to claim that the whole is in the parts, it

may help to shift our attention from Gott und Welt to Goethe’s studies of
animal and plant morphology.57
Goethe’s should not be taken as saying that the whole is to be found by
piecing together the parts. This is a common misunderstanding, made by
one recent scholar in contrasting Goethe’s anatomical ideas from those of
Richard Owen. While Owen sought a “least common denominator”, and
thus described “the vertebrate archetype as essentially a string of verte-
brae”, Goethe, it is claimed, sought an “an inclusive form, a pattern that
would contain all of the parts”. It is true that Goethe did not conceive of
the archetype as a common denominator, but it is a mistake to think of it
as an amalgam of particulars. A similar error is made by scholars who
move from Nietzsche’s claim that to see with “more eyes” is to see more
objectively to the conclusion that, for Nietzsche, “truth” is the amalgam
of individual perspectives. This is reading is understandable, but it is not
Nietzsche’s view. On the contrary, Nietzsche saw that “sum” of perspec-
tives is “in every case quite incongruent”.58
So how are we to understand Goethe’s view? In Italienische Reise,
Goethe describes “the organ of the plant we usually call the ‘leaf ’” as a
“true Proteus” which hides and reveals itself in all plant forms: from
beginning to end, “the plant is always just leaf [die Pflanze immer nur
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Blatt]”. In Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären, Goethe

wrote that there is a “secret relationship [geheime Verwandtschaft]”
amongst the external parts of the plant. He argued that the plant’s differ-
ent organs—sepals, petals, pistils, stamens—were all “modifications of a
single organ”, the leaf. For Goethe, the leaf is symbolic of the plant. The
whole plant is revealed in it. The plant is not the aggregate of its leaves,
but nor is the plant is not something apart from its organs, its ‘leaves’.
This “secret relationship” is an open secret. Here the nature of the plant is
to be understood by observing its development. While each leaf contains
the whole plant, some reveal the whole more clearly. Thus, to understand
plant morphology, Goethe looked for those exemplary cases “worth thou-
sand”, his Urphänomene. This is why, in The Metamorphosis of Plants,
Goethe pays particular attention to phenomena such as double flowers,
where the order of growth can be seen to reverse.
To look behind or beyond these Urphänomene is, for Goethe, a mis-
take. In a well-known conversation with Eckermann, Goethe says that
“astonishment [Erstaunen]” is the highest state man can attain; man
should be satisfied at the sight of the archetypal phenomenon and “he
should not seek anything further behind it [ein Weiteres soll er nicht
dahinter suchen]”. But we generally do keep seeking, and in doing so we
behave “like children who, seeing an image in a mirror, turn it over to see
what’s behind it”. Once more, it is a mistake to think that reality is hid-
den behind appearances. If we are to perceive the whole, we must look
into the parts, not behind them.
One might suspect that these morphological studies have little bearing
on Goethe’s religious thought. But for Goethe, the naturalistic and the
religious were not separate spheres. Thus on believing that he had discov-
ered the intermaxillary bone in the human upper jaw, Goethe claimed
he’d demonstrated that humans belong to the whole as “a hue of a great
harmony”.59 A couple of years later, Goethe writes that his botanical
studies have “revealed a έν και παν”.60 Goethe is reflecting on his reading
of Gott: Einige Gesprache, Herder’s interpretation of Spinoza.61 Goethe’s
claims that the leaf is the “true Proteus” and that the plant is “nothing but
leaf ” are intimately connected to the broader sense of hen kai pan.62
Indeed, Goethe believed that natural philosophy was a better way to
study God than entering into the conceptual cobweb spinning of
theological or metaphysical speculation. Thus, in a famous letter to

Jacobi, Goethe writes that he must be forgiven for “wanting to fall silent”
on the topic of a divine being, which he knows “only in singular things”.
Goethe’s letter ends: “Here I am in the mountains, seeking the divine in
herbs and stones”.63
In an essay published in his journal On Morphology, Goethe criticises
the abstraction from what is pliable to a “coherent whole” that is “deter-
mined, completed, and fixed” in character. If we consider organic wholes,
Goethe writes, we do not find these characteristics anywhere: “on the
contrary, everything fluctuates in constant motion”. Cassirer aptly
described Goethe’s thought is “dynamical throughout”. Here we see that
the whole is not something that stands behind the parts, but is itself
becoming. If such a view seems hard to “grasp”, we should remember that
Goethe actively resisted rigid conceptual formulation. In this same essay,
Goethe warned that if we wish to understand nature, we must remain
“agile and malleable” as nature herself.
* * *
Even if we keep in mind Cassirer’s warnings about the originality of

Goethe’s view, this exposition is likely to remind us of a common inter-
pretation of Heraclitus. It is to Nietzsche’s reading of Heraclitus, on
which “the one is the many [das Eine ist das Viele]”,64 that we will turn next.
Notes
1. W. Kaufmann, Goethe, Kant, and Hegel, op. cit., p. 51.
2. Ibid, p. 25.
3. “Einwirkung der neueren Philosophie”, 1817. A translation can be of this
essay, “The Influence of Modern Philosophy”, can be found in The
Essential Goethe, ed. M. Bell, Princeton University Press, 2016.
4. CWG, Apr. 14, 1824. Goethe argues here that Schiller’s style was “most
noble and impressive whenever he leaves of philosophising”. C.f. CWG,
Nov. 14, 1823, where Goethe also speaks of the pernicious influence of
philosophy on Schiller: “it was sad to see how so highly gifted a man
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tormented himself with philosophical disquisitions which could in no

way profit him”.
5. NF-1884,26[3].
6. For example, see M. Bazzano, Buddha is Dead: Nietzsche and the Dawn
of European Zen, Sussex Academic Press, 2006, §2, pp. 6–7.
7. CWG, Feb. 17, 1829.
8. “Du bist! du bist! sagt Lavater. Du bist! / Du bist! Du bist! Du bist, Herr
Jesus Christ! / Er wiederholte nicht so heftig Wort und Lehre, / wenn es
ganz just mit dieser Sache wäre”.
9. CWG, Feb. 17, 1829.
10. CWG, Jan. 18, 1830 (Soret supplement).
11. See for example Henri Bortoft, The Wholeness of Nature, Lindisfarne
Books, 1996 and Taking Appearances Seriously, Floris Books, 2012.
Bortoft was one of the better writers on Goethe and science, yet he cites
Steiner’s works on Goethe far more often than he cites Goethe directly.
Bortoft might be right that the “esoteric enterprise” of Anthroposophy
has had “the effect of taking attention away from other aspects of
[Steiner’s] work” including his apparently “luminous” contribution to
our knowledge of Goethe, but this doesn’t excuse neglect of the pri-
mary texts.
12. R. Steiner, Goethe’s Standard of the Soul, trans. D.S. Osmond,
Anthroposophic Press, 1925. In the original, Kap. I of Goethes Geistesart.
13. CWG, Jan. 29, 1827.
14. CWG, Oct. 11, 1828.
15. R. Steiner, The Story of My Life, trans. H. Collison, Anthroposophical
Publishing Co., 1928. In the original, Kap. XVIII of Mein Lebensgang.
16. D&W, book 8.
17. Letter to Nees von Esenbeck, July 23, 1820.
18. F. Amrine, “Goethe as Mystagogue”, Goethe Yearbook, vol. 23,
2016, p. 23.
19. Some of these references and criticisms have been long acknowledged,
for example by Bayard Taylor in his 1870s translation of Faust.
20. This paraliopomenon is numbered 196 in the Berliner Ausgabe.
21. R. Steiner, in a 1909 lecture titled “Riddles in Goethe’s Faust: Esoteric”.
The original can be found in R. Steiner, Die Rätsel in Goethes “Faust”,
exoterisch und esoterisch: 2 Vorträge, Verlag, 1981.
22. CWG, Jan. 3, 1830. C.f. Feb. 13, 1831 where Goethe acknowledges
inconsistencies in Faust and repeats the claim about the work being
incommensurable as a whole.
23. C.G. Jung, Letters, Vol. I: 1906–1950, ed. G. Adler and A. Jaffé, trans.
R.F.C. Hull, Routledge, 2015, p. 88ff.
24. Jung expands on these claims later in the same text, saying that the
fourth is Goethe’s “thinking function” and that the poet had character-
ised it perfectly in saying it would not come. “Exactly!”, declares Jung,
the thinking function “wanted for some reason to stay behind or below”.
For more of the same, see Psychology and Alchemy. Nietzsche admired the
Venetian Epigram in which Goethe wrote of the four things he finds as
objectionable as snakes and poison: tobacco smoke, bedbugs, garlic, and
the crucifix (VE LXVI). One can imagine a Jung-inspired reading:
Goethe plainly points to the mystery of the second coming. The fourth
is the cross, and the fourth won’t come. So Goethe is saying that Christ
won’t return. For some reason he wanted to stay behind or below… I
think of Goethe’s mockery of the spiritual readings of the Song of
Songs—and what, good lord, would these exegetes make of Goethe’s
Song of Schlongs (VE CXLI)? (Lift your Schwanz, man—I smell a mys-
tery behind!). On mystical interpretations of the hohe Lied, see Goethe’s
letter to Zelter of Jan. 29, 1830. In his youth, Goethe translated the
Song of Solomon, which he interpreted straightforwardly as a superb
“collection of love songs”: see his letter to Merck, Oct. 1775.
25. Letter to Lavater, Oct. 28, 1779.
26. GF, pp. 250–253.
27. C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, ed. A Jaffé, trans. R. Winston
and C. Winston, Fontana Press, 1995, p. 232.
28. C.G. Jung, Letters, Vol. I: 1906–1950, op. cit., p. 265.
29. See Goethe’s libretto for “Jery und Bätely”: “A girl and a glass of wine /
cures all want; / and whoever doesn’t drink and doesn’t kiss / is as good
as dead [Ein Mädchen und ein Gläschen Wein / kurieren alle Not; / und wer
nicht trinkt, und wer nicht küßt, / der ist so gut wie todt]”.
30. NF-1885,34[130]: “abstract thought, while a hardship for many, is for
me, on good days, festival and intoxication”.
31. NF-1884,26[3].
32. E. Cassirer, The Problem of Knowledge, trans. W. Woglom and C. Hendel,
Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 144–146.
32 A. Milne
33. See also Z “On Poets”, pp. 126–129, and also “To Goethe” in the Lieder
added to the second edition of GS, pp. 350–351.
34. M&R§279, pp. 33–34.
35. M&R§§1112–1113, p. 141.
36. For an influential treatment of this distinction, see: T. Todorov, Theories
of the Symbol, trans. C Porter, Oxford, 1982, esp. pp. 206–207.
37. It might reasonably be argued that Faust is not consistent with Goethe’s
own views on the nature of symbolism and so on. It certainly need not.
One might think, for example, the fact that in this passage, Faust’s
“entelechy” or “eternal part” has just been separated from his body, sug-
gests something contrary to Goethe’s ordinary monistic conception. But
in fact, Goethe did believe in an indestructible entelechy (CWG, Sep. 1,
1829; c.f. Mar. 3, 1830), as we shall see in our discussion of
Empedocles below.
38. It should also be clear that this is not a “nominalist” denial of the exis-
tence of the whole (universal) or a reduction of the whole to the parts.
39. J.W. Goethe, The Poems of Goethe: Translated in the Original Metres,
trans. E.A. Bowring et al., S.E. Cassino, 1882, p. 254.
40. The historical and polemical parts are both omitted from Eastlake’s
English translation, which includes only the didactic part. See
J.W. Goethe, Theory of Colours, trans. C.L. Eastlake, John Murray
Publishers, 1840, p. xiv.
41. This is in the fragments toward Maximen und Reflexionen: the
Ur-phenomenon is “symbolisch, weil es alle Fälle begreift, identisch mit
allen Fällen”.
42. M&R§314, p. 37 [TM].
43. M&R§569, p. 76 [TM].
44. R. Frost, “Conversations on the Craft of Poetry”, in Collected Poems,
Prose, & Plays, ed. R. Poirier and M. Richardson, Library of America,
1995, p. 856.
45. GS§83, pp. 137–138.
46. Sachers makes these remarks specifically about Eins und Alles: R. Sachers,
Goethe’s Poetry and the Philosophy of Nature: Gott und Welt 1798–1827,
Legenda, 2015, p. 87. But in her study of the legacy of this poem,
Sachers speaks of the “the poem’s idiosyncrasy as well as its inconsistency
with regard to its philosophical predecessors”. See: R. Sachers, “Goethe’s
Legacy? ‘Eins Und Alles’ and its Career in Scholarship”, German Life and
Letters, vol. 61, no. 2, 2008, p. 189.
47. Jan. 6, 1813. C.f. “Wir sind naturforschend Pantheisten, dichtend

Polytheisten, sittlich Monotheisten”.
48. M&R§578, pp. 125–126.
49. CWG, Feb. 12, 1829.
50. SS, p. 64.
51. NF-1885,2[87] (WP§561, p. 303).
52. NF-1888,15[118] (WP§536, p. 291).
53. Hadot has written admirably of Goethe and this ‘open secret’. See:
P. Hadot, The Veil of Isis: An Essay on the History of the Idea of Nature,
trans. M. Chase, Harvard University Press, 2006; esp. chap. 9 “Isis Has
No Veils”, pp. 247–261.
54. See for example Saslow’s translations of sonnet 107 in Michelangelo, The
Poetry of Michelangelo, trans. J.M. Saslow, Yale University Press, 1991,
p. 239. C.f. the excerpt of sonnet 260 on p. 31. See also Saslow’s discus-
sion of this theme in Michelangelo in p. 30ff.
55. See the sections of Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre given in M&R as
§§642–643, p. 86.
56. C.f. Goethe, in a letter to Schubarth (Apr. 2, 1818): “everything that
happens is a symbol, and as it represents itself perfectly, it points to the
rest [Alles was geschieht ist Symbol, und, indem es vollkommen sich selbst
darstellt, deutet es auf das Uebrige]”.
57. In what follows, I will give only examples drawn directly from Goethe’s
work. But there are many other images that can be used to make sense of
Goethe’s conception of the one and the many. Bortoft has made good
use of examples including the duck / rabbit image (where the whole is
not duck+rabbit, but is in each of the aspects) and transmission holo-
grams (where the whole can be seen in each fractured part). See:
H. Bortoft, “Goethe and the Dynamic Unity of Nature”, in Taking
Appearances Seriously, op. cit., pp. 108–157.
58. NF-1888,14[93] (WP§568, p. 306).
59. Letter to Knebel, Nov. 17, 1784.
60. Italienische Reise, Sep. 6, 1787.
61. Herder drew a distinction between Lessing’s ideas and Indian concep-
tions of unity, claiming that neither Spinoza nor Lessing believed in a
“phantastisch-rohe sinnliche All-Einheit”. Jacobi quoted Lessing as having
said: “Hen kai pan! Ich weiß nichts anders” Lessing supposedly said this
directly upon being read Goethe’s 1773 poem “Prometheus”. But in this
early poem of Goethe’s it is—to put the point charitably—hard to find
such a unitive conception.
34 A. Milne
62. Goethe’s poem “Eins und Alles”, which I have discussed above, was writ-
ten decades later—the title is, of course, a direct translation of the phrase
“hen kai pan”.
63. Letter to Jacobi, June 9, 1785.
64. PTAG§6, p. 57.
Bibliography
Amrine, F., “Goethe as Mystagogue”, Goethe Yearbook, vol. 23, 2016, pp. 19–39.
Cassirer, E., The Problem of Knowledge, trans. W. Woglom and C. Hendel, Yale
Jung, C.G., Memories, Dreams, Reflections, ed. A Jaffé, trans. R. Winston and
C. Winston, Fontana Press, 1995.
———, Letters, Vol. I: 1906–1950, ed. G. Adler and A. Jaffé, trans. R.F.C. Hull,
Routledge, 2015.
Kaufmann, W., Goethe, Kant, and Hegel: Discovering the Mind, Vol. I, Transaction
Publishers, 1991.
Sachers, R., “Goethe’s Legacy? ‘Eins Und Alles’ and its Career in Scholarship”,
German Life and Letters, vol. 61, no. 2, 2008, pp. 187–201.
———, Goethe’s Poetry and the Philosophy of Nature: Gott und Welt 1798–1827,
Routledge, 2015.
Steiner, R., Goethe’s Standard of the Soul, trans. D.S. Osmond, Anthroposophic
Press, 1925.
———, The Story of My Life, trans. H. Collison, Anthroposophical Publishing
Co., 1928.
3
Ancestors, Part II
In Chap. 2, I began to develop an account of Goethe’s conception of the

one and the many. In this chapter, I will offer brief expositions of
Nietzsche’s engagement with each of his other ‘ancestors’—Heraclitus,
Empedocles, and Spinoza. Each ancestor proves not only monistic but
also mystical—affirming a sense in which all things are one. But these
senses are not all one, and in each case, I will bring out contrasts with
Goethe’s view. In subsequent chapters, I will show how Nietzsche
developed this Goethean conception in his writings about part and whole
in seemingly disparate areas, including his conception of fatalism and his
defence of egoism.
Heraclitus
Nietzsche’s interpretation of Heraclitus is developed at greatest length in
his early lecture courses The Pre-Platonic Philosophers and Philosophy in
the Tragic Age of the Greeks. In these works, Nietzsche can be seen
struggling to articulate the conception of the one and the many that he
found in Heraclitus.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75007-7_3
36 A. Milne
In the Pre-Platonic Philosophers, Nietzsche discusses Heraclitus’ rejec-

tion of being, his denial that there is anything of which we may say, “it
is”. Heraclitus’ is a world of becoming, where nothing persists. But that
which becomes is in some sense “one thing in eternal transformation”—
fire. Heraclitus, Nietzsche says, “only sees the one”, but in a sense oppo-
site to that of Parmenides. Nietzsche draws out this contrast, explaining
that for Parmenides, multiplicity is a sensory illusion. But for Heraclitus,
multiplicity is “no way a deception”; it is rather, the “form of appearance
of the one”. Without multiplicity, the “one does not appear at all”.
On this reading, the whole does not exist apart from the parts, but
rather the one “evidences itself ” in the many.1 It would be easy to be
confused by this claim, which could be read as suggesting that we can
only encounter the one in the many, but not that the one only is in the
many. Yet the latter is Nietzsche’s reading, and this becomes very clear in
Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks where he has Heraclitus proclaim,
“the one is the many [das Eine ist das Viele]”.2
The one is “eternal transformation”. This bears comparison with
Duyvendak’s translation of the first line of the Daodejing: “The Way that
may be regarded as the Way is other than a permanent way”.3 Actually,
this is much more suggestive in Duyvendak’s French version, where he
gives us “La Voie vraiment Voie est autre qu’une voie constante”. Taking this
as our clue, we might say that the way that isn’t wayward is not truly
the Way.
Translators tend to render this along the lines of “the way that can be
spoken (or walked, wayed 4) is not the permanent way”.5 This might sug-
gest that there is a permanent way, that the Dao is something eternal, but
revealed to us as something impermanent. But Duyvendak’s translation
suggests a world of becoming without a ground of being; that the Dao is
itself on the way—and it is not on the way somewhere, it is rather way-
ward. Whether this is the right way to interpret the Heraclitus’ fragments
or the Daodejing is plainly debatable.6 But our interest here is Nietzsche’s
reception of Heraclitus, and I think this can be stated quite confidently.
In Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, Nietzsche writes that
Heraclitus, contrary to Anaximander, denied the duality of worlds: “he
no longer distinguished a physical world from a metaphysical one”.7 On
this reading, Heraclitus denied the existence of a world behind, believing
that the apparent world was the real world. This shows Nietzsche’s
interpretation of Heraclitus was one of appearance and becoming without
opposite. This interpretation was enduring for Nietzsche. As he put it
much later, in Twilight, “Heraclitus will remain eternally right with his
assertion that being is an empty fiction. The ‘apparent’ world is the only
one: the ‘true’ world is merely added by a lie”.8 Nietzsche himself develops
this concept by conceiving of being only in a relative sense: as a reduced
“tempo of becoming”.9
In these early lectures on the Tragic Age, Nietzsche presents Heraclitus’
world as “the game Zeus plays”, or, to put it in more concrete terms, the
play of fire with itself.10 Growth and decay exist without any moral sense:
the world is sheer play, in the same sense in which “artists and children”
play: in “eternal innocence”.11
Two of Heraclitus’ fragments seem especially important for Nietzsche:
“the kosmos… no god or man has made. It is as it always was and will be:
ever-living fire, in measures kindling and in measures sputtering out”12
and “Aion is a child at play, moving pieces in a game: kingship is the
child’s”.13 Nietzsche combines these two fragments in these lectures, as
well as in the Birth of Tragedy, to give the image of the Aion (eternity) as
a child on the beach, building sandcastles and then periodically destroying
them to begin anew.14
Here we see an early connection between Heraclitus and what Nietzsche
would later call “the innocence of becoming”.15 The power or ‘kingship’
of the cosmos is here not in the hands of some purposive force, but in
those of a child playing. The world does not exist for any purpose. Nature
has no end. Thus, Nietzsche will write, “That the world is divine play
[göttliches Spiel] beyond good and evil—for this, my predecessors are the
philosophy of Vedanta and Heraclitus”.16
Goethe is also a predecessor of this view: his metamorphic world was
wayward, delighting in the “beautiful concept… of moving order [von
beweglicher Ordnung]”.17 Goethe presented a world of ceaseless creativity,
without end or goal. He wrote to Zelter that the adage “nature does
nothing in vain” is “philistine”. Goethe saw nature as eternally creative,
“superfluous and squandering”.18 As with Heraclitus, there is no teleology
here. Cork trees do not grow that we might stuff our bottlenecks19—
nature creates for no purpose outside exuberant play. Goethe understood
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artistic creation in the same way, coming to consider his own artistic
capacities “entirely as nature”.20 Goethe wrote to Zelter, “nature and art
are too great to aim at purposes”.21
Nietzsche came to believe that nature’s purposeless creativity is best
revealed in artistic play, writing in a note from the mid-1880s that the
phenomenon of the artist is the most “transparent”, allowing us to see
through to the “basic instincts” of nature. Here “play” and “the useless”
are described as the ideal of one overfull of strength, and God is “παῖς
παίζων”.22 This reference to Heraclitus’ “child at play” helps us to
understand what Nietzsche means by speaking in this same notebook of
“an anti-metaphysical view of the world—yes, but an artistic one”23: It is
anti-metaphysical because there is no world behind appearances; but it is
artistic, because the generative forces are not purposeful but playful.
* * *
In his 1959 Heraclitus, Wheelwright claims that Goethe “evinced a lively

interest in Heraclitus”.24 In this, Wheelwright repeats the claim of Diels
from a half century earlier, who wrote, “from his Werther period to the
Eckermann conversations, Goethe liked to profess his adherence to
Heraclitus”. But this is nonsense. Goethe never mentions Heraclitus in
print.25 This is not a great surprise, as Heraclitus’ surviving fragments had
yet to be gathered into anything approaching a complete collection. In
fact, in 1807, Schleiermacher compiled 73 of Heraclitus’ fragments, and
these were published in the first volume of a collection of ancient teach-
ings that the editors dedicated to Goethe. But there is no record of Goethe
so much as acknowledging this work, and scholarly studies of the pur-
ported influence of Heraclitus on Goethe have put any resonance down
to “a kinship of natures [eine Verwandtschaft der Naturen]” rather than
any direct influence.26 But even beyond their dynamic conceptions of
nature and their rejection of final causation, there are striking similarities
in their thought that merit brief mention.
For Heraclitus, “Nature loves to hide”, but we learn about it best
through direct observation: “Whatever comes from sight, hearing,
learning from experience: this I prefer”. We are better to see for ourselves
than to listen to the reports of others: “Eyes are surer witnesses than
ears”.27 Similarly for Goethe, nature is essentially mysterious, but best

known through sensitive observation. Goethe, too, was very wary of
book learning, and hence of the scholar, who is by profession “capable of
denying his five senses”.28 For Goethe, “to think is more interesting than
to know, but not than to look [Denken ist interessanter als Wissen, aber nicht
als Anschauen]”.29
* * *
It is worth mentioning that Nietzsche’s conception of the world as will to

power owes a lot to his reading of Heraclitus. For example, in one of the
most notorious fragments, Nietzsche describes this world as “a play of
forces… at the same time one and many [zugleich Eins und “Vieles”]”,
which are eternally changing, “flowing and rushing together”. The world
is “eternally self-creating” and “self-destroying… without goal”. If we ask
for a name for this “Dionysian world”, then we are told, “the world is the
will to power—and nothing besides!”.30 The parallels with his reading of
Heraclitus’ world of becoming are very strong, especially so when we
recall that Nietzsche had decades earlier said of Heraclitus’ fire that “the
one is at the same time the many [das Eine ist … zugleich das Viele]”.
Where Heraclitus’ world was “the game Zeus plays”, which could be put
“more concretely” as the play of fire with itself, Nietzsche’s “Dionysian
world”, could be given a definitive name31 and revealed as will to power.
Finally, when Nietzsche writes that “you yourselves are also this will to
power—and nothing besides!” he claims an identity between part and
whole that also resonates with Heraclitus. According to Kahn, still the
most insightful interpreter of the fragments, Heraclitus’ saw the end
point for the search for self as the discovery of a “deeper identity”, an
identity with “the universe as a whole”.32
Of particular interest to us here is how Nietzsche’s conception of the
one and the many echoes his reading of Heraclitus, wherein the one is
not behind the many, but where “the One is the many [das Eine ist das
Viele]”. This view has puzzled interpreters. Anderson anticipates the
objection:
40 A. Milne
What are we to make of a One that exists as, and only as, a many? We
expect there to be something to this One as a one: we expect for it, as itself,
at least some degree of ontological independence. Otherwise there would
be no reason to mention it, much less to stress it, apart from multiplicity33
The confusion is, I think, understandable. The identification of one

with many, part with whole, is plainly paradoxical. It is, however,
Nietzsche’s view—and one he inherits from his ancestors. I hope that the
view will come into sharper focus in the following chapters, but I do not
think it can be completely demystified. The paradoxical nature is, I think,
indispensable, and leads Nietzsche to the personification of the world as
Dionysus, that “great ambiguous one [grosse Zweideutige]”.34 Dionysus is
the god who is not one.
Empedocles
I do not have as much to say about Empedocles as about the other ‘ances-
tors’. This is primarily because Nietzsche’s discussions of Empedocles are
relatively sparse.35 However, by looking at these discussions, it becomes
clear that Nietzsche closely associated the pre-Platonist’s vision of ultimate
unity with Goethe’s sense of the harmony of nature. That said, there are
very striking differences between Empedocles’ thought and that of either
Nietzsche or Goethe, and I will try to bring those out in what follows.
* * *
Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditation on “Schopenhauer as Educator” presents

Empedocles as a pessimist, sharing Schopenhauer’s negative assessment
of the value of existence.36 This obviously does not help us to explain why
Nietzsche would consider himself Empedocles’ heir in the mid-1980s.
The same essay presents a contrast between Rousseau, Goethe, and
Schopenhauer, treated as types. Very briefly: the Rousseauan man is both
activistic and nostalgic, and hence reactionary; the Goethean man is con-
templative, and hence conservative; and the Schopenhauerean man is
heroic, struggling incessantly and finding relief only in death. Once

again, Nietzsche’s mature views are not to be found here.
The point about Empedocles’ pessimism is repeated in Human All Too
Human, but there Empedocles is also presented as giving a non-moralistic
understanding of procreation, and thus an interpretation of individuation
unrelated to concepts of sin.37 Nietzsche writes that for Empedocles,
there is “nothing of shame, devil, sin” in the erotic. Rather, Empedocles
in the erotic sees the face of Aphrodite, and thus the promise that “Strife
will not prevail without end”. Nietzsche points here to the Strife and
Love as Empedocles’ basic polarity: the former being that which draws
separates, and the latter that which unites again. For Empedocles, these
alternate eternally—there is no hope of one finally conquering the other,
but the universe is seen as essentially cyclical, with the elements being
eternally broken apart and drawn together.
This is still a monistic worldview: Love and Strife are not two warring
Manichean forces, but rather two poles of a single process. Nonetheless,
Nietzsche discusses how Empedocles took the side of Love over Strife, of
oneness over differentiation, writing that Empedocles made “his life’s
mission” to “aid the idea of oneness in Love inside the world of Strife”.38
The basis of Empedocles’ praise of sexuality is that it symbolically
opposes the tendency to separate. Here what has been torn apart is
brought back together. This presents a very crucial difference with
Nietzsche’s own mature ‘Dionysian’ view, where it is not the moment of
union that is celebrated most highly, but the moment of parturition. In
sexuality, Nietzsche celebrates the impulse towards individuation, the
affirmation of this life. As he writes in Twilight, “the pangs of the woman
giving birth hallow all pain; all becoming and growing—all that
guarantees a future—involves pain. That there may be the eternal joy of
creating, that the will to life may eternally affirm itself, the agony of the
woman giving birth must also be there eternally”.39
It is hard to get further from Empedocles’ position than this. For
Empedocles, the ethical life was one which emphasised oneness and
calmed Strife. Empedocles believed in reincarnation, and he craved
release from the cycle of rebirth. Empedocles’ view is karmic: to be born
into the world of Strife is the punishment of a guilt.40
42 A. Milne
In the Pre-Platonic Philosophers, Empedocles is presented as “the tragic

philosopher”. But Empedocles’ view is strikingly contrary to what this
phrase means when Nietzsche much later, in Ecce Homo, declares
himself—with the possible exception of Heraclitus—“the first tragic
philosopher”.41 Nietzsche’s tragic philosophy involves the affirmation of
this life—and its eternal recurrence. Empedocles, on the other hand,
wanted out of the “wicked game”.
Goethe’s view is much closer to Nietzsche’s than to that of Empedocles.
Goethe believed in a kind of immortality, speaking of an indestructible
entelechy.42 Goethe told Eckermann that he deserved another existence—
not to expiate his wrongs, but as a reward for his untiring activity.43
Goethe had little patience for speculation about immortality.44 Speaking
with a good deal of similarity to Nietzsche’s thought that it is ressentiment
that shifts the focus away from life and towards the beyond, Goethe
claimed that speculation about immortality is for those who “did not get
the best of things” in this life.45 Goethe did not dwell on the world to
come, but rather insisted on the value of the present.46 Goethe plainly did
not want out of the game, but rather wanted more of the same.
Empedocles’ sense of a basic polarity is also essential to Goethe’s
thought. Empedocles’ Love and Strife are analogous to Goethe’s Systole
and Diastole.47 Unlike Empedocles, however, Goethe does not attempt to
take sides with one pole. He saw plainly that you cannot have one without
the other: “each systole presupposes its diastole”.48 Nietzsche acknowledges
Goethe’s polarity in “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life”,
paraphrasing a line from Dichtung und Wahrheit where Goethe writes,
“by expanding our virtues, we also cultivate our faults [wir indem wir
unsere Tugenden ausbilden, unsere Fehler zugleich mit anbauen]”.49
Nietzsche comes to make similar claims about the interdependence of
opposites,50 perhaps most famously in The Gay Science where he describes
joy and suffering are “sisters and even twins” that either “grow up” or
“remain small” together.51
Both Nietzsche and Goethe rejected the meek, vegetarian conclusion
that if pain and pleasure are linked, one must forgo the latter to avoid the
former. Neither of these men accepted the vision of the good life as one
of minimising suffering. Indeed, Goethe was disgusted by the vision of
the world transformed into a “giant hospital” in which each man will
serve as the other’s “humane nurse”.52 For Nietzsche, good and evil are
“complementary values”. With the denial of one side of this—or any
other—polarity, one falsely imagines one is “getting back to wholeness,
to unity”, but one in fact “actually denies life”.53
* * *
If we look further back in Nietzsche’s work, we do not find an extensive

discussion of Empedocles in Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. All
that exists is the outline for a lecture which was never written. But we do
find an important treatment of Empedocles in The Pre-Platonic
Philosophers. There Nietzsche writes that “the whole pathos of Empedocles
rests on this point, that all living things are one [Das ganze Pathos des
Empedokles ruht in diesem Punkte, dass alles Lebende eins sei]”. We are
told that, for Empedocles, “the gods, human beings, and animals are
one”. But more strikingly for our purposes, here is the note which
Nietzsche adds to this claim:
And so every creature is again only a tone, a hue of a great harmony, which
must be studied in large and on the whole, otherwise every individual is a
dead letter [und so ist wieder jede Kreatur nur ein Ton eine Schattierung einer
großen Harmonie, die man auch im ganzen und großen studieren muß sonst ist
jedes Einzelne ein toter Buchstabe].
This is a quotation from Goethe, and shows that Nietzsche associated

Empedocles’ view of ultimate unity with Goethe.54 The phrase comes
from a letter to Knebel in which Goethe reports his discovery of the
intermaxillary bone in the human upper jaw, which he took to demonstrate
that humans belong to nature, to the whole, just as much as any other
animal. Goethe argues for a holistic view of nature, claiming that the part
only makes sense in the context of the whole to which it belongs: “the
consonance of the whole makes each creature what it is [die
Übereinstimmung des Ganzen macht ein jedes Geschöpf zu dem was es ist]”.55
This helps us to make sense of a comment that Nietzsche makes about
Goethe much later, in Twilight of the Idols. There, Nietzsche praises
Goethe’s “Dionysian” faith “that only the particular is loathsome, and
44 A. Milne
that all is redeemed and affirmed in the whole [dass nur das Einzelne
verwerflich ist, dass im Ganzen sich Alles erlöst und bejaht]”.56 Scholars have
found this remark puzzling. Tanner, for example, says we “wonder what
to make of it”.57 Its source is to be discovered in book 12 of Dichtung und
Wahrheit. Goethe, giving a summary of Hamann’s teaching, writes:
Everything that a man undertakes to achieve, whether through act, word,

or otherwise, must come forth from all of his forces united: everything
isolated is reprehensible [Alles, was der Mensch zu leisten unternimmt, es
werde nun durch Tat oder Wort oder sonst hervorgebracht, muß aus sämtlichen
vereinigten Kräften entspringen; alles Vereinzelte ist verwerflich].58
Goethe says that this is “a splendid maxim! [eine herrliche Maxime!]”,

albeit one that is impossible to follow in practice. Goethe saw that to
communicate comprehensibly, one must temporarily become “one-
sided”. Otherwise, one ends up speaking in sibylline riddles like
Hamann—which are pregnant, but if one is to approach them, one “must
completely do without what is ordinarily called understanding”.
Nietzsche develops this beyond the claim that man needs to act with his
whole being, rather than just, say, his rational intellect. He uses it, rather,
as a statement of Goethe’s more general view that to decontextualize, to
isolate, is to make something reprehensible—and to see in context is to
redeem. The phrase is given in Twilight as a reiteration of Goethe’s claim
about individual as a dead letter: the individual viewed outside its context
is “dead”—for the context is what gives it its sense. As Goethe writes else-
where, “relationships are life”,59 so to see the part out of its context is to kill.
Nietzsche, too, came to regard the individual as inseparable from the
whole, indeed to see the individual as the whole. Thus in a late note, he
describes the concept “individual” as an error, saying every individual is
“the entire process [der ganze Prozeß]”. He makes it clear that the
individual is not merely the inheritor of the process of nature, but rather
is the process itself.60 But Nietzsche is far from throwing himself into the
caldera of Mount Etna to become one with nature, as legend tells us that
Empedocles did.61 Rather, Nietzsche concludes that this identification of
part with whole means that “the individual is of tremendous importance”.
Not believing in a whole apart from the parts, Nietzsche cannot
consistently take the side of the whole. Rather, the whole is—always and
only—expressed in the parts. Thus, “instinct speaks quite correctly” in

giving one a sense of one’s individual importance.
The ethical import of this is enormous. Far from taking the view that
the individual’s identity with the whole leads to an altruistic upshot,
Nietzsche puts up a robust defence of a self-centred ethic. In brief,
Nietzsche’s argument is that if each individual is the whole, one affirms
this whole not by self-negation, but through the most “severe self-
love”62—that through one’s self-development and self-overcoming, one
becomes a greater expression of the whole.
I will build on the idea of the identity of part and whole in my analysis
of Nietzsche’s discussions of mysticism in Chap. 4 and his conception of
fate in Chap. 7, and develop Nietzsche’s argument in defence of egoism
in Chap. 6. But first, we must turn our attention to the last of Nietzsche’s
ancestors: Spinoza.
Spinoza
Spinoza presented a fatalistic world utterly devoid of goals and purposes.
He argued that there is only one substance, “God or Nature”, of which
every existing thing is a “mode”. We cannot regard the whole apart from
the parts, that is, we cannot contemplate God outside of particular beings.
But, according to Spinoza, we can assume the perspective of the whole, in
which we see the particular beings as following “from the necessity of the
divine nature”. The divine nature is necessity. In other words, Spinoza’s
God is the process of fate, and our intellectual identification with that
process is the highest state a man can attain: “amor dei intellectualis”, the
contemplative insight that everything is as it must be.
For Goethe in the mid-1770s and for Nietzsche a century later the
discovery of Spinoza came with a shock of recognition. While both men
rejected important aspects of Spinoza’s worldview, they nonetheless found
many of their own views articulated here for the first time. In what
follows, I will summarise the reception of Spinoza by both Goethe and
Nietzsche, paying especial attention to their critical engagement with
Spinoza’s religious thought.
* * *
46 A. Milne
In Dichtung und Wahrheit, Goethe reflected on the appeal Spinoza had

for him as a young man in his twenties. He recognised two aspects: first,
Spinoza’s conception of an impersonal God63; secondly, and more impor-
tantly, Goethe explained the attraction in terms of the contrast between
Spinoza’s equanimity to his own impassioned nature. For Goethe, the
Ethics was extremely calming: as Nietzsche would say of Kant’s appeal to
Schopenhauer, Goethe had an interest in disinterest.64 Goethe’s interpre-
tation of Spinoza would develop significantly, but still in later life, he
would place Spinoza in the company of Shakespeare and Linnaeus as his
greatest influences.65
Goethe first studied Spinoza in 1774 with Jacobi. The two men would
exchange letters about Spinoza over a decade, including during the
so-called Pantheismusstreit. The controversy erupted over the publication
of correspondence between Jacobi and Mendelsohn, in which Jacobi
recounted a conversation he had had with Lessing. While I have no
intention of discussing these famous events in any detail, a very brief
summary will be helpful for understanding Goethe’s reading of Spinoza.
Lessing’s apparent confession of “Spinozism” came after Jacobi had him
read and respond to Goethe’s poem “Prometheus”. It is often remarked
that the poem has little to do with Spinoza’s teachings, though there are
important affinities: while there are gods for us to beseech and bemoan,
they are powerless, and in Prometheus’ eyes, pitiful. The existence of gods
is fully dependent on “hopeful fools [Hoffnungsvolle Toren]” who make
them offerings. Prometheus sees that the gods are as subject to fate as any
mortal is: to Zeus he declares “eternal fate” to be both “my master and
yours”. But Prometheus’ attitude to this is not one of despair. Having
been disillusioned of his youthful dreams of an ear beyond the sun to hear
his complaints, Prometheus does not find life hateful. Rather, Prometheus
goes on fashioning men in clay who will both suffer and rejoice in life,
ignoring the gods as he does—and knowing that all this is fate.
For Spinoza, freedom meant acting from the necessity of one’s nature,
as opposed to being externally determined. Jacobi believed that Spinoza’s
fatalism relegated consciousness to the role of observer, and rejected it on
this basis. Lessing saw that free will was Jacobi’s main concern, and
responded, “I don’t covet free will [Ich begehre keinen freien Willen]”. For
Lessing, it was merely “human prejudice” to consider thought as “first
and foremost”. Jacobi, typically a far more scrupulous reader of Spinoza

than his interlocutors, responded that this is far from the spirit of Spinoza,
for whom intellectual insight was the highest value. Lessing wasn’t
especially fazed by this. He never called himself a disciple of Spinoza.
Rather, what Lessing said is that if he had to name himself after anybody,
he knew of nobody better. Lessing was explicit that his own credo was not
to be found “in any book”. This response has many essential similarities
to Goethe’s own.
Goethe would write Jacobi in 1785 “Although I do not share [Spinoza’s]
conception of Nature itself ”, if he had to name one book that is closest
to his view, “I would have to say the Ethics”.66 Once again, Spinoza’s
philosophy is regarded as the least misleading model available. Goethe
also shared Lessing’s view of our overvaluation of consciousness. Goethe
even came to see his own poetic gifts as flowing forth without, and even
against, his will: when functioning at their best, they were forces of nature,
not of reason.67 Goethe associated this thought with Spinoza, but it is
clear that the latter’s thought is significantly transformed here: Goethe
took Spinoza’s conception of freedom as acting from the necessity of one’s
own nature, which de-emphasised the role of conscious will, and gave it
a more embodied reading: freedom as identification with one’s whole
body, and not merely one’s conscious reasoning.
* * *
Nietzsche first mentioned Spinoza in print in the 1870s, including in

Human, All Too Human. However, in an 1881 letter, Nietzsche writes
that he had previously hardly known Spinoza. In this letter, he points out
what he had just come to recognise as their most important points of
agreement: like Spinoza, Nietzsche rejected any notion of free will, teleol-
ogy, the moral world order, the unegoistic, and evil.68
Though Nietzsche hugely admired Spinoza, he came to see his purity
as “bloodless”, and made this criticism in terms of an explicit contrast
with Goethe. In a late note, Nietzsche makes a comparison between
‘pagan’ and ‘anaemic’ types. For the pagan—and it is worth noting that
both Goethe and Nietzsche used the term “pagan [heiden]” to describe
48 A. Milne
themselves—deification is felt “in the greatest abundance”. For the anae-

mic, it is felt “in the most fastidious selectivity”.69
Nietzsche tells us that these types actually see the world differently. The
pagan type sees the world as “fuller, rounder, more perfect”. The vision of
the anaemic type is thinned out; “the world is seen as more empty, pale,
diluted”, and so “intellectualisation and unsensuality” are idealised while
everything “animal and direct” is avoided.
Nietzsche goes on to describe differences between these types’ sense of
divinity. For the pagan, the divine is the pregnant, the ripe—“one
bestows”.70 For the anaemic, the divine is the transparent, the light. The
pagan type affirms the fullness of existence, while the anaemic type is
fastidiously selective, thinning out what is that he might affirm the
remainder—“one removes, one chooses”.
In this note, Nietzsche says that under certain circumstances, the anae-
mic can be the ideal of those who “represent” the pagan. As an example of
this, Nietzsche says, “Goethe sees his ‘saint’ in Spinoza”.71 We might say
that what is promissory in Spinoza is fulfilled in Goethe: the deification
and affirmation of becoming in its concreteness.72 That is, it is no longer
the idea of becoming that is deified, but its actual and sensible manifesta-
tion. More often, of course, successors move in the opposite direction—
for example, Steiner drifting off towards higher worlds.
In his paean to Goethe in Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche writes that
Goethe attempted an overcoming of his age73 by an “ascent to nature”.74
In this process, Goethe “sought help from history, natural science,
antiquity, and also Spinoza, but, above all, from practical activity”. We
are told that it was by “putting himself into the midst of life”, and taking
on as much as possible, that Goethe “disciplined himself to wholeness”
and “created himself ”. Spinoza’s ideas, though undoubtedly helpful, were
plainly not enough. This is one of the most consistent aspects of Goethe’s
worldview: that character develops not through self-conscious reflection
but, as said in Tasso, in the “torrent of life”.75
In a late note written very shortly after the one in which he acknowl-
edged his ‘ancestors’, Nietzsche wrote, “great philosophers are rarely
found”. Nietzsche described Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer as
“impoverished” and “one-sided” compared to the “great Greeks”,
including Heraclitus and Empedocles, who he describes as “fuller”, and

in whose company he declared, “Goethe stands well”.76
Goethe was a model of “totality [Totalität]”77 for Nietzsche, who took
as his motto Goethe’s declaration to “live resolutely” in wholeness and
fullness.78 The extent of this fullness can be seen in a draft of the Twilight
passage we have been discussing. While in the published version,
Nietzsche describes the Goethean ideal as being able to afford the “whole
range and wealth of being natural”, the draft specifies that this extends to
the “burlesque and buffoonesque”.79
We must understand paganism in Nietzsche’s sense as plenitude in all
forms, as good conscience in all that is natural80—including a sense of
excess and irreverence.81 Buffoonery is a crucial aspect of Goethe’s
worldview82 that is equally missed by critics who regard Goethe as a
stuffed shirt and by his furrowed-browed disciples, who could treat a
book like Faust as “ein Studium”. But Nietzsche esteemed the irreverent
aspect of Goethe highly,83 and considered mockery and light-heartedness
as essential to his own worldview84: in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche writes that
he would sooner be a satyr than a saint85 and a buffoon than a holy man.86
This pagan ideal of wholeness runs against the ‘one-sided’ intellectual-
ity of the anaemic philosopher. This is why, though Spinoza’s ideas are
helpful, they are also wholly inadequate. Nietzsche follows Goethe here
in putting a strong emphasis on sensory cultivation. Both men understood
that one could come to experience the world differently, but this was not
primarily a matter of thought or knowledge. Both saw our lopsided
intellectual development as a large part of the problem. The decadent
knows more than he can feel. The senses thus need to be given priority
over that “fine sieve” of the conscious intellect: “The strength and power
of the senses—this is the essential thing in a well-constituted and complete
man: the splendid “animal” must be given first—what could any “human-
ization” matter otherwise!”.87
* * *
Goethe’s own remarks about his ‘saint’ help to clarify differences in their
worldviews. In an 1875 letter to Jacobi, Goethe writes that he knows the
divine “only in singular things”, and says that no thinker can rouse him
50 A. Milne
to contemplation more than Spinoza can.88 Goethe points here to

Spinoza’s statement, “the more we understand singular things, the more
we understand God [Quo magis res singulares intelligimus, eo magis Deum
intelligimus]”.89 But Goethe immediately offers a criticism of Spinoza,
saying, “all individual things seem to disappear before his gaze”. This is
highly suggestive of Nietzsche’s analysis of the anaemic tendency towards
“intellectualisation and unsensuality”, with what is particular, diminish-
ing or vanishing [verschwinden] before his eyes. The finite is exalted into
an aspect of infinity, but loses all its concreteness and particularity in the
process.90
Goethe was a far more visual man than Spinoza, with a ‘pagan’ ten-
dency to see the singular as ‘fuller’, and to remain in sensory contact
phenomenon rather than drifting off into abstraction. Spinoza, the opti-
cian, was an eye man of a different sort: grinding lenses for instruments
that expand one’s vision. Goethe was wary of these instruments, suspect-
ing that their overuse would weaken our physical senses. For Goethe, the
“most disastrous” aspect of modern science was its over-reliance on “arti-
ficial instruments”, such that we recognise nature only by meter read-
ings.91 Goethe felt very strongly that physics must not be mathematized.92
This particularly applied to how we understand colour phenomena. That
Goethe’s qualitative approach to physics was not widely adopted hardly
needs saying. Even his major successors in morphology, including Haeckel
and D’Arcy Thompson, have taken a vastly more mathematical approach.
Goethe warned against the dissociation of the ‘human factor’ from
experimentation through increased instrumentation. Though it was
doubtless a major factor in the success of the scientific revolution, Goethe
saw instrumentation as perilous. He thought that instrumental
augmentation would lead to a weakening and undervaluing of the senses,
and to a lopsided development wherein people could know more than
they feel. In other words, Goethe was concerned with what Nietzsche
would come to call décadence. For instance, in Wilhelm Meisters
Wanderjahre, Wilhelm expresses his ambivalence about looking at Jupiter
through a telescope, preferring to see with unaided senses: he tells the
astronomer that one who looks through these lenses believes himself
“wiser than he is” and is out of balance with his own capacities.
Wilhelm here plainly states Goethe’s own view. Elsewhere, Goethe

writes that microscopes and telescopes “only serve to confuse the unaided
human senses”.93 This certainly did not mean that Goethe refused to
make use of such instruments, but he did think that with underdeveloped
senses, we lack the ability to see how these instruments can mislead us.
This was a part of his criticism of the use of the prism in Newton’s optics,
going so far as to say that phenomena must be freed from the gloom of
the “empirical-mechanic-dogmatic torture chamber [empirisch-
mechanisch-dogmatischen Marterkammer]”.
Spinoza made a sharp distinction between any form of ‘image’ and an
‘idea’, with the latter completely purged of ‘visual’ content. Goethe’s
position can be seen in a letter to Jacobi in which he offers a reinterpretation
of Spinoza’s third type of knowledge, “scientia intuitiva”. For Goethe, this
“intuitive knowledge” becomes a visual intuition—something that can
be seen, albeit only in the imagination.94 This is what Goethe means here
by contrasting Jacobi’s emphasis on belief with his own emphasis on
seeing. Elsewhere, Goethe calls this kind of visual intuition an “exact
sensorial imagination [exacte sinnliche Phantasie]”,95 a concept which he
developed in the wake of a well-known disagreement between himself
and Schiller as to whether the Urpflanze was an experience or an idea.96
Throughout Goethe’s mature thought, we find again and again the view
that “thinking is more interesting than knowledge, but not than
looking”.97
Goethe described Jacobi’s view that “nature hides God” as a “one-sided
proposition”.98 As we have seen above, Goethe’s own view was that nature
is an “open secret”. For Goethe, it is we who obscure nature by our way
of approaching it. This obscuration may be avoided if we take the right
approach to observation—which Goethe called a “gentle empiricism
[zarte empirie]”. Goethe’s approach was to become an extension of a
phenomenon, rather than an observer external to it.99 What this means,
in short, was to evoke the phenomenon in the “exact sensorial
imagination”. That nature can be experienced in this way did not mean
that it could ever be fully known. Goethe felt that man cannot “solve the
problems of the universe” and must “restrain himself within the limits of
the comprehensible”.100 Once again, man should not search vainly behind
the mirror.
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Goethe told Falk that “we talk much too much. We should speak less
and draw more. For my part, I would like to give up talking entirely and,
like nature, speak only in pictures”. Goethe went on to say that there is
“something so useless, so idle, I almost want to say so preeningly foolish”
about talking, and analyses it as a kind of coping mechanism, a way of
quelling one’s fear of nature’s “silent seriousness” by speaking over it. The
person who could “decipher” the “pregnant signatures [inhaltschwere
Signaturen]” in nature could afford to dispense altogether with the written
or spoken word.101 For Goethe, to “decipher” nature was not to translate
it into another language. It was, rather, to relate to it in such a way that
the phenomena are their own theory.102 We should be very glad that
Goethe did not abandon speech and writing in favour of drawing, an art
for which he judged himself to have little aptitude,103 and on which he
thought he had probably squandered too much time.104 That said,
Goethe’s point to Falk is fairly clear: the little snake, the fig tree, and the
cocoon that lay before them were best understood by being looked at, not
conceptualised about. To think is interesting, but to look is better. As
Goethe said on another occasion, people are so “occupied by what is
rolling about inside themselves” that they cannot observe nature. Indeed,
even the naturalist may be incapable of seeing or hearing through the
extent of his own learning.105 What is required, Goethe thought, was
immersion in the senses, and the negative capacity to resist
conceptualisation.
For Spinoza, by contrast, the salvific power of thought was absolute.
Spinoza did not believe in an Adamic language which had a perfect
correspondence between sign and signified,106 but his movement away
from the contingencies of language was certainly not towards the
concreteness of experience. It was, rather, towards the perfect arbitrariness
of mathematics. Spinoza shared the geometrical obsession that also
haunted other key thinkers of his time, including Descartes, Hobbes, and
Leibniz. He believed that by thinking in a “geometrical manner [more
geometrico]”, man could realise his essential identity with “God or nature”.
Spinoza’s deep faith in the rational intelligibility of the world was certainly
not shared by either Goethe or Nietzsche.107
For Nietzsche, the application of geometrical method in philosophy
was mere anaemic “conceptual web-spinning”.108 Novalis may have called
Spinoza a “god intoxicated man [Gott-trunkener Mensch]”109 but Nietzsche

considered Spinoza’s “intellectual love of God” too bloodless, too feverless
a form of reverence to merit the term love. In the fifth book of The Gay
Science, Nietzsche writes that Spinoza’s amor dei intellectualis is “mere
clatter” and nothing more: “what is amor, what deus, if there is not a drop
of blood in them?” This comes in a passage in which Nietzsche discusses
how “ideas are worse seductresses than our senses, for all their cold and
anaemic appearance”. Nietzsche writes that we begin with our senses, but
by the time the vampire of philosophy is finished feasting, all that is left
is “mere bones, mere clatter… categories, formulas, words”.110
In The Antichrist, Nietzsche writes that metaphysicians have “spun
their webs” around God until “he himself became a spider, another
metaphysician” who, in turn, spins the world out of himself “sub specie
Spinozae”, and is transfigured into something “ever thinner and paler”.111
Goethe had earlier offered very similar analysis of the seductions of
ideas. In Zur Farbenlehre, Goethe spoke of our tendency to “replace a
thing with its sign” and “kill it with the word”. Elsewhere, he was highly
critical of reduce the richness of phenomena into “images, concepts…
mere words”.112 To Eckermann, Goethe ridiculed how clergymen have
transformed God into “a phrase, a mere name”.113
In a letter to Jacobi, Goethe writes “God has punished you with meta-
physics, and set a thorn in your flesh, while blessing me with physics, so
that I may benefit from looking at his works [Gott mit der Metaphisick
gestraft und dir einen Pfahl ins Fleisch gesezt, mich dagegen mit der Phisick
geseegnet, damit mir es im Anschauen seiner Wercke wohl werde]”.114 That
Goethe’s religion is physical and not metaphysical not only means, as we
have seen, that it did not posit a world behind, but also that it is rooted
in the senses—that it is, as Nietzsche described it, pagan. With its
principal concern being abstractions and ideas, Spinoza’s system was in
this sense metaphysical.
When Goethe writes in “Epirrhema” that we are to “rejoice in the true
appearance [Freuet euch des wahren Schein]”, this must not be understood
as seeking redemption in illusion, as we see in Nietzsche’s philosophy
from the period of the Birth, perhaps best expressed in the following
early note:
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My philosophy is an inverted Platonism: the further something is from true

being, the purer, the more beautiful, the better it is. Living in illusion
[Schein] as the goal.115
Rather, Goethe is better understood in the sense of Nietzsche’s later

discussion of the Greeks as “superficial—out of profundity”.116 Schein is no
longer understood as mere semblance, illusion. There is no “true world”
behind appearances. The apparent world is reality.117 To “stop courageously
at the surface” means to realise that, like a mirror, there is nothing
behind it.118
Nietzsche wrote that “Nothing is less Greek than the conceptual web-
spinning of a hermit—amor intellectualis dei after the fashion of
Spinoza”.119 The association of Goethe with the ‘fuller’ pre-Socratic
Greeks can be seen here, too. Like Nietzsche, Goethe’s ideal was not the
anaemic transformation of God into Word. Rather than privileging the
rational faculties, Goethe emphasised the need for developing the sensory
faculties.
Just before the passage on Goethe in Twilight, Nietzsche writes of the
need to “persuade the body”. Culture begins, Nietzsche tells us, not in the
soul as the body-despising Christians have taught us, but as the Greeks
knew: in the body.120 From an early period, Goethe had come to criticise
theoretical knowledge without physical aptitude. In a famous 1772 letter
to Herder on Pindar, Goethe speaks of the need to be in touch with the
world and says he pities the poor man “for whom the head is all”.121
Nietzsche points to this in Twilight by labelling Kant—whose philosophy,
Nietzsche describes elsewhere as the “biography of a head”122—the
“antipode of Goethe”. Nietzsche’s shared Goethe’s desire for “totality”,
and resisting the “disintegration” of reason, senses, feeling, and will.123
Such criticism equally applies to the “one-sided” Spinoza. Nietzsche was
not looking for a theoretical rapprochement between man and world,
which would be a philosophy for a “fragments and limbs”.124 Nietzsche’s
“pagan” ideal begins with the body: he saw the “nonsensuality” of
philosophy as its greatest “nonsensicality”.125 The “most spiritual men”,
wrote Nietzsche, are “sensualists in the best faith”.126
Notes
1. PPP, pp. 62–63.
2. PTAG§6, p. 57.
3. Laozi, Tao Te Ching: The Book of the Way and Its Virtue, trans.
J.J.L. Duyvendak, John Murray, 1954, c.f. Tao Tö King: Le livre de la
voie et de la vertu, trans. J.J.L. Duyvendak, Adrien Maisonneuve, 1953.
4. Legge, for example, gives us trodden here: “The Tao that can be trodden
is not the enduring and unchanging Tao”. See: Laozi, “The Tao Teh
King”, in The Sacred Books of China: The Texts of Taoism: Part I, trans.
J. Legge, Clarendon, 1891, p. 47.
5. Duyvendak argued that the term dao did not have the sense of spoken
in the period in which the text was composed.
6. For example, Richardson notes scholarly debate over whether Heraclitus
has a philosophy of flux versus a philosophy of becoming. See
J. Richardson, Nietzsche’s System, Oxford University Press, 1996, esp.
p. 78 and p. 86.
7. PTAG§5, p. 51.
8. TI “‘Reason’ in Philosophy” §2, p. 481.
9. NF-1887,9[62] (WP§580, p. 312); c.f. NF-1887,10[18] (WP§485,
p. 268): “The concept of the substance is a consequence of the concept
of the subject: not the reverse! If we relinquish the soul, “the subject”,
the precondition for “substance” in general disappears. One acquires
degrees of being, one loses that which has being”.
10. PTAG§6, p. 58. Nietzsche goes on to say that this is the sense in which
“the one is at the same time the many”.
11. PTAG§7, p. 62.
12. Heraclitus, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus, ed. and trans. C.H. Kahn,
Cambridge University Press, 1979, §XXXVII [TM].
13. The Art and Thought of Heraclitus, §XCIV [TM].
14. PTAG§7, p. 62. Nietzsche uses the same image in BT§24. Contrary to
some translations (Davenport gives us “Time is a child building a sand-
castle by the sea…” in Herakleitos, “The Extant Fragments”, trans.
G. Davenport, The American Poetry Review, vol. 7, no. 1, 1979, p. 15,
§24), Heraclitus’ fragment says nothing about the sea or sandcastles.
Since Nietzsche said in the Pre-Platonic Philosophers that “In his world-
creating capacity, Zeus is compared to a child (as is Apollo) who builds
and destroys sand castles on the beach at the sea” (pp. 65–66), it seems
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that he has taken this image from The Iliad, where, in Butler’s transla-
tion, Apollo “kicked down the wall of the Achaeans as easily as a child
who playing on the sea-shore has built a house of sand and then kicks
it down again and destroys it…” See: Homer, The Iliad, trans. S. Butler,
ed. L.R. Loomis, W.J. Black, 1942, p. 233, book XV. A similar reading
is offered by Philo in his critique of the Stoic notion of perpetual cre-
ation and destruction, an idea they derived from Heraclitus. See: Philo,
On the Eternity of the World, in Philo: Vol. IX, trans. F.H. Colson, Loeb,
1985, p. 213, v. 42.
15. See TI Four Great Errors, §§7–8, pp. 499–501.
16. NF-1884,26[193]. If one wishes to inquire into Nietzsche’s under-
standing of Vedanta, the place to start is surely Das System des Vedânta
(1883) by Nietzsche’s friend Deussen which he was reading around
this time.
17. “Metamorphose der Tiere.” This poem also presents each thing as its
own end, rejecting final causes. Goethe saw, as he said, that cork trees
do not grow that we might have something to wedge into our
bottlenecks.
18. Letter to Zelter, Aug. 13, 1831. Here Goethe recognises some similar-
ity between his own views and Hegel’s philosophy, which he was other-
wise ambivalent about. Nietzsche himself recognised the similarity,
saying “Hegel’s way of thinking is not far different from Goethe’s…”
NF-1887,9[178] (WP§95, p. 60).
19. Goethe says this to Soret: CWG, Apr. 11, 1827.
20. D&W, book 16.
21. Letter to Zelter, Jan. 29, 1830. Here Goethe praises Kant’s third cri-
tique (which he elsewhere judges as being good on rhetoric, tolerable
on poetry, and weak on plastic art) for its treatment of art and nature as
functioning independently of aims, and remarks again on his early
pleasure in encountering Spinoza’s rejection of final causes.
22. NF-1885,2[130] (WP§797, p. 419).
23. NF-1885,2[186] (WP§1048). At the time of this note, Nietzsche was
writing the “Attempt at a Self-Criticism” in which he criticised the
“artist’s metaphysics” of the Birth. That is, the world-conception of the
Birth was playful and purposeless, but posited a world behind—a
Dionysian reality behind Apollonian illusion.
24. P. Wheelwright, Heraclitus, Princeton University Press, 1959, p. 14.
25. The only unmistakable reference to a Heraclitean thought that I know

of in Goethe’s work comes in a poem entitled “Dauer im Wechsel” in
the “Gott und Welt” cycle. It is a poem about impermanence, and
alludes to the most famous of the fragments in claiming that everything
changes so quickly that “in the same river / you couldn’t swim a
second time”.
26. This is the conclusion of Bapp, Aus Goethes griechischer Gedankenwelt,
1921, who devoted 60 pages to the relationship. Bapp’s conclusion is
quoted in Cleve, whose discussion of the topic is the most recent of
which I am aware. See: F.M. Cleve, The Giants of Pre-Sophistic Greek
Philosophy, Martinus Nijhoff, 1965, p. 117. The Diels quote is also
given by Cleve.
27. The Art and Thought of Heraclitus, §X, §XIV, §XV.
28. Letter to Merck, Apr. 8, 1785. This distrust of received wisdom goes
with Goethe’s lack of interest in what we would now call metaphysics.
Heraclitus was similarly dismissive towards this pursuit. Unlike some of
the other physikoi, Heraclitus wasn’t seeking a foundational substance:
his “fire” is not a name for the most basic element, but a way of
describing the incessant dynamism of nature.
29. M&R§1150, p. 146 [TM: Stopp misleadingly gives us “thinking is
more interesting than knowing, but not more interesting than
contemplating”].
30. NF-1885,38[12] (WP§1067, pp. 549–550).
31. In another note from the period (NF-1885,40[53]), Nietzsche describes
“the will to power” as “a definitive name [ein bestimmter Name]” for this
Protean and ungraspable world.
32. The Art and Thought of Heraclitus, p. 118. I take up the question of what
“deeper” might mean in what follows, and present difficulties for any
supposedly Nietzschean conception of an “ultimate” or “absolute”
identity.
33. M. Anderson, Plato and Nietzsche: Their Philosophical Art, Bloomsbury,
2014, p. 83.
34. BGE§295, p. 234.
35. It does seem to me almost indecent to treat Empedocles so briefly,
though there truly is not a great deal to work with. Aside from those
discussed below, see also BGE§204; though brief, this passage bears
comparison with NF-1884,26[3] on the “one-sidedness” of modern
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philosophers compared to the pre-Socratics, where it is said that

“Goethe stands well”. I discuss this fragment in the section on Spinoza.
36. UM.III§3, pp. 145–146; in this, Nietzsche follows the lead of
Schopenhauer, who praises Empedocles’ “resolute pessimism”. See:
A. Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena: Vol. I, ed. and trans.
S. Roehr and C. Janaway, Cambridge University Press, 2014;
“Fragments for the History of Philosophy”, §2.
37. HH§141, p. 76: after saying that “pessimists are not unanimous in the
matter” of the evaluation of procreation, he writes: “Empedocles, for
example, knows nothing of shame, devil, sin in all things erotic; rather,
on the great meadow of calamity, he sees one single salutary and hopeful
apparition: Aphrodite. For him she is the guarantee that Strife will not
prevail indefinitely, but will eventually give the scepter to a gentler
daemon”.
38. PPP, p. 109.
39. TI “What I Owe to the Ancients” §4, p. 562.
40. PPP, p. 110.
41. EH “Why I Write Such Good Books” BT§3, p. 272.
42. CWG, Sep. 1, 1829; c.f. Mar. 3, 1830.
43. CWG, Feb. 4, 1829.
44. This bears a striking contrast with Steiner who speculated endlessly
about such things. Steiner believed that he knew, for example, that the
historical Faust was one of Empedocles’ reincarnations. See: R. Steiner,
The Gospel of Mark, Sep. 15, 1912. In the original, Vortrag I of Das
Markus-Evangelium.
45. CWG, Feb. 25, 1824.
46. This is a frequent theme in Goethe’s thought, and can be summarised
in his advice to Eckermann (CWG, Nov. 3, 1823) to “always hold fast
to the present”: “each moment”, Goethe says, “is of infinite worth”
because it is “the representative of a whole eternity [der Repräsentant
einer ganzen Ewigkeit]”. C.f. Mephisto to the student: “Who seizes the
moment / is the right man [der den Augenblick ergreift, / Das ist der
rechte Mann]”. C.f. Faust and Helen’s “the present alone / is our joy
[Die Gegenwart allein / ist unser Gluck]”. Mephisto is constantly trying
to seduce Faust into living in the present—this is a rare moment for
Faust of looking neither forwards nor backwards.
47. For example, Goethe writes in Zur Farbenlehre, §739: “To make two of
what is one, to unify what is divided—this is the life of nature, the
eternal systole and diastole, the eternal syncrisis and diacrisis, the
inhaling and exhaling of the world in which we live, weave, and exist
[Das Geeinte zu entzweien, das Entzweite zu einigen, ist das Leben der
Natur; dies ist die ewige Systole und Diastole, die ewige Synkrisis und
Diakrisis, das Ein- und Ausatmen der Welt, in der wir leben, weben
und sind]”.
48. Zur Farbenlehre, §38. Goethe engages with Empedocles’ ideas in the
historical section of this work, writing of the interplay of black/water
and white/fire (Empedocles’ four primaries—the other two were red
and yellow—were each associated with an element). Goethe’s own view
bears some superficial similarity. Goethe wrote of the polarity of
darkness and light, and claimed that colours could be produced through
the interplay of these opposites: light passing through the darkness of a
turbid medium appeared yellow, while darkness seen through a semi-
transparent medium appeared blue.
49. D&W, book 13. Nietzsche paraphrases this as “dass wir mit unseren
Tugenden zugleich auch unsere Fehler anbauen”.
50. Nietzsche sometimes makes a stronger claim about the identity of
opposites, for example that “good actions are sublimated evil ones”
(HH§107), that being is a “slower tempo of becoming” (NF-1887,9[62],
WP§580, p. 312) that “morality is itself a form of immorality”
(NF-1887,9[140], WP§308, p. 172) that the living is “a special case” of
the dead (NF-1881,11[150], c.f. GS§109). More generally, what we
call opposites “actually express only variations in degree”. See:
NF-1887,9[91] (WP§552, p. 298).
51. GS§338, p. 271. C.f. NF-1887,10[111] (WP§881). One note associ-
ates this idea with Goethe, drawing on Goethe’s image of the great
hospital and writing, “the healthier, stronger, richer, more fruitful,
more enterprising a man feels, the more ‘immoral’ he will be, too”. See:
NF-1886,4[7] (WP§395, p. 213).
52. Letter to Charlotte von Stein, May 27, 1787: “Auch, muß ich selbst
sagen, halt ich es für wahr, daß die Humanität endlich siegen wird, nur
fürcht ich, daß zu gleicher Zeit die Welt ein großes Hospital und einer des
andern humaner Krankenwärter sein werde.” I discuss this in more detail
in Chap. 6.
53. NF-1888,15[113] (WP§351, pp. 191–193).
54. Nietzsche also added another footnote from Goethe to the Empedocles
text. This time it is from a letter to Lavater of June 1781, stating
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Goethe’s distrust of esoterics—the context of which is Goethe’s criticism

of Cagliostro, under whose spell Lavater had fallen.
55. Letter to Knebel, Nov. 17, 1784.
56. TI “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man” §49, p. 554.
57. M. Tanner, Nietzsche, Oxford, 1994, p. 79.
58. D&W, book 12.
59. Letter to Zelter, 29 Jan. 1830. The claim here is that nature does not
need a final end—its meaning can be found in its relationships alone.
60. NF-1887,9[30] (WP§785, pp. 412–413). C.f. NF-1887,9[7]
(WP§687, p. 366): “we are more than individuals: we are the whole
chain as well…”.
61. Different motivations have been suggested for Empedocles’ suicide. On
Nietzsche’s reading, which follows that of Hölderlin, Empedocles
jumped into the volcano to prove his immortality.
62. EH “Why I Am A Destiny” §7, pp. 332–333.
63. Goethe cites in particular Ethics VP17, that a man who loves god can-
not expect to be loved in return.
64. D&W, book 14.
65. Letter to Zelter, Nov. 7, 1816.
66. Letter to Jacobi of 21 Oct., 1785.
67. D&W, book 16: “… am freudigsten und reichlichsten trat sie
unwillkürlich, ja wider Willen hervor”.
68. July 30, 1881, BVN-1881,135. This is a very critical period, and
Nietzsche’s new intimacy with Spinoza comes at the time of the
‘revelation’ of the eternal recurrence. I deal with this in some length in
Chap. 4. Nietzsche wrote that with his discovery of Spinoza, his
“lonesomeness” became a “twosomeness”. He would write similarly of
Zarathustra’s ‘appearance’, which also occurred around this time.
69. NF-1887,11[138] (WP§341, pp. 186–187); Nietzsche actually dis-
cusses a third type, which is not of particular relevance to us here: the
‘anti natural’, whose ideal is the “denial of life” and who experiences the
divine in the “contempt for and destruction of life”.
70. That the pagan “gives away” suggests that they enrich what they see.
That the pagan type sees everything as “fuller, rounder, more perfect”
bears comparison with NF-1888,14[117] (WP§800, p. 421): “artists
should see nothing as it is, but fuller, simpler, stronger”.
71. NF-1887,11[138] (WP§341, pp. 186–187). C.f. NF-1887,9[176].
72. The contrast between Goethe and Spinoza cannot be drawn in terms of
Weber’s this-worldly and other-worldly mysticism—both thinkers surely
fall into the former category. We are talking about kinds of this worldly
affirmation (See: M. Weber, The Sociology of Religion, trans. E. Fischoff,
Methuen & Co, 1963, p. 166ff). We also must not think that the
distinction is that the one is deifying natura naturans and the other
natura naturata. For both it is the process that is divine. Though for
Goethe, there seems to be no world of natured things—nature just is
naturing, and as we see below he does not share Spinoza’s concept of
Nature (i.e. nature as an integrated whole, as a one).
73. In a phrase similar to Nietzsche’s remark (GS§338) about “laying the
skin of three centuries” between oneself and the present, Goethe writes
to Schiller (Nov. 4, 1797) that if we are to act on conviction, “we are
compelled to forget our century [wir genötigt unser Jahrhundert zu
vergessen]”.
75. “Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, / Sich ein Charakter in dem Strom
der Welt”.
76. NF-1884,26[3].
78. The lines are from a Goethe poem “General Confession [Generalbeichte]”
from the early 1800s. In this paraphrase from BT§18, as well as in
quotations from the period of the Birth (BVN-1871,166 and 168),
Nietzsche misquotes the poem as saying “Im Ganzen, Vollen, Schönen /
Resolut zu leben”. The replacement of goodness with fullness is surely
significant, as it is when both Pater and Carlyle, quoting the same
poem, replace beauty with truth. The lines had enduring resonance for
Nietzsche, who gets it right in his letter to Salomé (BVN-1882,234)
where he proposes it as their motto. The poem bears comparison with
Hafez’ celebration of those lovers who “drain life to the lees”, which I
take up in Chap. 8.
79. NF-1887,9[179].
80. NF-1887,10[193] (WP§147, p. 94); NF-1887,11[35] (WP§1047,
p. 538).
81. See for example NF-1887,10[165] (WP§916, pp. 483–484) on pagan-
ism and feasts.
82. Aside from Goethe own often caustically humorous works, one should
note his admiration of Rodolphe Töpffer’s comic albums including Dr.
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Festus. See CWG, Jan. 4, 1831, and also D. Kunzle, “Goethe and
Caricature: From Hogarth to Töpffer”, Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes, vol. 48, pp. 164–188.
83. For example, TI “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man” §51, p. 555.
84. On the association of buffoonery with Nietzsche’s religious outlook, see
for example GS§382, NF-1888,14[84], and NF-1888,17[4].
85. EH “Preface” §2, p. 217.
86. EH “Why I Am A Destiny” §1, p. 326.
87. NF-1886,5[34] (WP§1045 pp. 537–538).
88. June 9, 1875.
89. Ethics §5.24. B. Spinoza, A Spinoza Reader, ed. and trans. E. Curley,
Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 257.
90. R.H. Blyth made a similar kind of distinction in his attempt to differ-
entiate Zen from pantheism and mysticism: “Mysticism and Zen over-
lap, but are distinct. Mysticism sees the infinite meaning in the
(apparently) trivial thing; Zen sees the thing, the fall of Adam, your
own fall out of the window, and no more. True, everything is in the
thing, but it is not seen as everything, but as the thing”. See: R.H. Blyth,
Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics, E.P. Dutton & Co,
1960, pp. 212–224.
91. M&R§706, p. 95.
92. M&R§573, pp. 76–77. See also CWG, Dec. 20, 1826. That same year,
Goethe wrote his “On Mathematics and Its Misuse [Über Mathematik
und deren Mißbrauch]”.
93. M&R§502, p. 66.
94. Letter to Jacobi, May 5, 1786.
95. See Goethe’s review of Stiedenroth’s Psychologie zur Erklärung der
Seelenerscheinungen, published in On Morphology in 1824.
96. See “Fortunate Encounter” in SS, p. 20.
97. M&R§1150, p. 146 [TM].
98. 1811 journal: Goethe says that Jacobi’s “einseitigbeschränkter Ausspruch”
could not fail to alienate him, given that it was his own natural tendency
to see “God in nature and nature in God”.
99. M&R§565, p. 75 [TM]. In Faust (GF, p. 115) we read: “Mysterious in
the light of day, / Nature, in veils, will not let us perceive her, / And
what she is unwilling to betray, / You cannot wrest from her with
thumbscrews, wheel, or lever”.
100. CWG, Oct. 12, 1825.
101. A full English translation can be found in J.D. Falk and F. Müller,
Characteristics of Goethe: Vol. I, trans. S. Austin, Lea & Blanchard,
1841, p. 52. There is also a translated passage in Huxley’s Doors of
Perception.
102. C.f. M&R§575, p. 77.
103. C&E§189, p. 142.
104. C.f. CWG, Apr. 20, 1825.
105. CWG, May 18, 1824.
106. For a history of approaches to a perfect and universal language, see:
U. Eco, The Search for the Perfect Language, John Wiley & Sons, 1995.
Eco does not discuss Spinoza in depth. Spinoza’s views are well brought
out in M. Laerke, “Spinoza’s Language”, Journal of the History of
Philosophy, vo. 52, no. 3, 2014, pp. 519–547.
107. This is a major point of contrast with Goethe’s self-proclaimed disciples
including Ernst Haeckel and Rudolf Steiner, both of whom wrote of
solving the “world riddle”.
108. TI “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man” §23, p. 528; C.f. TI “‘Reason’ in
Philosophy” §4, p. 482. In this criticism, Nietzsche follows Hamann,
who wrote in a letter to Kant that Spinoza “occupied himself too much
with spider webs… which can only entangle small insects”. See:
J.G. Hamann, Briefwechsel: Bd. 1, ed. A. Henkel, Isel-Verlag,
1955, p. 378.
109. Riffing on this, Nietzsche refers to Spinoza as a “drunkard of God
[Trunkenbold Gottes]” in BGE§205, p. 125 [TM].
110. GS§372–373, p. 333.
111. AC§17, p. 585; c.f. GM.III§9, p. 113.
112. MR§428. It seems worth noting that Nietzsche’s most sustained dis-
cussion of this, in his 1873 “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral
Sense”, may be engaging quite directly with Goethe’s ideas. In it,
Nietzsche discusses how a name, rather than representing the
particular—the Urerlebniss (primal experience) that it originally
labelled—comes to mediate between what is always unequal. For
example, the concept “leaf ” serves to dismiss the differences between
particular leaves, and give the sense that in nature there is such a thing
as a leaf, which serves as the ideal form from which all real leaves stray.
113. CWG, Dec. 31, 1823.
114. Letter to Jacobi, May 5, 1786.
115. NF-1870,7[156] (TEN, p. 52).
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116. GS§P.4, p. 38.

117. EH “Preface” §2, p. 218; c.f. TI “How the ‘True World’ Finally Became
a Fable”, pp. 485–486 and TI “‘Reason’ in Philosophy” §2, p. 481.
118. C.f. GS§373, pp. 334–336.
119. TI “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man” §23, p. 528; C.f. TI “‘Reason’ in
Philosophy” §4, p. 482.
121. Letter to Herder, mid-July, 1772: “Armer Mensch an dem der Kopf alles
ist!” Goethe’s letter on Pindar and self-becoming is of major impor-
tance to Nietzsche, who alludes to it plainly in his discussion of Goethe
in BGE§198.
122. D§481, p. 480.
124. Z “On Redemption”, p. 138.
125. NF-1884,25[438] (WP§1046, p. 538).
126. NF-1886,5[34] (WP§1045, pp. 537–538).
Bibliography
Anderson, M., Plato and Nietzsche: Their Philosophical Art, Bloomsbury, 2014.
Cleve, F.M., The Giants of Pre-Sophistic Greek Philosophy, Martinus Nijhoff, 1965.
Heraclitus, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus, ed. and trans. C.H. Kahn,
Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Laozi, Tao Tö King: Le livre de la voie et de la vertu, trans. J.J.L. Duyvendak,
Adrien Maisonneuve, 1953.
———, Tao Te Ching: The Book of the Way and Its Virtue, trans. J.J.L. Duyvendak,
John Murray, 1954.
Spinoza, B., A Spinoza Reader, ed. and trans. E. Curley, Princeton University
Press, 1994.
Wheelwright, P., Heraclitus, Princeton University Press, 1959.
4
Mysticism from Birth to Breakdown
In this chapter, I explore Nietzsche’s discussions of unitive experiences

from the Birth onward.1 While Nietzsche’s early works contain a mystical
pathos that is not unfamiliar, I contend that if we may speak of Nietzsche’s
mature thought as mystical, then we must understand this term in quite
a novel sense. Mystical experience can be thought of as the felt union of
the part with the whole. If we are to speak of a Dionysian mysticism, then
this term must be understood in light of the Goethean conception in
which the whole does not exist apart from the parts. I argue that such a
mysticism leads neither to Quietism nor to altruistic activism, but to a
strong affirmation of egoism.
* * *
In his 1886 “Attempt at a Self-Criticism”, Nietzsche reflected that The

Birth of Tragedy developed out of “a lot of immature, overgreen personal
experiences”, which were all “close to the limits of communication”.2
These under-ripe experiences are surely of the very unitive, ‘mystical’ sort
discussed in the Birth, where the principium individuationis is temporar-
ily overcome during aesthetic experience.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75007-7_4
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A key point in the Birth was that what most people are experiencing
when they view art is not really aesthetic. Rather, they relate only at a
superficial level to a work’s moral content, to what speaks to their intel-
lect. Socrates here exemplifies the “typical non-mystic” whose logical fac-
ulties are hypertrophied and who can consider art only as either
instrumental or meaningless: he cannot engage with art deeply as art.3
According to Nietzsche, aesthetic experience is not intellectual, but rather
instinctive and unitive.
Nietzsche had rather a lot to say in the Birth about mystical aesthetic
experiences in which the sense of oneself as individual is temporarily sus-
pended or transcended, and one experiences an identification with the
whole unfurling spectacle: one is “at once subject and object, at once poet,
actor, and spectator”.4 The book speaks of the individual’s experienced
“oneness with the inmost ground of the world”,5 discusses one’s “identity”
with the “heart of the world”, and speaks of the lyrist’s use of the word “I”
as referring to the “only truly existent and eternal self ”, which rests at the
base of things.6 This emphasis on the ground points plainly to a concep-
tion of a “primal One [Ur-Eine]” beneath or behind the many.
Nietzsche was later very critical of this “questionable book”.7 In the
“Self-Criticism”, Nietzsche reflected that the Birth presented an “artist’s
metaphysics”.8 It was an artistic vision of the world in that it presented
the world as play as fundamentally theatrical or playful: it did not exist
for any purpose, especially not any moral purpose. But it was metaphysi-
cal in presenting a reality concealed beneath the illusory surface.
The book made a clear distinction between appearance and reality—
though it did not promise redemption from illusion, but rather “redemp-
tion in illusion”.9 In an early note, Nietzsche described his philosophy as
an “inverted Platonism”. It inverted the Platonic value of truth, regarding
a thing purer, more beautiful, better the further it is “from true being”
and presenting “living in illusion as the goal”.10
The point here, established early on, is that the Platonic One is strictly
nothing. In describing the spiritual life as abandoning the world of sense
and taking refuge in the One,11 Plotinus was, in fact, describing the will-
to-nothingness: the desire to overcome the illusion of appearances is the
desire for the dissolution of the world. Even at the time of the Birth,
Nietzsche’s goal was not the final return of the world to its “primal unity
[Ur-Eine]”.12 This is seen in the book’s basic distinction between the

Apollonian and the Dionysian.
The Apollonian draws distinct boundaries around “individuals”, while
the Dionysian dissolves these boundaries. Thus, the typical Apollonian
art is sculpture, with its sense of measure and harmony and clearly delin-
eated forms; and the quintessential Dionysian art is music, where unity
prevails: the separate parts yield and dissolve into a whole. The basic atti-
tude in the Birth towards individuation is not that it must finally be
rejected. The polarity between the Dionysian and the Apollonian is the
“contradiction at the heart of the world”, and the desire to resolve that
contradiction is the desire for nothingness. Nietzsche does not side with
the Dionysian one over the Apollonian many in the Birth. Rather, the
“highest goal” of art and tragedy is in their “fraternal union”: in teaching
both Dionysus and Apollo to speak the language of the other.13
In the Birth, redemption is not a retreat into the one behind the many.
But rather, it is the awareness that what one experiences is “illusion” or
“maya”. Redemption here is to see the world as an “aesthetic phenome-
non”, to behold it constantly as “a vivid play”.14 This awareness allows the
individual to “sit quietly in his tossing bark, amid the waves”.15 In
Nietzsche’s later language, this awareness affords an escape from the
“wicked game”.16
In the “Self-Criticism”, Nietzsche described the Birth as a book “for
initiates” who are related to each other by “rare aesthetic experiences”.17
That Schopenhauer was an initiate into such unitive aesthetic experiences
was surely a major attraction of Nietzsche to his thought.18 Schopenhauer
agreed with the Kant that we are destined to “remain on the outside of
things”, unable to access the things in themselves. But on his dual-aspect
reading of Kant, Schopenhauer believed that the limits of reason could be
experientially breached. The reason for this was that we are not merely
“the knowing subject” but are among the entities to be known—that is,
“we ourselves are the thing-in-itself”. From this fact, Schopenhauer
claimed that a path “from within” opens up: we can have knowledge of
the thing in itself by identity.19
In the Birth, Nietzsche writes that through “extraordinary courage and
wisdom”, Kant and Schopenhauer had gained “victory” over the opti-
mism that all of the “riddles of the universe” could be solved.20 This helps
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us to understand why Nietzsche employed “Schopenhauerian and

Kantian formulas” in the Birth: these thinkers gave the young Nietzsche
a vocabulary not so much to express the inexpressible, but to point to
what is left behind, what is left untouched by our theorising. Nietzsche
would shortly abandon this vocabulary,21 but it does not follow that he
thereby lost touch with the mystical sensibility so much in evidence in
the Birth. On the contrary, the “overgreen” early experiences would ripen,
as too would his way of expressing them. It is upon these mature discus-
sions that we will focus.
* * *
After The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche does not explicitly discuss mysticism
at great length. When he does mention mysticism, the term is mostly used
critically, such as in the Genealogy, where mysticism is said to be born of
Weltschmerz: so wearied of life do we become that we conceive of redemp-
tion as deep sleep.22 This reflects I think, an outgrowing of the mystical
pathos as evidenced in the Birth, which the mature Nietzsche associates
with a romantic, and thus decadent, outlook—a seeking of “metaphysical
comfort”. Nietzsche came to associate the desire for mystical union with
the morality of unselfing; that is, with a flight from our individuated
condition.23 But there certainly are discussions of mystical experiences
scattered throughout Nietzsche’s writing after the Birth, both in the pub-
lished works and in the unpublished fragments.
In “Schopenhauer as Educator”, for example, Nietzsche writes of the
saint’s experience of the ego being “completely melted away”, and the
experience of a “profound feeling of oneness and identity with all living
things”. He goes on to say that all of us are “related and allied to the
saint”, in that there are moments in which “we cease to understand the
word ‘I’”, and move across into something “beyond our being”.24 Here
we remain more or less within the pathos of the Birth and its “overgreen
personal experiences”. But one place where we can almost watch this
pathos ripening is in a remarkable notebook from the middle of 1881.
* * *
The notebook to which we now turn includes Nietzsche’s famous frag-

ment declaring his discovery of the eternal recurrence of the same as he
soared “6000 feet above the sea, and far higher above all human things”.25
The notebook is a very rich source that merits sustained attention.26
Near the beginning of the notebook, Nietzsche writes, “the individual
is an error”, and that “we are buds on one tree”. One should stop “feeling
oneself as this fantastic ego”. Both egoism and altruism are errors, the
former being the love of oneself as an individual, and the latter the “love
of other supposed individuals”. The fragment ends emphatically by
declaring, “Get over ‘me’ and ‘you’! Experience cosmically! [Über “mich”
und “dich” hinaus! Kosmisch empfinden!]”.27
This emphasis on experiencing truthfully, beyond the error of indi-
viduality, is echoed in other notes from the early stages of this notebook.
In one note, Nietzsche speaks of the need to get over “egoistic seeing” and
learn to look at the world “objectively”. Here, self-love is presented as
“too narrow”. The “highest selfishness” is not the opposite of altruism,
but is rather “neutral, objective vision”.28 In another, Nietzsche writes of
the need to “transform the sense of I” and to “weaken the personal ten-
dency”. His advice here is to adjust the eye “to the reality of things”.29
That is, the way things appear to us is illusory, but that we can experience
things as they are.
Nietzsche’s view shifts markedly within this notebook. In a slightly
later fragment, Nietzsche again speaks of the task as being “to see things
as they are”, but the way of achieving this is no longer to see impersonally
or to weaken the personal tendency. On the contrary, Nietzsche now
writes, “it was a mistake to emphasise the impersonal”. Rather than see-
ing from the “neutral” perspective of the “neighbour”, Nietzsche says that
one must see with the eyes of “many neighbours” and with “purely per-
sonal eyes”. Nietzsche here declares that the “impersonal” vision is “useful
every now and then” to overcome the “clouding of passion”, but in gen-
eral the impersonal is “merely the personal weakened, something feeble”.30
The gap between these positions is obviously very large. The notes
which span that chasm go to straight to the heart of Nietzsche’s much-
discussed perspectivism. What is not ordinarily seen is how this perspec-
tivism reflects Nietzsche’s conception of the one and the many.
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One of these notes speaks of the need to “unlearn desires” and assume
the perspective of the “invisible onlooker”. We must take on “the advan-
tages of the dead” and invest all of our strength in “looking”.31 One might
respond that the dead see nothing, that it is the living alone that look.
Nietzsche will reach this conclusion before long, but in these notes, he is
grappling with the distinction between the living and the dead.
Nietzsche believed that we have access to this “dead” perspective,
describing it as “a festival to cross over from this world to the ‘dead’
world”.32 It is not a “regression” to return to what is dead, Nietzsche
writes, but rather a “self-perfection” in which “we become quite true”. It
is with sensation that “deception begins”. Sensation is here merely “the
external aspect of existence”. We should see through this “comedy” of
appearances to the reality. Here the dead world is described as “what is
actual” and “without error”, revealing the world as “force against force”.
Nietzsche is emphasising a will-less perspective: a world in which there is
“no desire” and “no pain”. His view here is close to Schopenhauer’s advo-
cacy of being like a “clear mirror” in which everything is seen and noth-
ing is distorted.33 There seems to be the assumption here of the possibility
of neutrality, of a place from which the view is total, unselective—that is,
non-perspectival. That place which is no place in particular sounds a lot
like a ground beneath the particular, a one behind the many. In this note,
it was claimed that the living “are” and “belong to” this dead world.
Nietzsche mature thought retains this view, while abandoning the meta-
physical implication that the dead ground is reality, and the sensory or
apparent is illusory.
In Daybreak, which was finished just months before the heightened
experiences of mid-1881, there is another suggestion that the dead world
is truth. Book 5 begins with a passage in which Nietzsche describes an
encounter with the sea. He speaks of one being overcome by a “beautiful
and terrifying” silence. It is an experience in which one begins to “hate
speech, even thought”, sensing behind every word “the laughter of error”.
Here the sea is tempting one to “cease being human”, to become all sea.34
Later in the 1881 notebook, Nietzsche writes that the “dead” is not
inert: it too is becoming. “The living is not the opposite of the dead” but
is rather a “special case” of the dead.35 The living develops out of the dead.
Here we see Nietzsche’s mature view taking shape. We can also see why it
is deceptive to move from the claim that the dead world is without error
to the conclusion that it is true.36 For one thing, the dead world is partial:
it excludes the rich perspective that develops out of it, whose very ambi-
guity and multiplicity is truth.37
Truth is something other than the incapacity to deceive.38 There is no
truth without error. Thus, Nietzsche claims, “life is a condition of know-
ing” and “to err is a condition of life”.39 This view becomes clear in
Nietzsche’s writing on the living and the dead in subsequent years. In a
late note, Nietzsche writes again, “dissimulation seems to be lacking” in
the dead or inorganic world. But here Nietzsche claims that this incapac-
ity to deceive simply demonstrates that the inorganic occupies a lower
order of rank than the organic: that there is an “increase in “dissimula-
tion” proportionate to the rising order of creatures”, and that the highest
types are the most artistic.40
* * *
In Nietzsche’s mature thought, the person who takes himself for a detached
spectator is duped. His vision is not neutral, but merely the “personal
weakened”. All vision is perspectival, and perspectivity is inherently inter-
pretative. In Zarathustra, Nietzsche criticised the Schopenhauerean “lech-
ers” who think of themselves as “pure perceivers”. The highest goal for
these men is to immaculately perceive—to look at everything without
desire, wanting nothing from the world but look at it, to lie before it “like
a mirror with a hundred eyes”.41 This is presented as being free of the
“grasping and greed of selfishness”, but Zarathustra sees the hypocrisy.
Such men lack the innocence to create and have, as Nietzsche said of
Schopenhauer, the “most personal interest” in disinterest.42
In a note from the mid-1980s, Nietzsche wrote, “we belong to the
character of the world”.43 Here he writes that there is “no access” to that
character except through ourselves, and that everything about us neces-
sarily belongs to the world’s essence. This last claim sounds a lot like the
fallacy of composition. But it isn’t, in that Nietzsche didn’t believe there
existed a whole with those properties. The claim here is not just the epis-
temic claim that there is “no access” to the whole except through the
parts, but that the whole does not exist apart from the parts.
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In the fifth book of The Gay Science, Nietzsche discussed the extent of
“the perspective character of existence”, raising the possibility that all exis-
tence is “actively engaged in interpretation”.44 In Twilight, Nietzsche denies
the possibility of finding a position “outside of life” with which to evaluate
it. He argues that our “way of looking at things”, our perspectivity, is a
part of life, and writes, “life itself values through us when we posit values”.45
We should not be confused by this notion of the whole valuing through
the parts. Nietzsche’s conception of the whole is not one apart from the
parts. In the 1881 notebook, Nietzsche wrote that “as a whole”, the uni-
verse is “as far as possible from being an organism”.46 The organic, the
living, grows out of the dead. Our eyes have grown out of the world—
they are, in a sense, the world’s eyes. But wherever it eyes, it sees from
somewhere, as someone. The whole is not an organism, and thus has no
perspective of its own. The whole has no perspective outside of its per-
spectival parts. In a sense, all perspectives are perspectives of the whole,
but no perspective can encompass the whole.
* * *
Throughout the 1881 notebook, Nietzsche makes numerous claims to

the effect that our usual conception of ourselves is illusory. We are told
that the atomic individual is an error: we are not isolated, but rather
“buds on one tree”.47 That is, we are growths or manifestations of the
whole. But as we have just seen, the whole is not “an organism”, not a tree.
Nietzsche’s mature discussions maintain a similar position, although
the metaphor he uses is no longer the organic image of the tree, but
rather that of the chain. For example, in Twilight of the Idols, where
Nietzsche writes, “the single one, ‘the individual’… is an error after all”:
the individual is “no atom”, and no mere “link in the chain”.48 As
Nietzsche put it in a note from that time, “we are more than individuals:
we are the whole chain as well”.49 In another, he writes that “the ego is a
hundred times more than merely a unit in the chain of links; it is this
chain itself, entirely”.50
* * *
Richardson writes that Nietzsche believes “everything is in fact one thing:

that the only one thing is the sum of all”.51 But this ‘one thing’ isn’t a
unity, so it isn’t really one or a thing. Elsewhere, Richardson says even the
“sum of all things isn’t unambiguously whole.” While the parts “lack self-
sufficiency”, whole “lacks the unity we demand of a single thing”. The
parts “pull in opposite directions”, so “the one is also a many”.52 This is
helpful in clarifying the oddity of Nietzsche’s conception of the relation-
ship of part to whole: the parts are not parts, not discrete; the whole is not
whole, not unified.53
Writing of Nietzsche’s affirmation of everything, Richardson acknowl-
edges the similarity to mystical thought. Richardson points out, however,
that “mysticisms commonly promote a ‘not-willing’ and selflessness”, and
he asks how the yes to everything could be “consistent with Nietzsche’s
advocacy of willing and selfishness”.54 We are now in a position to begin
our own answer to this question.
Nietzsche’s claim that the individual is inseparable from the whole
does not lead to the rejection of the individuating tendency. On the con-
trary, Nietzsche argues that this identification of part with whole means
that the individual has a “tremendously great significance”.55 The whole
does not exist apart from the parts, and thus if the whole is to be enriched,
this can only happen through the enrichment of individuals.
The affirmation of everything involves not a detached “yes”.56 One
cannot stand aside from life in this way without actually denying life,
which has “in all its instincts both Yes and No”.57 Rather, Nietzsche envi-
sions the affirmation of the evaluative character of existence through the
affirmation of the individual who creates values.
* * *
It is in this 1881 notebook that Nietzsche first discusses the eternal recur-
rence of the same, according to which everything is bound together: as it
is put in Zarathustra, “all things are entangled, ensnared, enamored”.58
The original 1881 note remarks on the need for “understanding every-
thing as becoming” and “denying ourselves as individuals”.59 Our sense of
discrete beings is illusory. There is a single process, of which we are
growths. To say yes to anything, then, is to say yes to everything.
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This is not the place for an in depth discussion of the eternal recur-
rence. It must suffice to say that I think the tendency to stress its hypo-
thetical character,60 and thus turn the recurrence into an existential
imperative, is a mistake. Our own incredulity should not lead us to
downplay Nietzsche’s belief.61
Nietzsche’s idea of the eternal recurrence emerged in a period of expe-
riences of such intensity that told Gast, “I am living an extremely danger-
ous life”.62 Nietzsche says he had caught “a glimpse of things” that put
him ahead of all other men, and the intensity of his feelings made him
“shudder and laugh”. But he swears he will “keep his unshakable peace”.
This last statement does not refer to some tranquil quality of these experi-
ences. Rather, Nietzsche means that his silence about them will be unshak-
able. In some way, Nietzsche felt that the recurrence was not his to teach.
As he later writes in the Genealogy, “it behoves me only to be silent; or I
shall usurp that to which… only Zarathustra has a right”.63 Nietzsche was
by no means consistent on this point, and in Twilight of the Idols, he calls
himself “the teacher of the eternal recurrence”.64
Nietzsche’s own commentaries on these intense experiences are brief.
In Ecce Homo, we read of the conception of the eternal recurrence that it
occurred at the beginning of August 1881: “That day I was walking
through the woods along the lake of Silvaplana; at a powerful pyramidal
rock not far from Surlei I stopped. It was then that this idea came to me”.65
Just what is it that Nietzsche experienced in Sils-Maria before that
pyramidal rock that meant he was not only 6000 feet above sea level but
“far higher above everything human”? Was this a ‘mystical experience’?
The exact nature of the experience is a matter for speculation. But the
possibility of an altered experiential perspective is obviously important to
the recognition—let alone the affirmation—of the eternal recurrence of
the same, and, as we have seen, the notebook surrounding the develop-
ment of the idea contains fragments strongly suggestive of unitive experi-
ences, of the felt sensation of interconnection, that we are “buds on one
tree”.66
In 1887, Nietzsche appended the poem “Sils-Maria” to the second edi-
tion of The Gay Science:
Here I sat, waiting—not for anything—

Beyond Good and Evil, fancying
Now light, now shadows, all a game,
All lake, all noon, all time without all aim.
Then, suddenly, friend, one turned into two—
And Zarathustra walked into my view.67
This poem also refers to that fateful encounter in August 1881.68

Notice that these are not really descriptions of the experience. Not only
might that have to do with the fact that it was beyond or “close to the
limits of communication”,69 but that such experiences are no longer the
goal. The poem suggests that Zarathustra, or the thought of the recur-
rence, occurred within the emptiness of a unitive experience—which
supports Nietzsche’s evaluation of these experiences as important as stim-
ulants to new plans and projects. While in the Birth, such experiences are
considered redemptive, they are now seen as a part of a greater economy.
The new perspectives granted by these experiences allow one to see with
“many eyes”, and with this comes the ability to form new interpretations,
new valuations. In the 1881 notebook, the value creators are referred to
as artists of “images of existence”, which Nietzsche describes as the “most
important thing there has ever been”.70
It is also interesting that Nietzsche’s discussion of the appearance of
Zarathustra echoes strongly another of his encounters at that time. At the
end of July 1881, Nietzsche wrote to Overbeck at his amazement and
enchantment in discovering Spinoza, whose views Nietzsche felt echoed
his own so strongly that his “lonesomeness [Einsamkeit]” became a “two-
someness [Zweisamkeit]”.71 Spinoza’s belief in the interconnectedness of
everything, his fatalism, and his rejection of teleology are all of relevance
to Nietzsche’s conception of the recurrence and his amor fati.72
* * *
Lou Salomé, whose brief acquaintance with Nietzsche dates from 1882,
saw him as literally believing in the recurrence, which she linked to a
mystical identification of part with whole. Salomé’s readings of Nietzsche
are not always reliable but on this point, her analysis is quite astute. In
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1894, Salomé published Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken, in which

she criticised Nietzsche’s 1882 turn from rationalism to mysticism.
Salomé sometimes uses the term mystical to mean something like
“revealed”,73 but she also uses the term to refer to the individual experi-
encing “expansion into the cosmic totality of life”, wherein world, god,
and self “merge into a single concept”.
Salomé argued that Nietzsche’s philosophy built around the eternal
recurrence had an obviously “religious character” that raised the individ-
ual “to the status of a divinity”. Salomé spoke of Nietzsche’s “exaggerated
love of self ”, and contrasted Nietzsche’s egoism with Rée’s altruism.74
Much of this squares with Nietzsche’s own analysis. In fact, it is in a
description of the differences of his own thought to Rée’s that Nietzsche
writes “I want to give egoism a good conscience”.75 In a letter, Nietzsche
wrote that Rée wouldn’t marry Salomé because Rée considered “the prop-
agation of mankind” to be “intolerable” as it would add to “the number
of the wretched”. Nietzsche writes that for his own taste, Rée shows here
“too much pity” and “too few hopes”.76 Rée could not prioritise his own
projects and progeny in good conscience, and subscribed to what
Nietzsche saw as a deeply questionable valuation of suffering. Rée became
a physician with a “reputation for selfless service”.77 He was a model of
what Nietzsche saw as the worst imaginable “misunderstanding and
denial” of the healthy person’s task, in abandoning their individual pur-
suits in order to be “nurses and physicians” to the sick.78
It is important to note that Nietzsche’s 1881 fragments discussing a
transformed sense of self are found amidst his critical engagement with
Herbert Spencer’s evolutionary altruism79—a view with important simi-
larities to Rée’s.80 Spencer was the most popular English philosopher of
the period, and it has been rightly argued by Moore that Nietzsche’s cri-
tique of Darwinism must be understood as developing in this context.81
Like many “Darwinians” of the time, Spencer’s conception of evolution
was one of moral progress. To mention only a few theses which Nietzsche
expressly disagreed with in this notebook, Spencer held that egoism is the
primitive condition, but evolution is tending toward the progressive
adaptation of the individual to his social environment. Such adaptation,
it was believed, would eventually lead to an ideal society in which egoism
and altruism are reconciled, a society that is free from internal conflict,
attuned to an “Absolute Ethics”.82
Nietzsche’s discussion in these fragments of the “error” of altruism and
egoism needs to be read in this light. Nietzsche contrasts Spencer’s “herd”
ideal of “the greatest similarity of human beings” with his own ideal of
“constant dissimilarity and greatest possible sovereignty of the individ-
ual”.83 Against Spencer’s view that “egoism comes before altruism”,84
Nietzsche argues that egoism is in fact a fairly recent development, and
that altruism is the primitive condition for a social organism like man.85
Nietzsche thus argues that Spencer’s ideal of “the complete adaptation of
all to all” is “a mistake” and “the deepest degeneration”.86
Nietzsche ridicules that “glorifiers of selection-purposiveness” such as
Spencer “believe they know what the favourable circumstances are for
development!”.87 Nietzsche makes clear that we cannot know what will
lead to development, but that there certainly cannot be any without good
conscience in undertaking one’s tasks. Spencer’s view, on the contrary,
will lead to individual experiencing “bad conscience” whenever he creates
or does anything for himself—a point that I will pick up in my discussion
of Nietzsche on nursing in Chap. 6. Rée’s discomfort at the prospect of
adding to the cumulative misery is again exemplary. He could hope for
no destiny greater than to alleviate others’ suffering. For Nietzsche, this
pointed to a questionable “image of existence” and the need for new
interpretations, new valuations.88
In contrast to Spencer, Nietzsche claims that new interpretations are
desirable, not an adaptation to the Zeitgeist. In the Genealogy, Nietzsche
explicitly criticises Spencer and asserts that adaptation is an activity of the
“second rank”, a form of a “mere reactivity”. What is essential are the
“form-giving forces” which create “new interpretations and directions…
“adaptation” follows only after this”.89
It is a naivety to think that new interpretations are required because we
have yet to stumble on the “true” one. The idea that there is only one true
interpretation of reality is precisely what Nietzsche was combatting in the
period. Thus, in the 1881 notebook, he writes that “to see things as they
are” is to see from many perspectives, “to see with a hundred eyes, from
many persons”.90 This is to see things “as they are” not because these
visions sum into some coherent overall picture,91 but because this
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perspectivity belongs to the nature of things.92 The person who has seen
from many perspectives is thus one capable of creating new “images of
existence”, rather than conforming to some existing interpretation.
* * *
Goethe wrote, “each stage of life has a corresponding philosophy”.93 He

spoke of the individual developing through stages of childish realism,
youthful idealism, mature scepticism, and aged mysticism. The “mysti-
cism” which an old man avows comes from his appreciation of the irra-
tionality of events. Far from life developing steadily towards an end, the
old man sees that life follows a wayward course in which everything turns
on chance. This sense that, however cautious we may be, we do not have
control over events, leads to a detachment. Goethe made very similar
remarks elsewhere. In 1828, he told Förster that “in old age we become
mystics [im Greisenalter werden wir Mystiker]”94; while the following year,
Goethe said to Eckermann that the indifference of “Quietism” is appro-
priate to the last period of life.95
In a note from the mid-1980s, Nietzsche expressly criticised this view
of Goethe’s, writing that if it were true, there would be “little reason… to
grow as old and sensible as Goethe”.96 In fact, it is quite plain that Goethe
did not become a Quietist in old age, and continued with his own proj-
ects to the end of his 82 years. He certainly became less politically
involved, and did retreat further behind the mask of Herr Geheimrat—
quite possibly to protect his time and now more limited energies from the
unlimited demands of others.
Nietzsche certainly did not dismiss Goethe’s developmental pluralism:
in this note, he writes, “each period of life understands ‘truth’ in its own
way”. Nietzsche’s attitude towards ageing here holds some interest, and it
is always worth keeping in mind that his productive life ended at 45. In
this note, Nietzsche claims that he is “not old enough to have lost all
hope”. There is still the need to have projects, ambitions, hopes. In par-
ticular, he speaks of his hopes that mean he is still casting hooks to catch
his kind. Nietzsche says we should adopt the Greek judgement toward
old age, which they “hated more than death” and preferred to die rather
than “becoming reasonable”.
There is some continuity here with a view Nietzsche expressed some

few years earlier in Daybreak in a passage entitled “The philosopher and
age”. Here Nietzsche cautions against letting “the evening judge the
day”.97 He argues that once we have lost the capacity to act, we come to
denounce the rashness of youth. It seems we have finally gained “clear
sight”, but Nietzsche says that what inspires these judgements is not “wis-
dom but weariness”. This passage involves analyses that are quite com-
mon in Nietzsche’s work, where what appears coldest and most objective
is its own kind of distorting mirror, and where our incapacities recast
themselves as virtues of temperance.
Nietzsche’s own reflections on ageing plainly draw on his recurrent
cycles of his illness and each phase’s attendant temptations. His view was
not one of a progression of stages: the spring, summer, autumn, and win-
ter of life. Rather, it was one of the continuing cycle of life’s many springs,
summers, autumns, and winters. There were “winter doctrines” and win-
ter virtues, but these served to get one through to the spring. Rather than
advocating a sequence of life stages in the manner of Goethe, Nietzsche
thought in terms of what he called the “great economy”98 of a life. To this
end, unitive states could contribute a great deal, while a final mystical
stage could not.
We can put this another way. Nietzsche did not perceive of the part as
a passive manifestation of the whole, but rather as an expression of it. The
Quietist attempt to merely observe that whole is then a mistake: a vain
attempt to stand apart from the “wicked game” of which one is essentially
a part.99 Already by the time of The Gay Science, Nietzsche saw the seduc-
tions of detachment. There he writes of the sea as the rough surf of one’s
“plans and projects”, the masculine world above which the feminine
alluringly floats. These sirens promise to transform life into “a dream
about life”, a state in which one is neither dead nor living. They offer the
temptation of being a quiet observer who glides “over existence”.100
Nietzsche’s imagery here suggests parallels with Freud’s pathologising
of the desire for “oceanic feeling”. Freud claimed that the feeling of iden-
tification with the whole is primitive and that a “narrower and more
sharply outlined ego-feeling” is something healthy, belonging to matu-
rity.101 This is essentially the position that Nietzsche takes with relation to
Spencer: altruism is primitive to egoism, and the sense of oneself as
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separate is a relatively late development. But unlike Freud, Nietzsche

could see the value of these unitive states within the economy of a life,
and as spurs towards greater individuation.
* * *
In several fragments in the 1881 notebook we have discussed above,

Nietzsche stressed the usefulness of temporary unitive experience. He
speaks of “giving oneself over to life from time to time so that one can later
rest one’s eyes on it”,102 and of the impersonal being “useful every now
and then”.103 This view persists until the very end of Nietzsche’s produc-
tive life. In a note a couple of years later, Nietzsche defined the Dionysian
as the “temporary identification with the principle of life”.104 Finally, in a
very late note that appears to be a draft of the discussion of The Birth of
Tragedy in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche wrote that the term “Dionysian” means
“an urge to unity, a reaching out beyond personality… an ecstatic affir-
mation of the total character of life”.105 In this note, the Apollonian is
characterised as “the urge to perfect self-sufficiency”, to individuality and
differentiation. Here the Dionysian is characterised as an affirmation of
polarity: “the feeling of the necessary unity of creation and destruction”
and the “pantheistic” sense that “calls good even the most terrible and
questionable qualities of life” as indispensable aspects of its character.
Nietzsche stressed the importance of these unitive “Dionysian” states
in which one reaches out “beyond personality”, but this is not at all to say
that he willed their permanence. Nietzsche also clearly affirmed the
“Apollonian” boundaries: our sense of isolation is a “powerful goad”
towards distant goals.106 It is the “antagonism” between these two forces
that leads to development. The need for both the Apollonian and the
Dionysian to dwell within the one soul is but one instance of Nietzsche’s
understanding of the fertility of tension.107
The stress on the temporary character of mystical experience is also
made clear in the other published discussions of the Dionysian. In Beyond
Good and Evil, Nietzsche writes that Dionysus “silences all that is loud
and self-satisfied”, allowing souls to experience the desire “to lay as still as
a mirror, that the deep sky may mirror itself in them”.108 Here the
individual is temporarily brought into a passive or spectatorial relation-

ship to existence. But this state is a means to enriched individuation: we
are told that the individual walks away from the Dionysian encounter
“richer in himself ”, with “new hopes” and “new will”. In such an experi-
ence, one gets “blown open” and “sounded out”. One’s self-satisfaction
gives way to new dissatisfactions and new ambitions. One feels the goad
to become.
In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche describes the “essential feature” of the
“Dionysian state” as the “inability not to react” and the “ease of metamor-
phosis” by which, at the slightest suggestion, one can “enter into any
role”. Nietzsche plainly did not find this heightened reactivity perma-
nently desirable. Indeed, earlier in the same book, Nietzsche described
the “inability not to react to a stimulus” as “merely another form of
degeneration”.109 In the very next section, Nietzsche writes of the need to
be “rich in internal opposition”, and says that he has “spiritualised hostil-
ity”.110 We can see here once more that, for Nietzsche, while the urge to
unity may be “degenerate”, it may also have a useful role within the “total
economy” of an individual.
* * *
In Dostoyevsky’s Demons, there is a passage in which Kirillov tells Shatov

of those “seconds”, which come “only five or six at a time”, in which one
suddenly feels “the presence of eternal harmony, fully achieved.” Kirillov
describes this experience as the sudden affirmation of “the whole of
nature”, and says that for such experiences “I would give my whole life”.
He concludes with “I think man should stop giving birth. Why children,
why development, if the goal has been achieved?”111
Nietzsche transcribed this passage of Dostoyevsky’s novel in a late
notebook entry.112 As a result, some have falsely attributed these words to
Nietzsche himself.113 One such scholar, Harr, writes that he finds this text
“surprising”—as one surely would if one thought Nietzsche wrote it. It is
not that such experiences were foreign to him. Nietzsche was certainly
familiar with what he called these “great moments of grand harmony”,114
those “timeless moments that fall into one’s life as if from the moon”.115
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No, what jars with Nietzsche’s attitude here is the attitude that Kirillov
expresses towards completion and development.
Take for example one discussion of unitive experience in Zarathustra.
In “At Noon”, Zarathustra falls into the “well of eternity” in which every-
thing is transfigured and the “world is perfect”. Zarathustra then exclaims
“get up!” and teases himself for still “stretching, sighing, falling into deep
wells”.116 Having experienced everything “round and ripe”, having been
“stung in the heart” with such happiness, Zarathustra wants to return to
himself and to his task. We might follow Zarathustra’s thought elsewhere
and say, as he did of woe, “to individuation too, you say: go, but return!”.117
This is Nietzsche’s typical attitude towards such experiences: we should
“love peace as a means to new wars”.118
Nietzsche’s attitude towards perfection finds its fullest discussion in a
passage of Twilight on the Dionysian mysteries. There, Nietzsche writes
of the importance of the sexual symbol to the Greeks, for whom “every
single element in the act of procreation, of pregnancy, and of birth
aroused the highest and most solemn feelings”. In the Dionysian myster-
ies, “pain itself is pronounced holy”. Kirillov thought perfection meant
the end of striving, of becoming, and hence of childbirth. Nietzsche on
the other hand understood becoming as perfection.119 Pain is indispens-
able to growth, to becoming, thus “the pangs of the woman giving birth
hallow all pain”.120
In this same passage of Twilight, Nietzsche speaks of the Dionysian
affirmation of “life beyond all death and change”. Similarly, in a note, he
defines the Dionysian as the “ecstatic affirmation of the total character of
life as that which remains the same… through all change”.121 Perfection
is not static—and thus it cannot exclude ‘imperfection’. Thus, Nietzsche
writes elsewhere, “imperfection… still belongs to this perfection”.122 That
which remains the same is becoming. The next section of Twilight says
that in the Dionysian state, one is “oneself the eternal joy in becoming”.123
That is, one has temporarily identified with becoming, the principle of the
world.124 The Dionysian is the affirmation of creativity, of the world’s
wayward character. The world is not on its way anywhere, except around
once more. It is a world “without goal, unless the joy of the circle is itself
a goal”.125
Notes
1. For a discussion of this theme before the period of the Birth, see Parkes
on Nietzsche’s early nature mysticism in Composing the Soul, chap. 1.
2. ASC§2, p. 18.
3. BT§13, p. 88.
4. BT§5, p. 52.
5. BT§2, p. 38.
6. BT§5, pp. 49–50.
7. ASC§1, p. 17.
8. ASC§2 p. 18.
9. BT§4, BT§16.
10. NF-1870,7[156] (TEN p. 52).
11. Plotinus ends The Enneads with the claim that the “way of life of gods,
and divine, happy human beings” is the “release from everything here”.
It is a way of life which takes no pleasure in the earthly, but is “the ref-
uge of a solitary in the solitary”—the individual fleeing the many into
the One. See: Plotinus, The Enneads, ed. L.P. Gerson, trans. L.P. Gerson
et al., Cambridge University Press, 2017, p. 898.
12. In BT§4, p. 45, Nietzsche writes that he is convinced that the “primal
unity… needs the rapturous vision, the pleasurable illusion, for its con-
tinuous redemption”. The term “Ur-Eine” which Nietzsche uses here
seems to have its origin in Schopenhauer use of “Ur-Eins” in engaging
with Schelling’s “Ureinheit”. Schelling describes Janus as signifying the
primal unity of chaos. See A. Schopenhauer, “Some Remarks on
Sanskrit Literature”, Parerga and Paralipomena: Vol. II, trans. A. del
Caro and C. Janaway, Cambridge University Press, 2015, §190.
13. BT§21, p. 130. This union is similar to the ideal envisioned of an
“artistic Socrates [künstlerischen Sokrates]” (BT§14, p. 92; c.f. BT§15,
p. 98), that is, a person in whom the logical faculties co-exist with the
intuitive faculties of mystic and artist.
14. BT§8, p. 64. See NF-1881,11[285] for a sense of how concretely
Nietzsche conceived of this “divine play” in the Birth period.
15. BT§4, pp. 44–45.
16. BGE§205, p. 125.
17. ASC§3, p. 19.
18. The same can hardly be said for Kant, whose lack of feeling for art was
consistently ridiculed by Nietzsche. See GM.III§6, and also Daybreak,
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where Nietzsche describes Kant’s philosophy as “an involuntary biogra-

phy of a head” (D§481, p. 198).
19. A. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation: Vol. II, trans.
E.F.J. Payne, Dover, 1966, chap. 18. This stress on an intuitive, experi-
ential identification with ultimate reality is plainly “mystical”. But even
at the time of the Birth, Nietzsche’s conception differs enormously
from Schopenhauer’s. Rather than seeking a redemption from illusion,
Nietzsche looks for a “redemption in illusion” (BT§4, BT§16).
20. BT§18, p. 112. There is an obvious indebtedness here to Kant’s first
Critique. But Kant almost always comes to Nietzsche through
Schopenhauer, hence even here we have the discussion of maya. Later,
Nietzsche would accuse Schopenhauer himself of attempting such
unriddling (GS§99, p. 153).
21. Nietzsche is quite right in saying that even his use in BT is quite at odds
with “Schopenhauer’s spirit and taste” (ASC§6). Take, for example, the
basic attitude in BT towards individuation—the Apollonian princip-
ium individuationis is not at all to be finally rejected, but seen as the
possibility of “redemption in illusion” (BT§16). Nietzsche hardly sides
here with the Dionysian (One) over the Apollonian (many) at all, say-
ing that it is in their “fraternal union”—where “Dionysus speaks the
language of Apollo; and Apollo, finally the language of Dionysus”—
that the “highest goal of tragedy and of all art is attained” (BT§21).
22. GM.III§17 (pp. 129–134), c.f. GM.I§6 (p. 32): “the desire for a unio
mystica with God is the desire of the Buddhist for nothingness”. See
also NF-1883,7[108] on the varying motivations for “merger with the
godhead [Die Verschmelzung mit der Gottheit]” and NF-1883,24[26].
In Beyond Good and Evil, he says that mystics are “more honest and
doltish [tölpelhafter]” than philosophers who try to pass off their own
views as emerging from “cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic”.
While mystics acknowledge their “inspirations”, philosophers offer
rationalisations for their intuitions and “prejudices which they baptize
“truths”” (BGE§5, p. 12). There are exceptions to this. For example, in
one later note Nietzsche defines the mystic as “someone with enough
and too much happiness” and so “wants to give it away”.
NF-1884,25[258]: “Begriff des Mystikers: der an seinem eigenen Glück
genug und zuviel hat und sich eine Sprache für sein Glück sucht,—er
möchte davon wegschenken!”
23. C.f. NF-1885,36[21] (WP§655).
24. UM.III§5, p. 161.

25. NF-1881,11[141].
26. Parkes made the point two decades ago that this 1881 notebook
deserves more scholarly attention—a point which has, as far as I can
tell, gone largely unheeded. See: G. Parkes, Composing the Soul: Reaches
of Nietzsche’s Psychology, University of Chicago Press, 1994, pp. 299–305
(from here on CTS).
27. NF-1881,11[7].
28. NF-1881,11[10].
29. NF-1881,11[21].
30. NF-1881,11[65].
31. NF-1881,11[35].
32. NF-1881,11[70]. C.f. NF-1881,11[125], where Nietzsche writes of
being “redeemed from life” and “becoming dead again” as a “festival”.
One might think that the ability for the dead world to be experienced
suggests some kind of panpsychism. Parkes has argued for something
like this. See: G. Parkes, “Nietzsche, Panpsychism, and Pure Experience:
an East-Asian Contemplative Perspective”, in A. Rehberg (ed.),
Nietzsche and Phenomenology, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011,
pp. 87–100.
33. A. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation: Vol. II, op. cit.,
chap. 31.
34. D§423, p. 181.
35. NF-1881,11[150].
36. In the mid-1980s, Nietzsche’s view of the perspectival character of the
world came to extend even to the inorganic. See for example
NF-1885,36[20], where Nietzsche writes that even in the inorganic
realm, an “atom of force” only ‘considers’ its own “neighbourhood”,
whereas distant forces get evened out. We are told that in this lies the
“kernel of the perspectival” and also accounts for why “a living being is
“egoistic” through and through”. C.f. NF-1886,5[12] on the generality
of “perspective optics”. That interpretation is universal is also implied
by Nietzsche’s claim that “the will to power interprets” (NF-1885,2[148]
(WP§643, p. 342)).
37. Here I disagree with Parkes, who has argued that the way things appear
“Before Sunrise” is comparable with tathātā, suchness (i.e. ultimate
nature). See: G. Parkes “Nature and the Human ‘Redivinized’”, in
J. Lippitt and J. Urpeth (eds.), Nietzsche and the Divine, Clinamen
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Press, 2000, p. 192f. I think that Parkes’ reading has a good deal more
in common with Nietzsche’s conception of a “temperate zone” in
HH§236 than it does with Nietzsche’s later thought where there is a
movement south, away from ‘objectivity’ (which Nietzsche comes to
see as itself a mask), and towards what is Mediterranean, full, ripe (c.f.
BGE§295 and CW§3).
38. C.f. Z “On the Higher Man” §9, p. 290: “the inability to lie is far from
the love of truth. Beware! Freedom from fever is not yet knowledge by
any means! I do not believe chilled spirits. Whoever is unable to lie does
not know what truth is”.
39. NF,1881[162].
40. NF-1887,10[159] (WP§544, pp. 292–293); this point is also made in
NF-1888,14[152] (WP§515, pp. 278–279).
41. Z “On Immaculate Perception”, p. 122.
42. GM.III§6, pp. 105–106.
43. NF-1885,1[89].
44. GS§374, p. 366. C.f. NF-1885,2[148].
45. TI “Morality as Anti-Nature” §5, p. 490.
46. NF-1881,11[201]. This claim, as well as the claim [150] that the living
is a special type of the dead, is taken up the following year in The Gay
Science. See: GS§109, pp. 167–168. C.f. NF-1886,7[62] (WP§331,
p. 181), where Nietzsche claims “there is no all”, and NF-1887,11[74]
(WP§711, pp. 378–379), where Nietzsche writes that “A total process
does not exist at all… there is no totality… the world is not an organ-
ism at all, but chaos”. C.f. NF-1883,15[55], a note from the period of
Zarathustra in which Nietzsche writes that whether one knows it or
not, “each individual acts with the entire cosmic being [jedes Individuum
wirkt am ganzen kosmischen Wesen]”. Here again we see the identity of
part with whole, but we also seem to have the unusual suggestion that
the whole is a “one”—a being or entity.
47. See for example NF-1881,11[7].
49. NF-1887,9[7] (WP§687, p. 366).
50. NF-1887,10[136] (WP§682, p. 361) [TM]. In this same notebook
[57], Nietzsche writes that the notion of the “individual as atom” gives
a “false independence”.
51. J. Richardson, “Nietzsche’s Value Monism”, in M. Dries and P.J.E. Kail
(eds.), Nietzsche on Mind and Nature, Oxford University Press,
2015, p. 90.
52. J. Richardson, Nietzsche’s System, op. cit., p. 106. This means that we

could read the claim that there is no whole—and that the world is not
an organism—as entailing a denial not only of Purusha (or the world-
person of the BT period), but also of what Spinoza called Nature.
53. Richardson says (Ibid, pp. 106–107) that Nietzsche holds there are
“two criteria for ‘being a being’”: the first is “being complete, an ‘in-
itself ’”, and the second, “being unified, a ‘one’”. On Richardson’s read-
ing of Nietzsche, “nothing satisfies both conditions; the parts are ruled
out by the first, the wholes by the second”
54. J. Richardson, “Nietzsche’s Value Monism”, op. cit., p. 96.
55. NF-1887,9[30] (WP§785, pp. 412–413).
56. C.f. the braying ass in Z “On the Spirit of Gravity” §2, p. 194.
57. NF-1888,15[113] (WP§351, pp. 191–193).
58. Z “The Drunken Song” §10, p. 323.
59. NF-1881,11[141].
60. The ‘existential imperative’ reading puts especial weight on the hypo-
thetical presentation in GS§341: “what if, some day or night, a demon
were to”.
61. For one thing, the intensity of Nietzsche’s experiences surrounding the
discovery of the recurrence suggests that he believed in it rather literally.
This is also the view taken by the best current scholarship on the topic,
including P. Loeb, The Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, Cambridge
62. Letter to Gast, Aug. 14, 1881; BVN-1881,136 (SL§90, p. 178); c.f.
BVN-1885,599, a much later letter to Overbeck where he speaks of a
similar kind of danger: “Meine Gefahr ist in der That sehr groß, aber
nicht diese Art Gefahr: wohl aber weiß ich mitunter nicht mehr, ob ich die
Sphinx bin, die fragt, oder jener berühmte Oedipus, der gefragt wird” This
letter pre-empts the beginning of Beyond Good and Evil: “Who of us is
Oedipus here? Who the Sphinx?” (BGE§1, p. 9).
63. GM.II§25, p. 96.
64. TI “What I Owe to the Ancients” §5, p. 563. C.f. NF-1881,11[141].
65. EH “Why I Write Such Good Books” Z§1, p. 295.
66. NF-1881,11[7].
67. GS, p. 371.
68. The connection between Zarathustra and the recurrence is obviously
very strong, and it is in the 1881 notebook that Nietzsche first utters
the name: NF-1881,11[195].
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69. ASC§2, p. 18.

70. NF-1881,11[21]. The fragment includes the claim that “our inclina-
tions and disinclinations are arable lands” from which the “fruits” of
new “images of existence” come forth. This helps to clarify that
Nietzsche is not talking here about some neutral, desire-less
perspective.
71. BVN-1881,135. Nietzsche points to five main points of agreement: the
denial of free will, teleology, a moral world-order, the unegoistic, and
evil. Nietzsche’s first substantive engagement with Spinoza’s thought
occur in the 1881 notebook in which the recurrence and Zarathustra
are both first mentioned: see NF-1881,11[132], [137], [193], [194],
and [307]. The first of these notes discusses the “fundamental error
[Grundirrtum]” of belief in unity/harmony, and insists on life’s essential
diversity and struggle for power.
72. This is not to deny the significant differences between Nietzsche’s
thought and Spinoza’s, which I have discussed in Chap. 3. In the “18
month gestation” (EH “Why I Write Such Good Books” Z§1, p. 295)
between this 1881 experience and the conclusion of the first part of
Zarathustra, those differences would become clearer.
73. In particular, Salomé questions Nietzsche’s shift from seeking a scien-
tific basis for the eternal recurrence of the same to his assertion of it as
an unquestionable reality. L. Andreas-Salomé, Nietzsche, trans.
S. Mandel, University of Illinois Press, 2001, p. 133f.
74. Ibid, p. 137, p. 75.
75. NF-1883,16[15].
76. BVN-1882,264.
77. See Small’s introduction to P. Rée, Basic Writings, ed. and trans.
R. Small, University of Illinois Press, 2003, p. xvii.
78. GM.III§14, p. 124.
79. This notebook is the place where Nietzsche explicitly engages with
Spencer more than any other place. In the published texts, see: GS§373,
BGE§253, GM.I§3, GM.II§12, TI “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man”
§37, and EH “Why I Am A Destiny” §4. Some of Nietzsche’s later
discussions of the identity of part with whole also occur in the context
of a critical engagement with Spencer’s thought. This includes notes
surrounding Nietzsche’s claim that “the ego is a hundred times more
than merely a unit in the chain of members; it is this chain itself,
entirely” NF-1887,10[136] (WP§682, p. 361).
80. For a discussion of the differences between Rée’s position and Spencer’s,
see Small’s introduction to P. Rée, Basic Writings, op. cit., pp.
xxii–xxiv.
81. G. Moore, “Nietzsche, Spencer, and the Ethics of Evolution”, The
Journal of Nietzsche Studies, vol. 23, 2002, pp. 1–20. Moore quotes
some of the passages from NF-1881,11, though the focus of his paper
is not on a transformed sense of identity. Moore’s paper is thus a helpful
complement to Parkes’ discussion of these fragments, which make no
mention of Nietzsche’s engagement with Spencer.
82. For Nietzsche’s criticisms of Spencer’s position, see for example
NF-1881,11[40], [43], and [73].
83. NF-1881,11[40].
84. H. Spencer, The Data of Ethics, D. Appleton & Co, 1883, p. 187, §68.
85. NF-1881,11[185,93,316]; c.f. NF-1880,6[163] and NF-1883,8[11]
(WP§771, p. 404): “Man, more than any animal, originally altruistic:
hence his slow development (child) and lofty culture; hence, too, his
extraordinary, ultimate kind of egoism”.
86. NF-1881,11[73].
87. NF-1881,11[43]; C.f. GS§1 on the discussion of “the teachers of the
purpose of existence”. Also, this fragment foreshadows Nietzsche’s later
critique of Christianity: “One believes one knows, first, that an approach
to one type is desirable; secondly, that one knows what this type is like;
thirdly, that every deviation from this type is a regression”
(NF-1887,11[226] (WP§339, pp. 185–186)).
88. In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche writes: “To demand that all should become
“good human beings”, herd animals, blue-eyed, benevolent, “beautiful
souls”—or as Mr Herbert Spencer would have it, altruistic—would
deprive existence of its great character and would castrate men” See: EH
“Why I Am A Destiny” §4, pp. 329–330. C.f. NF-1888,16[40]
(WP§822): “The good man… represents a form of exhaustion” and also
NF-1888,15[113] (WP§351) on “the good man”.
89. GM.II§12, p. 79.
90. NF-1881,11[65].
91. This is often misunderstood with respect to the similar remark in the
Genealogy: “There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective “know-
ing”; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more
eyes, different eyes; we can use to observe one thing, the more complete
will our “concept” of this thing, our “objectivity,” be” (GM.III§12,
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p. 119). Nietzsche makes clear that these perspectives are incommensu-

rable. See: NF-1888,14[93] (WP§568, p. 306): “the sum of these is in
every case quite incongruent”.
92. This “perspectivism” would emerge as a major theme in Nietzsche’s
published work the following year in The Gay Science. See for example
GS§143, pp. 191–192. Here, Nietzsche treats monotheism’s “rigid
doctrine of one normal human type” as being “perhaps the greatest
danger that has yet confronted humanity”. This is contrasted with the
polytheistic acceptance of a “plurality of norms” and the sense that man
has “the strength to create for ourselves our own eyes”, our own valua-
tions. The danger of the monotheistic view is developed further in later
notes in which Nietzsche argues that monotheism leads to nihilism
because it presents us with a single world-interpretation. This is espe-
cially so in the case of the Christian worship of truth, which eventually
turns upon itself (i.e. it questions its own truthfulness). When this
exclusive interpretation becomes untenable, it seems that no interpreta-
tion is possible. See: NF-1885,2[127] (WP§1, p. 7), NF-1886,5[71]
(WP§55, p. 35).
93. M&R§806, pp. 108–109.
94. C&E§245, p. 187. Goethe was responding here to Förster’s speculation
that Faust would end with Mephistopheles’ admission of defeat, saying
that a good man knows the way to proceed. Goethe responds that this
would be in the spirit of the Enlightenment, but his own view is that in
old age we become mystics—in the context, this means that we come
to see the irrationality of things and accept that we don’t know the way.
95. CWG, Feb. 17, 1829. The development here follows much the same
course as the passage in the Maxims: sensualism in childhood, idealism
in youth, scepticism in middle age, and mysticism in old age.
96. NF-1885,35[48].
97. D§542, pp. 214–216.
98. Nietzsche uses this phrase in the epilogue to Nietzsche Contra Wagner,
and also in Ecce Homo where he speaks of “the great economy of the
whole”. C.f. NF-1887,10[168] (WP§852) on the “large-scale
economy”.
99. BGE§205, p. 125.
100. GS§60, p. 124.
101. S. Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, trans. J. Strachey,
W.W. Norton, 1961, p. 15.
102. NF-1881,11[141].
103. NF-1881,11[65]. C.f. [21] on the need to look away from what is per-
sonal “for the time being”.
104. NF-1883,8[14] (WP§417, p. 224); my emphasis.
105. NF-1888,14[14] (WP§1050, p. 539).
106. NF-1884,26[231] (WP§686, p. 365).
107. In the published version, Nietzsche again acknowledges Heraclitus as
his forerunner here: EH “Why I Write Such Good Books” BT§3, p. 273.
108. BGE§295, p. 233.
109. TI “Morality as Anti-Nature” §2, p. 487. In section 6 of “What the
Germans Lack”, Nietzsche describes the ability “not to react at once to
a stimulus” as “the first preliminary schooling for spirituality”. One
needs to “gain control of all the inhibiting, excluding instincts”. In
order to “learn to see”, one must have the ability “not to “will”—to be
able to suspend decision”. Everything “unspiritual” and “vulgar” has to
do with the “inability to resist a stimulus”, where one “must react” to
every impulse.
111. F. Dostoyevsky, Demons, trans. R. Pevear and L. Volokhonsky, Vintage
Books, 1995, p. 590 (Part 3, §5.V)
112. NF-1887,11[337]; though Nietzsche does not give a reference, the sur-
rounding notes make the attribution very clear.
113. See for example M. Harr, “Metamorphosis of the Divine”, in Nietzsche
and Metaphysics, trans. M. Gendre, SUNY Press, 1996, p. 144, and also
M.A. Gillespie, “Nietzsche’s Musical Politics”, in T. Strong and
M.A. Gillespie (eds.), Nietzsche’s New Seas, University of Chicago Press,
1988, p. 149. This article is reprinted without correction in Gillespie’s
Nietzsche’s Final Teaching, University of Chicago Press, 2017 (see
p. 244).
114. NF-1884,26[119] (WP§259, p. 150).
115. NF-1888,17[4] (WP§1038, p. 534).
116. Z “At Noon”, p. 278.
118. Z “On War and Warriors”, p. 47.
119. C.f. a draft in which Nietzsche writes that, outside of the reign of the
ascetic ideal, “the act of procreation is… a sort of symbol of perfection”
(NF-1887,8[3] (WP§148, p. 94)). In the next notebook, he describes
perfection as “necessarily overflowing all limits” (NF-1887,9[102]
(WP§801, p. 422)), thus perfection is inherently creative, generative.
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120. TI “What I Owe to the Ancients” §4, pp. 561–562.

121. NF-1888,14[14] (WP§1050, p. 539).
122. AC§57, p. 645: “‘The world is perfect’—thus says the instinct of the
most spiritual, the Yes-saying instinct; ‘imperfection, whatever is
beneath us, the pathos of distance—even the chandala still belongs to
this perfection’” C.f. NF-1887,7[62] (WP§331, p. 180) and
NF-1888,11[30] (WP §1004, p. 520).
123. TI “What I Owe to the Ancients” §5, p. 563.
124. C.f. NF-1883,8[14] (WP§417, p. 224).
125. NF-1885,38[12] (WP§1067, pp. 549–550).
Bibliography
Andreas-Salomé, L., Nietzsche, trans. S. Mandel, University of Illinois
Press, 2001.
Dostoyevsky, F., Demons, trans. R. Pevear and L. Volokhonsky, Vintage
Books, 1995.
Plotinus, The Enneads, ed. L.P. Gerson and trans. L.P. Gerson et al., Cambridge
Rée, P., Basic Writings, ed. and trans. R. Small, University of Illinois Press, 2003.
Richardson, J., Nietzsche’s System, Oxford University Press, 1996.
———, “Nietzsche’s Value Monism”, in M. Dries and P.J.E. Kail (eds.),
Nietzsche on Mind and Nature, Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 89–119.
Schopenhauer, A., The World as Will and Representation: Vol. II, trans. E.F.J. Payne,
Dover, 1966.
Spencer, H., The Data of Ethics, D. Appleton & Co, 1883.
5
Against Mediation
In this chapter, I critically engage with some previous scholarly attempts

to situate Nietzsche’s religious thought in a mystical context. In the mid-
dle of last century, Nishitani claimed strong affinities between Nietzsche’s
thought and both Meister Eckhart and Mahayana Buddhism.1 Nishitani’s
interpretation has proved influential on later readings, and these links
have been further strengthened by scholars such as Stambaugh and
Parkes. While acknowledging the mystical element in Nietzsche’s work
which these scholars have emphasised, I argue that the comparative
claims drawn are seriously misleading.
I begin by discussing Nietzsche’s relationship to Meister Eckhart,
before considering comparisons which have been made between Nietzsche
and the early Daoists, Laozi, and Zhuangzi. Finally, I argue against
attempts to draw strong parallels between Nietzsche’s thought and the
Bodhisattva ideal of Mahayana Buddhism.
* * *
In a note from the mid-1980s, Nietzsche writes that we should not be

deceived by the seeming isolation of individuals: “something flows on

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75007-7_5
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underneath individuals”. But here Nietzsche affirms the individuated

condition: “that the individual feels himself isolated is itself the most
powerful goad in the process towards the most distant goals”.2 The indi-
vidual’s pursuits are what elaborates the whole, thus there is a need for
good conscience in one’s individuation, for self-esteem. This position is
further developed in Nietzsche’s criticism of “the German mystic” later in
this same notebook.3
Nietzsche writes, “the mystic experiences himself now as god, now as
worm”. We are told, “what is lacking here is ‘self-esteem’”.4 Modesty and
pride, self-contempt and self-admiration, are treated as “closely related”,
as being judgements differing “merely according to where one looks”. The
fragment concludes: “fate is an elevating thought for one who under-
stands that he belongs to it”.5 Nietzsche claims that the mystic feeling
godlike is the other side of their feeling wormlike. Both of these judge-
ments have the “sure look of valuation”, but without self-esteem, this
valuation takes a contorted form. The mystic’s lack of self-esteem, lack of
good conscience in individuality, means that egoism is expressed as
self-loathing.
This analysis follows one that is quite typical of Nietzsche: lacking a
straightforward means of expression, pride turns against itself. This pro-
vides our best clue as to whom Nietzsche is referring here. For, earlier in
the same notebook, he writes, “Christianity has on its conscience the
corruption of many full people, e.g. Pascal, and earlier Meister Eckhart”.6
Elsewhere, Nietzsche analyses Pascal’s corruption in greater detail, point-
ing to a lack of self-esteem that he shared with Eckhart. Nietzsche felt
that Pascal had been destroyed by Christianity’s praise of meekness and
selflessness. This valuation meant that Pascal could not feel good con-
science in his powerful individuality, and thus his “will to power turns
backward, against itself ”.7
It seems very likely that in discussing the psychology of the German
mystics, Nietzsche had Eckhart in mind. Nietzsche did not engage with
any of the other obvious candidates, such as Hildegaard, Suso, Tauler,
Mechtild, and Böhme.8 Eckhart, on the other hand, is quoted in the
Untimely Meditations9 and The Gay Science,10 and is also mentioned in the
notebooks. It is not known to what extent Nietzsche was familiar with
Meister Eckhart’s writings,11 though it does seem clear that Schopenhauer
was his main point of contact.12 Given that several scholars have made
claims to a strong affinity between Eckhart and Nietzsche, we will benefit
from a brief consideration of Eckhart’s thought even if he is not the refer-
ent here.
* * *
In his commentary on the Gospel of John, Meister Eckhart writes that

multitude is “the enemy of the one” and “always a sin”. The reason for
this is that “the many is a fall from the One and therefore from the
Good”.13 Here we see a Neoplatonic thought which runs through much
of the Christian mystical tradition. For the Neoplatonists, the one had
ontological priority over the many. Each successive wave of manifestation
or emanation was less perfect than the previous one. The spiritual life,
which Plotinus characterised as the “return of the one to the One”, was
an ascent back up this ladder towards formless, emptiness. The Christian
Neoplatonist equates individuation with the Fall, and hence redemption
with reunion.
In Eckhart’s commentary on The Book of Wisdom, he describes cre-
ation as the descent into differentiation and inequality. The uncreated is
the “fountainhead of unity, equality, and nondistinction”. But, Eckhart
says, being creatures of what is uncreated, we too are in some sense “one,
equal, and undifferentiated”.14 He then quotes Proclus as saying that “all
multiplicity shares somehow in the One”.15
The many participate in the one—but how are we to understand this
participation? Eckhart expresses what we would now call a panentheistic
view, which has been defined in modern times as follows:
The Being of God includes and penetrates the whole universe, so that every
part exists in Him, but His Being is more than, and not exhausted by, the
universe.16
That the universe does not exhaust God means, in crude terms, that
there is a “region” of God that lies “outside” of manifestation, as the
ground of being.17 I have put the spatial terms here in scare quotes because
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they obviously cannot be understood literally in the case of something

unmanifest.
There are some evident similarities to Nietzsche’s view: the one is
wholly in every individual part, and is not divided amongst them: “the
One descends totally into all things which are beneath it, which are many
and which are enumerated”.18 There are yet decisive differences: for
Eckhart, the one is not exhausted by the totality of its parts, but exists
also beyond the many. That is, the relationship between one and many is
not entirely reciprocal. And in some sense, that undifferentiated, uncre-
ated “part” is more essentially God:
God’s house is the unity of His being. What is one is best all alone. Therefore
unity stands by God and keeps God together, adding nothing. There He
sits in His best part, His esse, all within Himself, nowhere outside.19
This is certainly not to say to be confused with the view that the One
is a one, a potential object of perception: “Some simple folk imagine they
will see God as if He were standing there and they here. That is not so”.20
Eckhart’s view is that God can be seen equally in everything—but never
in his essence. To ‘see’ God as he is in himself, one must withdraw entirely
from manifestation. One must become nothing.21 When one is no longer
a one, there is only God: “seize Him naked in his robing room, where He
is uncovered and bare in Himself. Then you will ‘abide in Him’”.22
* * *
Nishitani claimed that there are affinities between Eckhart’s admoni-

tion to live “without why”23 and Nietzsche’s “nihilistic” philosophy.24
But this is actually a principal point of disagreement. Eckhart’s move-
ment is away from valuation, Nietzsche’s is towards it. Both deny any-
thing ultimately purposive, but for Eckhart this is not a denial of an
ultimate or absolute.
For Eckhart, all reasons and valuations are relational. Truth is found
where there are no purposes or motives, in the “the ground that is ground-
less”.25 This is surely not Nietzsche’s view. For Nietzsche, there is not even
the absence of a ground “beneath” the relative. There is only the
relative—though just as the apparent world ceases to exist when we get

rid of the real world,26 the relative loses its relativity when it loses its con-
trast with the ultimate.
In a much discussed late note, Nietzsche says that Nihilism means that
“the goal is lacking; an answer to the ‘Why?’ is lacking”.27 He also tells us
that nihilism is “ambiguous”, by which he means that there are different
ways in which we might respond to this absence of an ultimate meaning.
Nietzsche’s “pathological intermediate state” is to infer from this ultimate
meaninglessness that “there is no meaning at all”. Nietzsche contends
that this state is based on our frustrated expectation that there ought to be
a single value to reality: “One interpretation has collapsed; but because it
was considered the interpretation it now seems as if there were no mean-
ing at all in existence, as if everything were in vain”.28 But Nietzsche says
that nihilism can also be “a sign of strength”, a sense that all of earlier
articles have faith are now inappropriate, and the desire to “productively
posit for oneself a new goal, a ‘Why?’, a faith”.29
According to Nietzsche’s “perspectivism”, interpretation is a precondi-
tion of truth, not a veil over it. On this view, the whole idea of ultimate
meaning loses its meaning. Having seen this, to adapt what Nietzsche
says elsewhere, the lack of ultimate meaning “is no longer any reason for
devaluating the universe”.30 If we see that the notion of ultimate meaning
doesn’t make sense, then we do not despair in its absence. There is an
affirmation here of relative meaning not as a cheap substitute for ultimate
meaning, but as the only possible kind of meaning, as something
“divine”.31
* * *
It would be easy to be beguiled by phrases in Eckhart like “the unity is the

distinction, and the distinction is the unity”32 into thinking his concep-
tion of the one and the many is the same as the one we have been discuss-
ing. But such paradoxical formulations can lead all too easily to false
agreement, and a closer look will reveal a great distance between Eckhart’s
position and Nietzsche’s.
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Both Eckhart and Nietzsche certainly attempt an affirmation of the

whole, but the way that whole is conceived is quite different. Eckhart’s
understanding of the part and whole is not wholly reciprocal. In the
Commentary on the Book of Wisdom, Eckhart writes, “the parts, which
are many, are secondary, to the extent that the perfection of the one uni-
verse requires them”.33 The parts have their value and being in terms of
the whole, but Eckhart explicitly denies the reciprocal of this.34
For Eckhart, nothing has value in itself, except for the thing which is
no-thing, God. In his commentary on the Book of Divine Comfort, we
read, “whatever comes with God is good, and is good only because it
comes from God”35 and that “the goodness of this world is despicable and
worthless: God alone is of value”.36
This might begin to give us a sense of why Nietzsche thought Eckhart,
like Pascal, had been “corrupted” by Christianity. If self-esteem requires
the intrinsic value of individuals (i.e. the many), then we see that self-
esteem is an impossibility for Eckhart. All things are equally devoid of
intrinsic value. All things have their value derivative of their being crea-
tures of God, and all things are to be loved equally because God is to be
found “equally in all things”.37 This consideration also leads Eckhart to
affirm an un-self-centric morality in which all individuals must be valued
indifferently:
it is necessary that you should make no distinction in the family of men,

not being closer to yourself than to another. You must love all men equally,
respect and regard them equally, and whatever happens to another, whether
good or bad, must be the same as if it happened to you.
On Eckhart’s view, the part has value only in its ultimate identity with
the whole.38 This is to say that there can be no self-privileging because the
self has value only as the Self. The individual has no value as an individ-
ual—he lacks self-esteem. This kind of indifferent “neighbour’s moral-
ity”, in which the self has no special value to itself, is strongly rejected by
Nietzsche, whose desire was “to give egoism a good conscience”.39 I will
discuss Nietzsche’s defence of egoism at length in Chap. 6.
In a late note, Nietzsche writes that the faith in some kind of ultimate
unity or monism “suffices to give man a deep feeling of standing in the
context of, and being dependent on, some whole that is infinitely supe-
rior to him, and he sees himself as a mode of the deity”.40 Eckhart’s view
of the merely derivative value of the parts can be seen in this. One needs
to derive one’s value from the whole, while in themselves “all creatures are
worthless”.41 For Nietzsche, since the whole does not exist apart from the
parts, the whole cannot be affirmed except in the expression of the parts.
This is why “fate is an elevating thought to one who realises he belongs to
it”. There is nothing “beneath” manifestation, hence the affirmation of
the “ground” is ultimately the affirmation of nothing.42 So far, Eckhart
might agree. But for Nietzsche, this is not “a nothing” that is “a some-
thing”43 —it is simply nothing.
Unlike Eckhart, Nietzsche affirms the relative world of valuations. We
should be careful not to misunderstand his position here. Unlike some
Existential thinkers, the value of valuation for Nietzsche is not the defiant
overlaying of meaning on a meaningless world.44 Rather, our valuations
are the meaning of the world.45 This point can be put in various ways, but
one is to say that instead of seeing the relative as dependent on the abso-
lute, the absolute and relative are seen as reciprocally related—the abso-
lute does not exist outside of the relative. Hence, the relative takes on an
absolute value. Valuation becomes divine: “to this extent, nihilism, as the
denial of a truthful world, of being, might be a divine way of thinking”.46
In becoming value creators, we are participating in the essentially per-
spectival, evaluative character of the world: “when we speak of values, we
speak with the inspiration, with the way of looking at things, which is
part of life: life itself forces us to posit values; life itself values through us
when we posit values”.47 Nietzsche would have us become value creators,
whereas Eckhart asks us to shift away from relative valuation, to live
“without why”:
The just man… has no why for which he does anything, just as God acts
without why and has no why. In the same way as God acts, so the just man
acts without why; and just as life lives for its own sake and asks no why for
which to live, so the just man has no why for which to act.48
Eckhart’s yes to everything is a form of detached indifference49: “it

should be all the same to you”.50 It is the sort of yes-without-no51 which
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was mocked by Nietzsche in Zarathustra with the “Yea-Yuh” braying

ass.52 We are to act without why because we are to move towards the
divine “spark” in us, and God is not motivated by reasons. God’s creation
is “without why”.
For Eckhart, the many are manifestations of the one. While for
Nietzsche, the one only exists in the many. To live “without why” is to
negate the basically perspectival, interpretive character of existence.53 It is
actually to deprive the world of its divinity, which exists only in its multi-
plicity. In saying yes to everything, Eckhart’s mode of valuation imagines
it is “getting back to wholeness”, but on Nietzsche’s reading, it “actually
denies life, which has in all its instincts both Yes and No”.54 Similarly, in
his lack of self-esteem, the German mystic does not give value to the
whole, but instead removes from the whole its source of value.
* * *
Eckhart writes that one should neither pray to God for his gifts, nor
thank God for them “since He must give”. Instead, Eckhart writes, “I will
thank him for being such that He must give”.55 The one entails the many:
it has to overflow into creation and it cannot remain unmanifest. This
view is common amongst Neoplatonists, though it is explained in various
ways. It could be said that God did not choose to create a world, but rather
this is in his nature.56 Dionysius the Areopagite said that God created the
world not from necessity or compulsion but from “overabundance [hyper-
pleres]”.57 But Dionysius also speaks of this abundance as creating a
“yearning” which “moved Him to exert the abundance of His powers in
the production of the universe”.58
In all of this, there are superficially striking links to Zarathustra’s con-
ception of the “gift-bestowing virtue”, which is described as “involun-
tary” and “useless”, as emerging from the creator’s overabundance creating
a need for “outstretched hands”.59 Just like these Neoplatonic mystics,
Nietzsche’s position here could easily be read in kenotic terms: in the self-
emptying of the one into the many.60 But given that Nietzsche does not
construe a one behind the many, from which the many emanate, this
reading does not make sense.
There are two other links which scholars have made between Nietzsche
and mysticism which now need to be discussed: the comparison with the
early Daoist sages, and with the Mahayana Buddhist ideal of the
Bodhisattva.
* * *
According to Stambaugh, Nietzsche was by temperament “closest to Lao

Tzu and Chuang Tzu”.61 Nietzsche certainly had more in common with
these great Daoist masters than with the later alchemists and magicians
that transmuted the godless mysticism of Laozi and Zhuangzi into a pop-
ular religion haunted by a plethora of spirits and spirit-seers. But even
with the early Daoists, the comparison with Nietzsche’s mature thought
is stretched. The first volume of Human, All Too Human concludes with
a description of the free-thinker as one who feels like a “wanderer on the
earth”. Nietzsche writes that such a thinker will not have a destination,
but rather will “watch and observe”, and stay attuned to “what is really
going on in the world”. To this end, the freethinker must not be “too
firmly attached to any individual thing”, and must find pleasure rather in
“change and impermanence”.62 This is, I think, as close as Nietzsche
comes to the spirit of early Daoism, whereas Nietzsche’s mature philoso-
phy is not directed towards detached observation of the harmonious flux
of events, but rather towards goals and valuations.
In his monograph comparative study of Nietzsche and Zhuangzi,
Shang has detailed many points of agreement. But Shang’s analysis also
brings out significant differences. For example, Shang writes that
Zhuangzi’s emphasis is on “the ultimate serenity of one’s mind” and
“ziran [spontaneity]”, while Nietzsche “prefers Heraclitus’s war as legiti-
mate contestation for the exaltation and transformation of one’s exis-
tence”, and affirms human valuation and will.63 I take these points of
contrast to be of the greatest importance.
In The Gay Science, Nietzsche writes that life, as “perpetual improvisa-
tion” would be his “exile and Siberia”.64 Nietzsche still praises what is
wayward and wandering—it is perpetual wandering that he rejects.
Occasional wandering is, on the other hand, vital within the context of a
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purposive life. Hence, in Nietzsche’s late aesthetics, there is a shift in taste

from sensational, “intestine rattling” music65 and all “aping the high tide
of the soul”,66 towards a delight in everything mocking and light as a brief
reprieve from the weight of one’s tasks. Nietzsche describes these works of
art as “abysses of perfection” in which one can temporarily lose oneself,67
“brief rests”68 from which one awakes restored. Bizet, who Nietzsche dis-
covered in 1881,69 is the typical example.70 Nietzsche praised Carmen as
music which “doesn’t sweat”. Returning from this delight, Nietzsche
found himself energised to his own tasks: “Bizet makes me fertile”.71
When asked why he had never painted landscapes, Picasso responded,
“I have always lived inside myself ”. In his Mellon lectures, Clark responds:
“how Nietzsche would have snarled at this! The idea of preferring one’s
mental phantasmagoria to the glitter on the bay!”.72 But Clark’s contrast
here is overstated: we should never forget the aspect of Nietzsche which
found abstract thought to be a “festival and intoxication”.73 In a famous
passage of the Genealogy, we read that “All instincts that do not discharge
themselves outwardly tum inward—this is what I call the internalization
of man: thus it was that man first developed what was later called his
‘soul’”.74 But it should not be imagined that Nietzsche was ‘against’ inter-
nalisation: shortly after, Nietzsche writes that the bad conscience is “an
illness, there is no doubt about that, but an illness as pregnancy is
illness”.75
Clark’s image of the glitter on the bay brings to mind an experience
which Nietzsche described twice in his published works. In The Gay
Science, Nietzsche speaks of the possibility of “a happiness that, like the
sun in the evening, continually bestows its inexhaustible riches, pouring
them into the sea, feeling richest, as the sun does, only when even the
poorest fisherman is still rowing with golden oars!”.76 This experience is
described again in Zarathustra: “from the sun I learned this: when he goes
down, overrich; he pours gold into the sea out of inexhaustible riches, so
that even the poorest fisherman still rows with golden oars. For this I
once saw and I did not tire of my tears as I watched it”.77
This imagery bears comparison with a fragment in which Nietzsche
defines “the mystic” as someone with “too much happiness” which he
thus wants to “give away”.78 For Nietzsche, this is an uncommonly posi-
tive description of the mystic. It suggests a strong link with the
spontaneous self-squanderers of Zarathustra, whose pressure of abun-

dance creates a need for “outstretched hands” to receive their gifts.79
The image of the sun outpouring could also easily suggest kenotic or
Neoplatonic imagery. But the more plausible contextual reading is of the
sun as a model value-giver, drawing on the prominent contrast between
the solar and the lunar in Zarathustra. The moon absorbs and reflects
value, but generates nothing new. The sun is generative, and is in this
sense a model of the artist as value creator. We are told that the sun is
innocent in its longing, and the moon a mere lecher. Nietzsche does not
praise those whose desire is to stand before the world as “a mirror with a
hundred eyes”, but rather those who want to create values.80
Nietzsche presents the tearful experience at the sight of the world
transfigured by the sinking sun as a goad to self-enrichment, to “take all
things to and into yourself that they may flow back out of your well as the
gifts of your love”.81 That is, far from inspiring a sense of detached equa-
nimity, it is a spur to the individual’s “inner certainty of having a right to
everything”82 in the pursuit of ever greater plans and projects.
* * *
In a notebook for Zarathustra, Nietzsche writes, “I may become the

Buddha of Europe, which would of course be the opposite of the Indian
one”.83 However, scholars with a broad sympathy for both Nietzsche and
Buddhist thought have long argued that Nietzsche’s very limited under-
standing of Buddhism created a false opposition here. In brief, they hold
that while this antithesis may exist between Nietzsche’s work and
Theravada Buddhism, it does not hold when the point of comparison is
with the Mahayana tradition. For example, Nishitani wrote that
Ironically, it was not in his nihilistic view of Buddhism but in such ideas as
amor fati and the Dionysian as the overcoming of nihilism that Nietzsche
came closest to Buddhism, and especially to Mahayana.84
Following Nishitani, scholars have treated Zarathustra as a particularly

fertile source of Mahayana Buddhist themes.85 Foremost amongst these
scholars is Parkes, who has presented Nietzsche as an “advocate of the
104 A. Milne
Bodhisattva ideal”.86 I find this interpretation quite implausible. In order

to make this clear, I must give a very rough gloss of what is meant by the
term Bodhisattva.
In Theravada Buddhism, the Bodhisattva was a person on the path of
liberation, prior to becoming an enlightened Arhat. But in Mahayana
Buddhism, the Bodhisattva became the ideal. This is often explained in
mythological terms as the enlightened being’s compassionate refusal to
dwell in Nirvana and its decision to return to Samsara in order to save
other beings from suffering. The popular conception of the Bodhisattva
is of one who has sacrificed his own eternal bliss in order to work for the
salvation of others: he vows to liberate all others before he attains his own
liberation.87 But does the Bodhisattva ‘sacrifice’ Nirvana, or is this simply
how such compassionate action inevitably appears to the unenlightened?
The Bodhisattva’s vows may reflect the realisation that there is no block
between this world and the world to come. This is of course the ‘this-
worldly’ aspect of Mahayana Buddhism, which can be expressed in vari-
ous ways, including Nagarjuna’s remark in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā
that there is “not the slightest difference whatsoever” between Samsara
and Nirvana88 and the final lines of Hakuin’s “Song of Meditation”: “This
very earth is the Lotus Land of Purity, / And this body is the body of the
Buddha”.89
It is not difficult to see why Nietzsche’s figure of Zarathustra is open to
such a Bodhisattvic reading. Zarathustra lived in solitude where he
became “awakened”90 and, remaining “faithful to the earth”,91 came down
from the mountains in order to teach others.92 These similarities are fairly
superficial, however, and a more critical look will find that the antithesis
that Nietzsche saw between Zarathustra and the Buddha still holds.
* * *
The Bodhisattva ideal is certainly not “life-denying” in the sense of crav-

ing the “deep sleep” of eternal union with the void.93 There is no tran-
scendent “back-world” here, but only this world being seen under
different aspects. But this doesn’t mean that the agreement with Nietzsche’s
thought runs deep. The Bodhisattva recognises his identity with the
whole, and tries to awaken others. He wants to alleviate others’ suffering,

which is rooted in their ignorance of their identity with all that is.
According to the Ch’an master Huangbo, all beings are “One Mind,
beside which nothing exists”. There is “no distinction between the Buddha
and sentient beings”. The only difference between a Buddha and other
beings is the Buddha’s awareness of this identity, while other beings seek
after that which they in fact are.94 The Bodhisattva recognises not only
that there is no block between Nirvana and Samsara, but also that there
is no block between self and other. His mission to quell the suffering of
others, to save all sentient beings, is thus not best understood as altruistic,
since the others are, as Schopenhauer put it, “not-not-I, but I once more”.
Nishitani wrote that “true self-centeredness” is a “selfless self-
centeredness”, in which what is central is “a self that is not a self ”. He
claimed that Nietzsche failed to reach this “true self-centeredness of an
absolute emptiness”, with his philosophy seeing the world from the
“standpoint of will” rather than that of emptiness.95 I think that Nishitani’s
analysis here is broadly correct, though I do not think it reveals Nietzsche
as falling short of the Bodhisattva ideal, but rather of conceiving of a
wholly different one.
Nishitani’s “selfless self-centeredness” turns upon a concept of “a self
that is not a self ”—that is, a “higher” self, the Self which is the self of all
selves. With the Mahayana conception of the non-duality of the relative
and the absolute, the Bodhisattva is a self who has realised he is nothing
other than the Self, and thus exists in the relative realm of seemingly sepa-
rate beings with the recognition of his ultimate identification with them.
The Bodhisattva thus does not prioritise his little self over their little
selves, which are nothing other than himself.
Nietzsche’s “European Buddhism” has nothing to do with awakening
to an egoless perspective in which the other’s suffering becomes one’s
concern. Rather, it is an awakening to one’s relationship to the whole
which makes the individual “tremendously important”: his valuations are
what give the world its meaning, and he sacrifices himself not to his
neighbour, but to his plans and projects.
The Bodhisattva ideal is based on compassion for others, whose suffer-
ing is caused by thirst—desire, grasping, willing. What will quench that
thirst is the realisation that they are what they are seeking after. The
106 A. Milne
Bodhisattva ideal is still unworldly in the sense of desiring an end to suf-

fering, not promoting valuation, and hence being destructive to what
Nietzsche called the “great character” of life96—it is trying to awaken
people, to help them out of the wicked game. While this position does
not overtly share Schopenhauer’s conclusion that the world’s “non-
existence would be preferable to its existence”,97 this is still an implication
given Nietzsche’s polar view of opposites. The attempt to negate suffering
is not a “return to wholeness” as it imagines, but rather is life negating
because joy and suffering are inherently tied together.
Nietzsche was quite right to see his Zarathustran ideal as the antithesis
of Buddhism. Zarathustra’s awakening is to the reality of the eternal
recurrence of the same. According to this, all things are tied together, and
thus the suffering of the smallest must recur and must be affirmed.
Zarathustra’s love has a height above compassion98: the affirmation of the
great character of life comes with the sense that “man must become better
and more evil”99—must enjoy more and suffer more. Rather than send-
ing others on the path to liberation from desire, Zarathustra attempts to
send people their own way100 and encourages them towards new projects,
attachments, desires—new values. Zarathustra is in a sense closer to
“existence’s master of ceremonies” that Nietzsche discussed in The Gay
Science, a figure who, far from trying to awaken others, seeks to “preserve
the universality of dreaming”.101
* * *
To my mind, some scholars have been much too keen to mediate here
between Nietzsche and Buddhist thought.102 Parkes, for example, makes
the implausible claim that Nietzsche consistently drew a “distinction
between ego and Self ”. But some ungainly exegetical acrobatics are
required to maintain this interpretation. ‘Self ’ gains a capital where ‘ego’
doesn’t, suggesting a distinction between self/Self (or relative/absolute)
that simply was not there in the original. Similarly, Parkes writes,
“Nietzsche advocates a ‘whole and holy’ selfishness that is opposed to one
that is egocentric and ‘sick’”.103 This suggests that the egoistic/self-centric
is essentially sick, while the Self-centric is whole and holy. But in the
original, ‘whole and holy’ and ‘sick’ are both forms of selfishness
[Selbstsucht]—the sick one is not an egoism and the other a selfishness.
According to Parkes, some of Nietzsche’s late remarks which seem to
be favourable to egoism are simply products of “the white heat of his
manic productivity” which led him to forget his the distinction between
ego and self that “he consistently drew up to that point”. But this distinc-
tion is by no means consistently made at any earlier period. In fact,
Nietzsche has favourable things to say about the ego in every book in the
1880s, except for Zarathustra where the word “ego” is never used.104
In a late note, Nietzsche wrote that one must atone most of all for one’s
modesty and the “failure to listen to one’s most personal requirements”.
He wrote that because one can never forgive this lack of “reverence for
oneself ”, for the “lack of genuine egoism”, one’s twisted pride creates
doubts about the existence of a “real ego”.105 This is not a view unique to
the manic end of the 1980s. Nietzsche had argued something similar at
the Dawn of the decade,106 writing that most so-called egoism is merely
“pseudo-egoism”. Most people’s supposedly egoistic actions do not serve
their ego, but rather the “phantom” which has “formed itself in the heads
of those around them” and been projected back onto them. That the
majority are “incapable of setting up a real ego” is not, however, an argu-
ment against egoism.
* * *
Nietzsche certainly does reject the conception of the ego “taken in an

atomistic sense” and where it is “pried out of becoming, as something
that is a being”.107 But this is not at all the same as disparaging egoism,
understood as the good conscience in “the law of perspective” according
to which what is closest appears largest.108 Egoism is preferential concern
for oneself—oneself not as a metaphysical entity, but as an organic
unity109 that, while relatively isolable,110 is ultimately incapable of being
disentangled from the whole.
When Nietzsche spoke of his desire “to give egoism a good con-
science”,111 he was not talking of some higher or absolute self. Nietzsche’s
sense of the non-duality of the relative and absolute is simply to say that
108 A. Milne
the absolute does not exist, and thus that the relative is not ‘merely’ rela-
tive but is absolutely the only world there is. Nietzsche’s conception of
“whole and holy selfishness” is not the “selfless self-centeredness” of one
who has identified with the whole and thus ceases to privilege himself as
a part. It is rather the good conscience in self-privileging that comes from
one who understands that the whole exists nowhere apart from the parts,
and thus sets about the enrichment of the whole through the pursuit of
one’s own plans and projects.
Notes
1. Nishitani’s The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism was published in 1949, but
an English translation did not appear until 1990. Long before this
book was published, Nishitani had written a long essay on Eckhart and
Nietzsche—but this has not, to my knowledge, been published in
English.
2. NF-1884,26[231] (WP§686, p. 365).
3. NF-1884,26[442]. In fragment [341] of the same notebook, Nietzsche
speaks of the “deep dreamy seriousness [tiefen träumerischen Ernst]” and
“childishness [Kinderei]” of the German mystics. In fragment [308], we
read, “The real end of all philosophising is the intuitio mystica
[Eigentlicher Zweck alles Philosophirens die intuitio mystica]”.
4. The remark about the absence of “Selbst-Gefühl” could be understood
as saying that they lack a “sense of self ” (a literal interpretation of self-
feeling), however this is plainly not what Nietzsche means here, as it is
precisely these mystics’ convoluted pride that Nietzsche is comment-
ing upon.
5. I take up Nietzsche’s understanding of the individual as belonging to
fate in Chap. 7.
6. NF-1884,26[3]: “Das Christenthum hat es auf dem Gewissen, viele volle
Menschen verdorben zu haben z.B. Pascal und früher den Meister Eckart”.
7. NF-1887,11[55] (WP§252, p. 145).
8. To my knowledge, Nietzsche never refers to any of these mystics except
Böhme, who is mentioned just once, in a notebook fragment criticising
Novalis. See: NF-1888,16[36].
9. In “Schopenhauer as Educator” Nietzsche writes that the “truthful

man… knows what Meister Eckhart knows”, namely, that “the beast
that bears you fastest to perfection is suffering”. UM§III.4, p. 153. This
is a line that Schopenhauer himself had quoted in chap. 48 of The
World as Will and Representation: Vol. II.
10. In GS§292, p. 235 [TM], we read: “Hasn’t the time come to say of
morality what Meister Eckhart said: “I ask God to rid me of God!””. I
have not found this line quoted in Schopenhauer, and it’s not clear
where else Nietzsche may have encountered it. One possibility is that
Nietzsche encountered this idea through Wagner, for whom Eckhart
was important in the mid-1970s. This passage is quoted in Aberach’s
book on Wagner’s religious ideas. But Aberach does not suggest that
Wagner was familiar with this passage. See: A.D. Aberach, Richard
Wagner’s Religious Ideas, Edwin Mellen Press, 1996, p. 195. Aberach
discusses Eckhart’s influence pp. 194–203. On this point, also see:
U. Kienzle “Parsifal and Religion: A Christian Music Drama?”, trans.
M.A. Cicora, in W. Kinderman and K.R. Syer (eds.), A Companion to
Wagner’s Parsifal, Camden House, 2005, pp. 81–130.
11. To my knowledge, Nietzsche did not own the Pfeiffer edition of
Eckhart’s works lauded by Schopenhauer in the first volume of the
World as Will. That Eckhart’s name appears on a reading list after the
quote in The Gay Science offers some weak support to the view that
Nietzsche was not closely acquainted at this time. See NF-1883,15[8].
12. Schopenhauer’s descriptions support the reading of NF-1884,26[442]
as referring to Eckhart. In the first volume of The World as Will,
Schopenhauer speaks of “the German mystics, i.e. Meister Eckhart [der
Deutschen Mystiker, also des Meister Eckhard]”. See A. Schopenhauer,
The World as Will and Representation: Vol. I, trans. E.F.J. Payne, Dover,
1966, §68 [TM]. In the second volume (chap. 48), Schopenhauer
refers to Eckhart as “the father of German mysticism [dem Vater der
Deutschen Mystik]”.
13. Eckhart, Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises
and Defense, ed. and trans. E. Colledge and B. McGinn, S.P.C.K.,
1981, p. 166.
14. Eckhart, The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart, ed. and trans.
M. O.’C. Walshe, Crossroad Publishing, 2007, pp. 471–472.
110 A. Milne
15. Quoted in Complete Mystical Works, p. 472; Colledge and McGinn (op.
cit., pp. 98–99) translate this as “every multitude somehow participates
in the One”.
16. Cross and Livingstone, quoted in J.W. Cooper, Panentheism: The Other
God of the Philosophers, Baker Academic, 2006, p. 27.
17. Cooper puts it more formally: “God and the world are ontologically
distinct and God transcends the world, but the world is in God
ontologically”.
18. Eckhart, Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher, ed. and trans.
B. McGinn, Paulist Press, 1986, p. 167. This is from a later section of
the Commentary on the Book of Wisdom, however I quote here from
another source as the commentary—originally written in Latin—has
not been translated as a whole into English. The whole may be found
in the second volume of Die Lateinischen Werke, ed. J. Koch,
Stuttgart, 1954.
19. Complete Mystical Works, sermon 35, p. 107; c.f. sermon 1, p. 30 where
“the ground” is described as the “noblest part”.
20. Complete Mystical Works, sermon 65, p. 332.
21. Thus to become one with god is to “forget oneself ” and all others. See:
Complete Mystical Works, sermon 78, p. 393.
22. Complete Mystical Works, sermon 63, pp. 318–319. C.f. sermon 53,
p. 283. Note that this unveiling is simply not possible on Nietzsche’s
conception of the one and the many: the veils are indispensable, they
are truth (see BGE§P). For Eckhart, subject/object considerations
mean that we cannot unveil the one: we cannot experience God, but we
can become so poor, so empty, that God experiences himself: “poverty
of spirit means being so free of God and all His works, that God, if He
wishes to work in the soul, is Himself the place where He works—and
this He gladly does… So we say that a man should be so poor that he
neither is nor has any place for God to work in. To preserve a place is
to preserve distinction. Therefore I pray to God to make me free of
God.” See sermon 87, esp. pp. 423–424.
23. Eckhart repeatedly uses both the phrase “sunder warumbe” and “ohne
warum”. See for example Complete Mystical Works, sermon 13b, p. 110
and sermon 16, p. 125.
24. K. Nishitani, The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, trans. G. Parkes with
S. Aihara, SUNY Press, 1990, p. 48.
26. TI “How the ‘True World’ Finally Became a Fable”, pp. 485–486.

27. NF-1887,9[35] (TLN, pp. 146–147 [TM]; this note is divided up into
several sections in WP—see Kaufmann’s footnote to WP§2, p. 9).
28. NF-1886,5[71] (WP§55, p. 35). Nietzsche discusses this also in
NF-1885,2[127] (WP§1, p. 7). where he makes the case that
Christianity gave itself as providing the sole interpretation of the world.
When the Christian was awoken to the falseness of Christianity, he
moved from the belief that “God is truth” to the “fanatical faith” that
“all is false”: when an interpretation that claimed exclusivity becomes
untenable, it “awakens the suspicion that all interpretations of the
world are false”.
29. NF-1887,9[35] (TLN, pp. 146–147 [TM]).
30. NF-1887,11[99] (WP§12, p. 13).
31. NF-1887,9[41] (WP§15, p. 15).
33. Complete Mystical Works, p. 472.
34. We could incautiously describe this as the difference between pantheist
reciprocity and panentheism. Certainly, Eckhart’s evaluation here is
typical of Neoplatonist forms of panentheism. On this, see J.W. Cooper,
op. cit., p. 44; and on Eckhart specifically pp. 50–52. On Nietzsche’s
understanding of pantheism, see NF-1886,5[71] (WP§35, p. 36).
37. Complete Mystical Works, sermon 13a, pp. 105–106.
38. C.f. Complete Mystical Works, sermon 49, p. 263.
39. NF-1883,16[15].
40. NF-1887,11[99] (WP§12, p. 12).
42. As Nietzsche writes in the Genealogy, “the desire for a unio mystica with
God is the desire of the Buddhist for nothingness” (GM.I§6, p. 32) and
that man “rather will nothingness than not will” (GM.III§1, p. 97).
44. For Sartre, it is bad faith to believe in ultimate value, in something
unchanging. We must acknowledge the relativity and contingency of
our values. The debt to Nietzsche’s view, but also the difference, here
should be clear.
45. C.f. GS§374, p. 336.
46. NF-1887,9[41] (WP§15, p. 15).
112 A. Milne

49. See also Complete Mystical Works, “On Detachment”, pp. 566–575.
50. Complete Mystical Works, sermon 13a, p. 106.
51. Eckhart strikes me as quite singularly lacking in ressentiment. But we
might ask why this is. Is it not born of detachment (abgeschiedenheit
and gelassenheit), based on a panentheistic understanding that one can
stand outside of manifestation, that one can be released of all things?
That is, is Eckhart’s equanimity not based on what would appear to
Nietzsche as an “escape” from the “wicked game”, and thus a false
understanding of one’s relation to that game (BGE§205, p. 125)? I do
not mean to suggest that Eckhart was utterly remote from worldly con-
cern: one need only look at Eckhart’s engagement with the Beguines to
see why he is taken by some modern writers as a champion of ‘sacred
activism’ (yes—so odious does our time find otium that it would com-
pel even our mystics to be ‘activists’). But one can seem to have a foot
on either side of the “wicked game”. This is suggested by an anecdote
about Ignatius Loyola: it was suspected that the next pope would out-
law the Jesuits, and someone asked Ignatius what he should do were
this to happen. Ignatius is said to have responded, “give me fifteen
minutes in the oratory and I shall be at peace with it”.
52. Z “On the Spirit of Gravity” §2, p. 194.
53. This point is made many times with respect to truth and appearance,
for example BGE§34, p. 46.
54. NF-1888,15[113] (WP§351, pp. 191–193).
56. However, for many of these thinkers (and for obvious reasons to do
with claims to omnipotence), there is equally a concern to say that God
was not compelled to create a world.
57. Rolt translates this as “exceeding fullness”. See: Dionysius the
Areopagite, On the Divine Names and the Mystical Theology, ed. and
trans. C.E. Rolt, SPCK, 1920, p. 163.
58. Ibid, p. 102. In a footnote to this, Rolt quotes Lady Julian of Norwich
as saying: “There is a property in God of thirst and longing.”
59. Z “On the Gift-Giving Virtue” §1, p. 74; Z “Prologue” §1, p. 10.
60. It is however undeniable that certain aspects of Zarathustra lend them-
selves to this kind of reading. For instance, when Zarathustra (Z “At
Noon”, p. 278) asks the sky “when will you drink my soul back into
yourself?”, this sounds a lot like an Neoplatonic conception of emana-

tion and return. But this interpretation is by no means certain. Indeed,
Loeb’s important reading of the sequence of Zarathustra, the section (in
Part IV), comes chronologically before “On the Great Longing” (Part
III). In the latter passage, the soul itself is named “azure bell”, that is,
the heaven that it is said to have emanated from in the former. See:
P. Loeb, The Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, op. cit., p. 85ff.
61. J. Stambaugh, “The Other Nietzsche”, in The Other Nietzsche, SUNY
Press, 1994, p. 151. Stambaugh identifies Nietzsche’s “rejection of
metaphysical backworlds and his understanding of the world as play” as
especial points of agreement. This is the full extent of Stambaugh’s dis-
cussion of the point.
62. HH§638, pp. 203–204. In the 1886 preface, Nietzsche discusses this
passage. He writes of the convalescent’s eyes being reopened to what is
“close at hand”. The convalescent is astonished, and sits silently won-
dering where he had been. How transformed everything seems, what
“bloom and magic” the nearest things have acquired. The original pas-
sage had made the delight in “bright things” in the “joyful morning” a
part of the wanderer ideal. But in the later preface, we see Nietzsche’s
mature thought and its focus on seasonal virtue. For one coming out of
winter, for the convalescent, even the “spots of sunlight on the wall” are
infinitely touching. This is a step on the way back to life, to valuation.
See Ibid, pp. 8–9. In HH§236 (p. 113), Nietzsche writes of the virtues
of the “temperate zone”: it is untroubled by the “violent antitheses” of
the tropics, and allows for a calm, sharp, even cold objectivity.
Nietzsche’s later philosophy migrates south, away from ‘objectivity’
(which Nietzsche comes to see as itself a mask), and towards what is full
and ripe (c.f. BGE§295 and CW§3).
63. G. Shang, Liberation as Affirmation: The Religiosity of Zhuangzi and
Nietzsche, SUNY Press, 2006, pp. 134–135.
64. GS§295, pp. 236–237. This section is in praise of “brief habits”. These
habits are a way of approaching goals indirectly, and of revising goals.
That is, they are construed in a broader, purposive context.
65. NCW, “Wagner as a Danger” §2, p. 667.
66. GS§86, p. 142.
67. GS§368, pp. 324–325.
68. GS§302.
114 A. Milne
69. See EH “Why I Write Such Good Books” Z§1, p. 295 on how
Nietzsche’s taste in music changed hugely around the time of concep-
tion of Zarathustra, that is, the recurrence. Nietzsche describes this as
the period in which his life became serious. Laden with the “heaviest
fate” of the recurrence, he suddenly finds his taste in music trans-
formed. He no longer needs dignity, but buffoonery. See:
NF-1887,10[145] (WP§1009, p. 522).
70. Another example is Mozart, whose “golden seriousness” Nietzsche dis-
cusses in NCW (c.f. WS§165).
71. CW.Preface§1, p. 157.
72. T.J. Clark, Picasso and Truth, Princeton University Press, 2013, p. 104.
Clark’s commentary on Picasso’s “Still Life with Mandolin and Guitar”
(1924) in the pages surrounding this passage bears serious reflection
and comparison with the very important conception of the mask in
Nietzsche’s philosophy.
73. NF-1885,34[130].
74. GM.II§16, p. 84.
75. GM.II§19, p. 88.
76. GS§337, pp. 268–269. The context here is the development of the
historical sense, and the prospect of crowding the whole history of
humanity into a single soul, such that the individual experiences “the
history of humanity as a whole as his own history”. This suggests a
rather different sense than Nietzsche’s infamous post-break claim to
Burckhardt that “at bottom, I am every name in history”
(BVN-1889,1256).
77. Z “Old and New Tablets”, §3, p. 198.
78. NF-1884,25[258].
79. Z “Prologue” §1, p. 10. C.f. GS§370 on “suffering from overfullness”.
80. Z “The Immaculate Perceivers”, pp. 121–124. Nietzsche’s point is actu-
ally more subtle than my gloss here, since nobody is merely passive. The
“immaculate perceivers” think they are seeing life neutrally, in its such-
ness, but what they are really seeing is their own impoverishment and
anaemia projected out onto the world. Using a phrase from Beyond
Good and Evil, we could say that even the moon is “far more of an artist
than he believes” (BGE§192, p. 105). C.f. NF-1887,9[102] (WP§801,
p. 422): “The sober, the weary, the exhausted, the dried-up (e.g. schol-
ars) can receive absolutely nothing from art, because they do not pos-
sess the primary artistic force, the pressure of abundance: whoever

cannot give, also receives nothing”.
81. Z “On the Gift-Giving Virtue”. In this section, another natural image
is used: the creator is presented as a flowing river which is both “a bless-
ing and a danger to those living near”. Much can grow beside it, but
much can also be swept away.
82. NF-1887,10[128] (WP§388, pp. 208–209).
83. NF-1882,4[2]: “Ich könnte der Buddha Europas werden: was freilich ein
Gegenstück zum indischen wäre”.
84. K. Nishitani, The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, p. 180.
85. G. Parkes, “Nature and the Human ‘Redivinised’: Mahayana Buddhist
themes in Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, op. cit., pp. 181–199.
86. G. Parkes, “Open Letter to Bret Davis: Letter on Egoism”, in Journal of
Nietzsche Studies, vol. 46, 2015, p. 43.
87. This is an oversimplification. The emphasis in Zen is often on the path
as goal. This is particularly true of the Sōtō school. Put crudely, sitting
zazen isn’t about becoming a Buddha, but it is the practice of being a
Buddha. Similarly, the practice of compassion is the practice of being a
Bodhisattva. The Bodhisattva ideal is not simply for realised Buddhas
who have stepped back into the realm of suffering, but a path to that
realisation. Rather than (directly?) seeking their own liberation, they
organise their life around compassionate action. The claim that this
path is their liberation is perhaps best understood as a way of under-
mining the scheming element that Nietzsche pointed to in Human, All
Too Human: “he that humbles himself wants to be exalted”.
88. This is Inada’s translation, quoted in B.W. Davis, “Zen After Zarathustra:
The Problem of the Will in the Confrontation Between Nietzsche and
Buddhism”, Journal of Nietzsche Studies, vol. 28, 2004, p. 98.
89. This is Suzuki’s translation. See: D.T. Suzuki, Manual of Zen Buddhism,
Grove Press, 1960, p. 152.
90. Zarathustra is referred to as “ein Erwachter” in Z “Prologue” §2, p. 11.
Parkes (“Nature and the Human ‘Redivinized’”, op. cit., p. 198) has
pointed out that this term was used in texts Nietzsche was familiar with
to refer to a Buddha.
91. Z “Prologue” §3, p. 13.
92. Parkes also reads Zarathustra’s love for those who “squander them-
selves” in a Buddhist light. But this self-squandering is burning oneself
out in one’s projects, projects that lead one to sacrifice both oneself and
116 A. Milne
one’s neighbours. I take up the question of the benefit to others in

Chap. 6.
93. See GM.III§17 (pp. 129–134) for Nietzsche’s criticism of the Hindu
ideal of reabsorption into Brahma. C.f. the analysis of the “Buddhist
desire for nothingness” (GM.I§6, p. 32) in a permanent state of union
with the void.
94. Huangbo, The Zen Teaching of Huang Po, trans. J. Blofeld, Grove Press,
1958. C.f. the Zen master Ikkyū, who wrote in a didactic poem that
“Deeply thinking of it, / I and other people,— / There is no difference,
/ As there is no mind / Beyond this Mind”. This is R.H. Blyth’s transla-
tion, quoted in Zen and Zen Classics, Vol. 5, Hokuseido Press,
1966, p. 188.
95. K. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, trans. J. Van Bragt, University
of California Press, 1983, p. 123f.
97. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation: Vol. II, op. cit.,
chap. 46.
98. Z “On the Pitying”, p. 90.
99. Z “The Convalescent” §2, p. 219.
100. Z “The Spirit of Gravity” §2, p. 195.
101. GS§54, p. 116.
102. There is a very interesting debate on this topic between Parkes and
Davis, sparked by the latter’s article “Zen after Zarathustra”. See: B.W. Davis,
“Zen After Zarathustra: The Problem of the Will in the Confrontation
Between Nietzsche and Buddhism”, Journal of Nietzsche Studies, vol.
28, 2004; and G. Parkes, “Open Letter to Bret Davis: Letter on
Egoism”, B.W. Davis, “Reply to Graham Parkes: Nietzsche as Zebra:
With both Egoistic Antibuddha and Nonegoistic Bodhisattva Stripes”,
and G. Parkes, “Reply to Bret Davis: Zarathustra and Asian Thought:
A Few Final Words”, all in Journal of Nietzsche Studies, vol. 46, 2015.
Parkes has been a consistent source of intriguing, and often well sup-
ported, interpretations of Nietzsche’s work. While Parkes is probably
the most convincing advocate for a “mystical” reading of Nietzsche, he
does have a tendency to overstress similarities in just the kind of man-
ner that Nietzsche criticised in his “against mediators” passage in The
Gay Science (GS§228, p. 212). Parkes says that he is emphasising an
aspect of Nietzsche’s thought that is typically overlooked (“Final
Words”, p. 83). Unfortunately, this often has the effect of blurring dif-
ferences. In the early 1990s, Parkes wrote that he believes that

“Nishitani’s mature thought, with its emphasis on the field of empti-
ness, may indeed comprehend and in some respects go beyond what
Nietzsche has wrought”. Parkes’ tendency has been towards charitably
reading Nietzsche in line with this vision of emptiness. But Nietzsche
was no Buddhist, and I admire Davis’ attempts in this debate to avoid
this kind of mediation, and his stress on creating a “confrontation”
between Nietzsche and Zen. Davis’ discomfort is palpable with many
of Nietzsche’s ideas, which he sees as plainly contrary to his own
Buddhist commitment. Irrespective of the upshot we take from this, I
think that the ideal that Davis presents of a person whose life is “no
longer centred on its self-interests”, but is rather “capable of compas-
sionate altruism” (“Zen After Zarathustra”, p. 112), is indeed very far
from Nietzsche’s own. Davis seems to me right in saying that we cannot
always take a “both/and”, and that this is particularly true of the case of
whether a life is given its unity by “egoistic craving” or “altruistic vow”
(Ibid, p. 69). Nietzsche plainly puts his weight behind the former. I
hope that this present work helps to clarify how Nietzsche’s unabashed
egoism is consistent with the mystical element in his thought which
Parkes has recognised and emphasised.
103. G. Parkes, “Final Words”, op. cit., pp. 87–88.
104. See for example, D§79, GS§328, BGE§221, GM.II§17.
105. NF-1888,15[98] (WP§918, p. 486).
106. D§105, p. 106.
107. NF-1887,10[57] (WP§786, p. 413). Parkes’s Composing the Soul (see:
p. 309f ) contains a sound analysis of Nietzsche’s critique of the
Cartesian ego-as-thinker, and of the soul as “something indestructible,
eternal, as a monad, as an atomon” (BGE§12, p. 20). But Parkes mis-
takenly seems to think that this critique renders egoism nonsensical.
Davis seems to share key assumptions here, writing that Nietzsche’s
critique of the ego combined with his egoism as constituting a “great
and finally unresolved tension” in his thought. B.W. Davis, “Reply to
Graham Parkes”, op. cit., p. 65.
108. GS§162, p. 199.
109. In the 1881 notebook discussed above, Nietzsche writes “The I—not to
be confused with the organic feeling of unity [Das Ich—nicht zu ver-
wechseln mit dem organischen Einheitsgefühle]” (NF-1881,11[14]). C.f.
NF-1885,1[87]: “The “ego”… is not one with the unified governing of
118 A. Milne
our nature”. We might say of this sense of unity that “instinct speaks
quite correctly here. Where this instinct weakens—where the individ-
ual seeks a value for himself only in the service of others, one can be
certain that exhaustion and degeneration are present”: NF-1887,9[30]
(WP§785, p. 413).
110. C.f. NF-1888,14[80] (TLN, p. 247; WP§693, p. 369 excludes this
line): “If A exerts an effect on B, then only as localised [lokalisirt] is A
separated from B”; that is, cause and effect are conventionally separated
parts of a single process. C.f. BGE§21, p. 29: “One should use “cause”
and “effect” only as pure concepts, that is to say, as conventional fic-
tions [conventioneller Fiktionen] for the purpose of designation and
communication—not for explanation.”
111. NF-1882,16[15].
Bibliography
Clark, T.J., Picasso and Truth, Princeton University Press, 2013.
Cooper, J.W., Panentheism: The Other God of the Philosophers, Baker
Academic, 2006.
Davis, B.W., “Zen After Zarathustra: The Problem of the Will in the
Confrontation Between Nietzsche and Buddhism”, Journal of Nietzsche
Studies, vol. 28, 2004, pp. 89–138.
———, “Reply to Graham Parkes: Nietzsche as Zebra: With both Egoistic
Antibuddha and Nonegoistic Bodhisattva Stripes”, in Journal of Nietzsche
Studies, vol. 46, 2015, pp. 62–81.
Dionysius the Areopagite, On the Divine Names and the Mystical Theology, ed.
and trans. C.E. Rolt, SPCK, 1920.
Eckhart, Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher, ed. and trans. B. McGinn, Paulist
Press, 1986.
———, Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises and
Defense, ed. and trans. E. Colledge and B. McGinn, S.P.C.K., 1981.
———, The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart, ed. and trans.
M.O.’C. Walshe, Crossroad Publishing, 2007.
Huangbo, The Zen Teaching of Huang Po, trans. J. Blofeld, Grove Press, 1958.
Moore, G., “Nietzsche, Spencer, and the Ethics of Evolution”, The Journal of
Nietzsche Studies, vol. 23, 2002, pp. 1–20.
Nishitani, K., Religion and Nothingness, trans. J. Van Bragt, University of
California Press, 1983.
———, The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, trans. G. Parkes with S. Aihara, SUNY
Press, 1990.
Parkes, G., Composing the Soul: Reaches of Nietzsche’s Psychology, University of
Chicago Press, 1994.
Parkes, G., “Nature and the Human ‘Redivinized’: Mahayana Buddhist themes
in Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, in J. Lippitt and J. Urpeth (eds.), Nietzsche and
the Divine, Clinamen Press, 2000, pp. 181–199.
———, “Open Letter to Bret Davis: Letter on Egoism”, in Journal of Nietzsche
Studies, vol. 46, 2015a, pp. 42–61.
———, “Reply to Bret Davis: Zarathustra and Asian Thought: A Few Final
Words”, in Journal of Nietzsche Studies, vol. 46, 2015b, pp. 82–88.
Schopenhauer, A., The World as Will and Representation: Vol. I, trans. E.F.J. Payne,
Dover, 1966.
Shang, G., Liberation as Affirmation: The Religiosity of Zhuangzi and Nietzsche,
SUNY Press, 2006.
Stambaugh, J., The Other Nietzsche, SUNY Press, 1994.
Suzuki, D.T., Manual of Zen Buddhism, Grove Press, 1960.
6
The Great Hospital
Nietzsche conceived of his project as an attempt to “give egoism a good

conscience”.1 This favourable attitude towards egoism sits very uneasily
with previous attempts to situate Nietzsche’s thought in a mystical intel-
lectual context. It is my belief that our foregoing discussion of Nietzsche’s
conception of the one and the many will help us significantly to make
sense of his robust defence of the self-centric. In this chapter, I will take
up certain aspects of that defence. In particular, I will focus on Nietzsche’s
critique of the morality of unselfing and his conception of a “whole and
holy” selfishness.
* * *
The attempt to root a morality of compassion in mystical experience was

taken up by Schopenhauer in On the Basis of Morals.2 Schopenhauer
argued that individuation is an illusion arising from space and time.
Reality, the thing-in-itself, lies outside of space and time, and hence is
one.3 For Schopenhauer, each individual is the thing-in-itself—and can
realise this through what would now be called “knowledge by identity”.4
Since there is but one thing-in-itself, the individual who has realised his
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75007-7_6
122 A. Milne
identity with the thing-in-itself has also realised his identity with all other
individuals: he recognises “his own true essence in the other”. Thus, when
the mystic encounters another, he does not encounter a “not-I” but an “I
once more [Ich noch ein Mal]”. This recognition that another’s suffering
is my suffering—“yet not in me but in another”—leads directly to an ethic
of compassion.
The mystic is for Schopenhauer the “good character”, and the egoist
the “bad”. Egoism, the privileging of one’s self over others, arises out of
an ignorance of one’s ultimate identity. The egoist falsely imagines a
“strong dividing wall” between himself and the other: “the world is for
him an absolute not-I”. Not knowing his identity with the other, the ego-
ist vainly attempts to gain his own advantage at the expense of the other.
Schopenhauer was, of course, a raging egoist, and it is precisely this ten-
sion which lends much of the enduring fascination of his work.
Schopenhauer’s Mitleidsethik plainly rests on a belief in a one behind
the many—a belief in a true world hidden behind the apparent one. In
what follows, I will show that Nietzsche’s defence of egoism is not born
of a denial of the identity of part and whole, but rather a denial that the
whole is apart from the parts.
* * *
As we saw above, Nietzsche made an identification of the part with the

whole. In a late note, Nietzsche writes that the concept “individual [indi-
viduum]” is an error because every “single being [Einzelwesen]” is the
“entire process” of life. But Nietzsche does not move from here to an
altruistic conclusion. Rather, he says that when we grasp this identifica-
tion, the individual “acquires a tremendously great significance”.5 This is
not an isolated fragment.6 In another note, Nietzsche repeats the claim
that the individual is “the whole line of development [die ganze Linie der
Entwicklung]” and says that this gives the individual who has turned out
well as having an “extraordinary right to egoism”.7 In the section of
Twilight for which this note served as a draft, Nietzsche says that such an
individual has extreme worth “for the sake of life as a whole, which takes
a step farther through him”.8
6 The Great Hospital 123
For Nietzsche, the identification of part with whole allowed for the
possibility of what he referred to in Zarathustra as a “whole and holy [heil
und heilig]” selfishness, and contrasted with “sick” selfishness.9 “You force
all things to and into yourself that they may flow back out of your well as
the gifts of your love”.10 Thus spoke Zarathustra about one whose love
was whole and holy. The ‘that’ here sounds instrumental: the whole and
holy take on all things in order to give them back enriched. But this is a
mistaken reading.11 Nietzsche makes clear that this gift-giving is not
charitable or calculated in any sense, but a natural phenomenon like a
river in flood that is “a blessing and a danger to those living near”. The
artist’s overfullness creates a need for “outstretched hands”.12
In Twilight Nietzsche writes that in the state of artistic “frenzy”, the
artist instinctively “enriches everything” out of their own fullness,13 and
that we misunderstand our benefactors if we imagine that their gifts are
given in order to benefit us.14 What is taken is not borrowed with a mind
to repaying it with interest, or returning it enriched—rather, it is taken,
as Nietzsche writes in a note, with the self-assurance of one who has “the
inner certainty of having a right to everything”.15 In this same notebook,
Nietzsche writes:
Observe the eyes of benefactors: what one sees is the antithesis of self-
denial, of hatred for the moi, of “Pascalism”.16
As Nietzsche warns in Beyond Good and Evil, we must not “yield to

humanitarian illusions about the origins of an aristocratic society”.17 Our
benefactors are not selfless, and their gifts are not alms. Their benefit to
others comes not through leaving their way to aid others aid, but rather
through the works that emerge from their self-centred pursuits. Indeed,
these pursuits require much that is very far from beneficent: a hardness
that allows these creators not to get waylaid by their pity for others’ suf-
fering. Creators need, as Zarathustra tells us, “a height that is above their
pity”, and that allows them to say “myself I sacrifice to my love, and my
neighbor as myself ”.18
In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche writes that the “morality that would un-self
man” is one that “fundamentally… negates life”. What is “most pro-
foundly necessary for growth” is, Nietzsche claims, “severe self-love [der
124 A. Milne
strengen Selbstsucht]”.19 The severity of this self-love is the capacity to be

hard not only to oneself, but to others: to look away from the suffering of
others and pursue one’s own projects.
In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche criticises “every unegoistic moral-
ity that takes itself for unconditional and addresses itself to all”. Nietzsche
presents his own pluralistic conception here, claiming that for those peo-
ple who are naturally commanding, “self-denial and modest self-
effacement would not be a virtue but the waste of a virtue”.20
An unegoistic morality is, for strong types, a “provocation to sins of
omission” and a “seduction and injury”. This is the basis of Nietzsche’s
criticism elsewhere that the Christian moral conscience has “ruined many
full people”21—including its “most instructive victim”, Pascal.22 In insist-
ing on a universal altruism, Christianity taught that there is “only one
ideal; only one way to redemption”.23 Nietzsche claimed that the Christian
teaching of selflessness is at complete odds with the nature of people with
a robustly delineated self, and being so, can only manifest as self-
loathing24—as Pascal’s sense that “the moi is always hateful”.25
Nietzsche wrote that what he combats in Christianity is that it “wants
to break the strong”, converting their “proud assurance” into “distress of
conscience”. Christianity turns the strong man’s will to power “against
itself ”, so that the strong perish, like Pascal, through gruesome “orgies of
self-contempt”.26
In a note, Nietzsche wrote that the Christian emphasis on unselfing
had not only turned Pascal against himself, but that it “destroys the con-
cept of the artist”.27 This antipathy between Christianity and art becomes
clear enough when one recalls that Nietzsche followed Tolstoy28 in taking
“resist not evil” as the “key” Christian teaching.29 Given an altruistic
ideal, one would always have a “bad conscience” in “doing something for
oneself, setting aside, creating”.30 But this is what the artist must continu-
ally and instinctively do. The artist is essentially one who resists, selects,
ranks, and orders. The artist is an “absolute egoist”31 with a good con-
science in helping himself to whatever will profit his work: he has “the
inner certainty of having a right to everything”.32
Nietzsche thought that an instinctive life of non-resistance was “still
possible today”, and “for certain people even necessary”.33 The point
about certain people is essential. The notion that any particular ethic could
be universally appropriate is strongly rejected by Nietzsche.34 Each man

has his way, but “the way—that does not exist”.35 The belief in a universal
way is insidious: it diverts others from their way.
Nietzsche considered a universal morality of unselfing “fundamentally
life negating” for a several related reasons. Firstly, it is founded on a mis-
taken valuation of suffering. For Nietzsche, suffering is inevitable—it is a
part of growth, life. We turn against life by trying to negate suffering. To
aim at the abolition of suffering is to construe life as an error and anaes-
thesia as the highest one can reach.36 Secondly, it makes impossible the
life of “value creators”, including artists, who give suffering a meaning.
Thirdly, a morality of unselfing attempts to sacrifice the part for the
whole–but there is no whole apart from the parts. This point not only lay
behind Nietzsche’s critique of Christian morality but also of the political
religions of his time.
Nietzsche rejected the political religions that subordinated the indi-
vidual to a collective which exists only as an abstraction. This critique
applied equally to Hegel’s authoritarian State37 as to Comte’s “religion of
humanity”, with its utopian altruisme.38 In very similar terms to John
Gray in our time,39 Nietzsche argued that these projects were merely sec-
ularised versions of Christian eschatology:
the belief in progress towards the ideal is the only form in which a goal in
history is thought of today. In summa: one has transferred the arrival of the
“kingdom of God” into the future, on earth, in human form—but funda-
mentally one has held fast to the belief in the old ideal.40
* * *
In his monograph on Nietzsche’s philosophy of religion, Young has

claimed that Nietzsche’s primary concern was “the flourishing of com-
munity”, which Nietzsche apparently believed could only be brought
about only through “the flourishing of communal religion”. Young has
attempted to position Nietzsche as neither anti-political individualist nor
elitist, claiming that while higher types are of “unmistakable central
importance to Nietzsche”, it is a mistake to think that they are the source
126 A. Milne
of the society’s value. Rather, on Young’s reading, “the higher types are
valued for the sake of the social totality”.41 Though it accords reasonably
well with widespread (even if not prevailing) values of both our own time
and Nietzsche’s, I think Young’s reading misses the mark rather widely.
Nietzsche’s view both was and remains untimely.
In the third essay of the Genealogy, Nietzsche wrote of the danger of
“great compassion” inspired in the healthy by the sick. He wrote that to
think of the task of the healthy as “to be nurses and physicians” is the
worst imaginable “misunderstanding and denial of their task”.42 In a note
from the period, Nietzsche writes:
Nothing would be more costly than virtue: for one would in the end have
turned the earth into a great hospital: and ultimate wisdom would be
“everyone as everyone else’s nurse.” To be sure, one would then possess that
much desired “peace on earth”! But how little “delight in each other”! How
little beauty, high spirits, daring, danger! How few “works” for the sake of
which life on earth is worthwhile! And, alas, no more “deeds” whatever!43
This idea of a mutual nursing society is borrowed from Goethe. In a

letter to Charlotte von Stein in 1787, Goethe wrote of his fear that the
triumph of humanism will come with the transformation of the world
into “a great hospital” in which every man will serve as another’s “humane
nurse”.44
In such a radically levelled world, there is no possibility of great
works—which are, Nietzsche tells us, “in the profoundest sense immo-
ralities”: they require monstrous selfishness, selectivity, and absorption in
one’s task. This is not to deny in any sense that great works also require
the menial slack to be taken up by others. The point is well made by
Herzen when he writes that the life of the artist presupposes “an environ-
ment constantly swept and tended by others”. Herzen’s response could
easily have come from Nietzsche’s pen:
“Our civilization is a civilization of the minority—it is made possible only

by the existence of a majority of proletarians. I am not a moralist, I am not
sentimental… I am not sorry for the twenty generations of Germans who
were wasted in order to make Goethe possible, and am glad that the feudal
dues of Pskov made it possible to rear Pushkin.45
One certainly need not go so far as Herzen here—but of course,

Nietzsche did. In The Antichrist, for example, Nietzsche describes high
culture as a “pyramid” that can only stand on the “broad base” of a “strong
and soundly consolidated mediocrity”.46
Here we find ourselves deep in the territory of some of Nietzsche’s
most notorious and troubling ideas. I do not seek to defend them, but I
do think they are worth the effort of understanding. Moreover, I think
they become much more comprehensible—even if no more creditable—
in the context of Nietzsche’s concept of the one and the many, the whole
and the part, that I have articulated in the foregoing.
Nietzsche believed that the alternative to this aristocratic pyramid is
not a situation in which nobody is sacrificed, but one in which everybody
is sacrificed. Nietzsche was deeply suspicious of our faith in progress. He
thought that the masses were sacrificed today as ever before, but without
purpose. In a note, Nietzsche wrote that today “every individual is sacri-
ficed and serves as a tool”—but for what? “Goals are lacking and these
must be individuals”.47
Nietzsche’s way of envisioning the individual as goal was not teleologi-
cal. His view here is consistent from very early on. For example, in the
Untimely Meditations, he wrote, “the goal of humanity cannot lie in its
end but only in its highest exemplars”.48 Moreover, Nietzsche’s goal was
emphatically not a coming race of superhumans.49 Unlike Trotsky,
Nietzsche never dreamed of an age where “the average human type will
rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx”.50 Nietzsche was
very clear that there could be no herd of exceptions: the first presupposi-
tion of a higher type is a majority of mediocre men.51 In The Antichrist,
after saying that progress is a modern fiction, Nietzsche writes that “suc-
cess in individual cases” occurs in “widely different places and cultures”.
He says that this “higher type” are “fortunate accidents” that “always have
been possible and will always be possible”.52 It is in such passing “inter-
ludes”, such “lucky strokes”,53 that “the rest of existence is justified”.54
This startling statement about the part justifying the whole makes
more sense in the context of Nietzsche’s conception of the individual as
128 A. Milne
an expression of “the entire process” of life.55 On this conception, the

individual “acquires a tremendously great significance”56: his worth is
great because “life as a whole… takes a step farther through him”.57
Because of this, such an individual has an “extraordinary right to ego-
ism”,58 that is, to privilege his own projects, to develop his natural talents,
and thus to extend and express the whole in himself. On this view, it
would be a grave mistake for these men to be lured from their own paths
by pity for others’ suffering. The value creators’ responsibility is not to the
other, but to themselves, and “no worse misunderstanding and denial of
their task can be imagined” than to turn them into “nurses and physi-
cians”, instruments of the sick.59
In Twilight, Nietzsche writes that it is no objection that Goethe was “a
mere interlude” that couldn’t be put to public use: we “misunderstand
great human beings” by looking at them from the “pathetic perspective of
public utility”.60 The goal, the whole, must be found in the individual.
* * *
In a critical passage of The Gay Science that contains a condensed account

of Nietzsche’s critique of the psychological motivations of the neighbour’s
ethic, Nietzsche describes the way that compassion seduces one from
one’s own task. He writes that there is “constantly some clamour” calling
one aside, and some sight catching one’s eye that requires one to “drop
our own preoccupation instantly” in order to help. There are, Nietzsche
continues, “a hundred decent and praiseworthy ways of losing my own
way”. Indeed, for many, this is precisely what morality has come to con-
sist of: “to lose one’s own way in order to come to the assistance of a
neighbour”.
Nietzsche describes such a neighbour’s ethic as “secretly seductive”:
one’s way is “too hard and demanding”, and offers little by way of others’
love and gratitude. In abandoning one’s own way, one can reap the imme-
diate rewards of the charitable. One wants to betray one’s own tasks, but
one wants a “detour with a good conscience”,61 and this is what the
neighbour’s suffering provides: “the long desired permission—to dodge
one’s goal”.
In “On the Love of the Neighbour”, Zarathustra claims to see through

what purports to be “selflessness”, saying, “your love of the neighbour is
your bad love of yourselves”. One flees oneself to one’s neighbour, and
would like to “make a virtue” of this flight.62 Similarly, in Beyond Good and
Evil, Nietzsche wrote that there is “too much charm and sugar” in the idea
of “for others” and “not for myself”.63 His point is that we should be suspi-
cious of our own motivations: we want to be seduced from our path, only
our vanity desires that this capitulation should appear as a great sacrifice.64
It is plain that the lure of the neighbour’s ethic was felt very strongly by
Nietzsche himself. In this sense, Nietzsche was the opposite of
Schopenhauer: an instinctive altruist praising egoism. Marie von Bradke
described Nietzsche as “overflowing with pity”. She said that it was the
“inner struggle” with his “pathologically delicate soul” that caused him to
praise hardness and to admire “those Renaissance men of violence who
had walked stolidly over corpses to reach their goal”.65 Nietzsche himself
described pity as his “greatest danger”,66 and wrote in a letter to Overbeck
that it was his own “terrible experiences” with the emotion which lead to
his “theoretical shift in the valuation of pity”.67 Nietzsche came to see that
in order to undertake his tasks, he needed to be able to look away from
the suffering of others.68
In 1881, Nietzsche responded to a letter his mother giving news of the
death of her brother Theobald. After sympathising with her loss, Nietzsche
adds a postscript asking that she write him about “good things”.69 There
he was in Sils Maria, grappling with difficult thoughts at a great height,70
and could easily brought down by reports of “personal sufferings”. Better
to send news, he suggested, of a “delicious sausage”. This helps us to
understand Nietzsche’s description of isolation as not only “the escape of
the sick” but also “the escape from the sick”.71 By wandering, he sought
not only a favourable climate, but also a productive distance from every-
thing that would induce pity and thus seduce him from his task.
* * *
Goethe is a striking example of this “whole and holy” selfishness, the

benefactor in whose eyes we see not self-denial but the self-assurance of
having “a right to everything”. But even Goethe has been misrepresented
130 A. Milne
by those who regard the altruist as the only ideal. For example, the
Orientalist Otto Schrader concluded his pamphlet The Religion of Goethe
with the preposterous claim that “the practical philosophy of Goethe is in
exact harmony with that of the Bhagavad-Gîta: liberation by means of an
unwavering altruistic activity”.72 Much closer to the truth is the descrip-
tion given by Knebel, a close correspondent of Goethe’s for over five
decades, who wrote that “Goethe was an egoist in the highest degree: but
he had to be, for he knew what a treasure he had to protect”.73 The impli-
cation here is that Goethe’s duty was not to others, but to his own talents.
Late in life, Goethe described his work as “entirely egoistic”, claimed
that he had undertaken it solely for his own education and edification,
and stated his complete indifference to what others made of it.74 In his
excellent biography of Goethe, Safranski writes that for all of Goethe’s
intimate social and cultural involvement, he also “knew how to maintain
his individuality”. According to Safranski, Goethe was “an expert at
ignoring things” whose guiding principle was “to take in only as much of
the world as he could process” and to disregard anything he could not
respond to productively.75
It seems that Goethe inherited his good conscience in selective atten-
tion from his mother. Katharina Goethe is quoted to have once instructed
a servant not to tell her “of anything horrible, afflicting, or agitating”. It
was her desire to “hear nothing of the kind”. If it concerns her, she would
find out soon enough; and if it didn’t, then “I have nothing whatever to
do with it”.76
Goethe himself appreciated that a sharp selfishness is “indispensable
[unentbehrliche]” and “blameless [untadelig]” when one is aiming at great
works.77 Safranski writes that it was because Goethe was “so receptive and
sensitive” to the world that he had to be “careful not to allow himself to
be ensnared to the point of insensibility”. If the individual is not to be
dissolved into the “bustle and whirl of society”, he must have “the inner
coherence” which Goethe called “the gravitational force toward oneself”.78
* * *
It could be argued that only the skittish, the pathologically sensitive, need
blinkers, while the truly hard don’t need to look away. But Nietzsche’s
praise of the creator’s hardness was not at all praise of insensibility. Rather,
the hardness of selective attention is a way of defending a heightened
sensibility from the seductions of pity. This becomes very clear in
Nietzsche’s criticism of Stoicism. He writes, “it is nothing to be hard like
a Stoic” through “insensibility”, and advises that one needs both “a deli-
cate sensibility” and “the opposite capacity”.79
The Stoic realises that suffering and joy are inextricably bound, but
allows pleasure to atrophy that no disturbances be felt. Goethe, too, saw
that “by expanding our virtues, we also cultivate our faults”.80 But this
doubleness was to be embraced, not rejected.81 Following Goethe,
Nietzsche did not succumb to the illusion that we are “getting back to
wholeness” by ending the unrest between opposites.82 For Nietzsche, this
tension was of great importance. Nietzsche said that the “wisest man” is
the man “richest in contradictions”,83 and elsewhere that the “highest
man” is the man who most strongly represents “the antithetical character
of existence [den Gegensatz-Charakter des Daseins]”.84 That is, the highest
individuals are those who most fully express the character of life—the
parts that most fully express the whole.
Nietzsche wrote, “we belong to the character of the world [Wir gehören
zum Charakter der Welt]”.85 The highest type are thus those who thus the
one who exemplify that “antithetical character”. Such individuals embrace
the “unstable equilibrium” between their opposing tendencies, seeing in
such contradictions not an “argument against existence” but rather a
seduction and a “stimulus to life”. As one example of these “well consti-
tuted, joyful mortals”, Nietzsche names Goethe. The second is Hafez,
whom we shall address in Chap. 8.86
It is the world’s “antithetical character” that Nietzsche deifies in
Dionysus.87 The Dionysian is “the religious affirmation of life, life whole
and not denied or halved”.88 Nietzsche’s Dionysian spirituality is one in
which one does not renounce one’s individuality, one’s sensuality, or one’s
antipathy. It is a spirituality with Selbstgefühl, in which all “one-sidedness”
of the anaemic philosophers, mystics, and cobweb-spinners is overcome, in
which we are “weaned from the half and live resolutely in wholeness”.89
* * *
132 A. Milne
In contemporary times, views with important similarities to

Schopenhauer’s ethic of compassion have become widely fashionable,
with supporters from various ethical traditions. According to Murdoch,
“fat relentless ego” is the enemy of the moral life. Murdoch claims that
undertaking the ego’s “defeat” is an aim shared by moral philosophy and
religion.90 Johnston has similarly argued that there is a “massive consen-
sus” across spiritual traditions that salvation “requires overcoming the
centripetal force of self-involvement”.91 For Johnston, “the truly ethical
life” is one in which the self is no longer treated as something “at the
centre” or “to be privileged”.92 The other has as every bit as much claim
on my concern as I do. Given the vast multitude of sufferers, my ethical
import to myself is infinitesimal.
Though they do not appeal to the same metaphysical basis as
Schopenhauer’s, both Murdoch and Johnston claim an objective basis for
their ethics. Murdoch defines virtue as “the attempt to pierce the veil of
selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is”,93 and Johnston
speaks of the moral need to “orient one’s life around reality”—a reality in
which the “legitimate interests” of others “figure on a par with your own”
in terms of your practical reasoning.
I will consider briefly two aspects of Nietzsche’s criticism of such posi-
tions. First, his conception of love of self is the basis of love for others.
Second, his rejection of the “objective” perspective or view is from
nowhere.
* * *
Nietzsche warned that, with the neighbour’s ethic, one “becomes a mere
neighbour”.94 It is just this that Johnston concludes, saying that when
you take the objective view, “you will find yourself to be only one of the
others”. Johnston saw the ethical life as one “whose guiding principle is
radical altruism or agape”.95 But what possibility is there for love in
impartiality? In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche argued against the “gruesome non-
sense” that love ought to be “unegoistic”:
One has to sit firmly upon oneself, one must stand bravely on one’s own
two legs, otherwise one is simply incapable of loving.96
Similarly, in a late note Nietzsche writes that it is one of the “great

crimes in psychology” that everything “great in man has been reinter-
preted as selflessness, as self-sacrifice for the sake of something else”. He
goes on to declare that “only the most complete persons can love” and
that “one must be firmly rooted in oneself ”.97
For Nietzsche, “great love” comes not from a loss of a centre of gravity,
but rather from “richness in personality”, “instinctive affirmation of one-
self ”, from “godlike selfhood [göttliche Selbstigkeit]”.98 To love is to prefer,
to privilege, to be inordinately concerned. If agape excludes eros, then it is
not love but indifference. If one does not love oneself as oneself, then one
cannot love another as something more than one amongst others—as a
mere bearer of states, a fellow sufferer. The “loved one” is to be pitied and
tended to, but not enabled to go his own way.99 Here the levelling of
concern leads to the diminution of life, not its enrichment; ultimately, it
leads to a world in which there are no creators, only caretakers.
In The Gay Science, Nietzsche argues that the “preachers of pity” do not
understand how joy and suffering are “sisters and even twins”, growing or
remaining small together, and entreats that we “share not suffering but
joy”.100 The implication is that the preachers of pity are sharers of suffer-
ing, as they spread an interpretation of the sufferer as to be pitied, and
thus they make pitiful. In Zarathustra, Nietzsche writes, “what in the
world has caused more suffering than the folly of the pitying?”101 This is
spelled out a little more in The Antichrist, where Nietzsche argues, “pity
makes suffering contagious” and says that pity “multiplies misery and
conserves all that is miserable”.102 In their attempts to alleviate suffering,
the preachers of pity peddle the interpretation of suffering as intrinsically
bad. Just as Nietzsche claimed elsewhere that “the source of wrong is
never unequal rights but the claim of ‘equal’ rights”,103 we might think
that the problem is not suffering, but the belief that suffering is dispens-
able—or, to say the same thing, the belief that one’s suffering is needless.104
Nietzsche certainly did not advocate never being helpful to others, but
rather stressed the need to be especially selective here. He thought that
the only people one can truly help are those “whose distress you under-
stand entirely”—one’s friends. This is partly so that one doesn’t attempt to
prematurely alleviate suffering which is in fact necessary to a person’s
growth and projects, and thus make their “worth and will smaller”. One
134 A. Milne
helps not by helping make a friend more comfortable, but by making

them “bolder, more persevering, simpler, gayer”.105
To love another is not to pity their suffering—but rather to appreciate
their individuality, to help them go their own way. This, too, requires
hardness: in Zarathustra, we read, “all great love is above even its pity; for
it still wants to create the beloved”. If one has a “suffering friend”, we are
advised to be a “resting place”, but not be too indulgent.106 We shall
“profit them best” not by tenderness, but by acting as “a hard bed”, “a
field cot”.107
For Nietzsche, suffering was absolutely indispensable to growth and
development: joy and suffering grow or atrophy together. In Beyond Good
and Evil, he wrote that all great works have emerged out of “the discipline
of suffering, of great suffering”, and described as “a naiveté” any philoso-
phy that cannot see that there are “higher problems” than those of “plea-
sure, pain, and pity”.108
* * *
Another important aspect of Nietzsche’s defence of egoism was his rejec-

tion of the ‘objective’ perspective, the point of view of the universe, that
is assumed by altruism. For Nietzsche, perspectivity is essentially partial-
ity: a view is always a view from somewhere. In The Gay Science
Nietzsche wrote:
Egoism is the law of perspective applied to feelings: what is closest appears

large and weighty, and as one moves farther away size and weight decrease.109
For Nietzsche, this effect is not an error.110 There is no way of seeing

things in which they assume their ‘true’ size. Nietzsche altogether rejects
the distinction between the ‘true’ and ’apparent’ world. In Ecce Homo,
we read:
“The “true world” and the “apparent world”—that means: the menda-
ciously invented world and reality”111
The view is subtler than it might at first appear, for this world is neither
“true” nor “apparent”—it is simply what is. Thus in Twilight, we read:
The true world—we have abolished. What world has remained? The appar-
ent one perhaps? But no! With the true world we have also abolished the
apparent one.112
That there is no ‘true’ world behind the supposedly ‘apparent’ one

means also that there is no whole behind the parts. We cannot take the
perspective of the whole, which does not exist apart from the parts. There
are no valuations beyond those of individuals, but “life itself values
through us when we posit values”.113
In a note, Nietzsche wrote, “something flows beneath individuals”. Yet
he did not see individuation as a mistake, going on to describe the sense
of isolation as “the most powerful goad in the process towards the most
distant goals”.114 Despite this identification of part and whole, Nietzsche
did not regard our egoistic perspective as an error. Rather, Nietzsche
claimed, “instinct speaks correctly” in attributing a tremendous value to
the individual.115
Nietzsche described the “impulse towards unity” as weakness and the
“impulse towards variety, differentiation” as strength: the weak wish to
“become one” with what is strong, so they can seek nourishment from it
whereas, the strong “drive others away”.116
The individuating tendency is a natural expression of the will to power.
The rejection of the moi is a rejection of this tendency, and an attempt to
take sides with the whole. But if we understand that the whole does not
exist apart from the parts, then a rejection of a part is also a rejection of
the whole. On this view, self-abnegation is impious: it deteriorates that
which it claims to reverence.
* * *
For Murdoch, the “true mysticism” is morality, which involves looking

away from oneself, and indeed from everything particular, towards “a
distant transcendent perfection, a source of uncontaminated energy”.117
136 A. Milne
This is, of course, a movement towards a one behind the many, a whole
behind the parts.
As we have seen, Nietzsche’s view was strikingly different. He did not
make eyes at the beyond,118 and he did not see the value of the part as
derivative of the whole.119 On Nietzsche’s conception of part and whole,
one simply cannot “stand aside” from life. There is nowhere but life to
stand, no unconditioned ground of being.120 Thus Nietzsche writes in
Beyond Good and Evil that wisdom is not “a means and a trick for getting
out of a wicked game”. Realising that there is no escape from the game
which one is, the wise “feels the burden and the duty of a hundred
attempts and temptations of life—he risks himself constantly, he plays the
wicked game”.121
This is not at all some self-sacrifice in coming to the aid of others, but
the bold pursuit of one’s own way. It is just this that Nietzsche praises
about Goethe in Twilight, writing that Goethe “did not retire from life
but put himself into the midst of it”, taking upon himself “as much as
possible”. It is this “religious affirmation of life, of life as a whole, not
denied and halved”,122 that allows one to play the wicked game, to
embrace the fullness of life and of individuality. It is, as Goethe wrote, a
rejection of half measures, and of all mere sipping at life’s brimming cup.123
Another thinker who praised the “draining of life to the lees” was
Hafez, to whom we turn in Chap. 8. But first we must take a brief look
at Nietzsche’s discussions of fate as identity, a difficult conception which
Nietzsche believed fostered self-esteem.
Notes
1. NF-1883,16[15]. In a note from the same year, Nietzsche wrote that
“Egoism is not a principle, but rather the one fact [Egoismus ist kein
Princip, sondern die Eine Tatsache]”. See: NF-1883,7[256].
2. A. Schopenhauer, “Prize Essay on the Basis of Morals”, in Two
Fundamental Problems of Ethics, trans. C. Janaway, Cambridge
University Press, 2009, esp. pp. 248–257.
3. Ibid, p. 251: “But if time and space is foreign to the thing in itself, i.e.
to the true essence of the world, then necessarily plurality is foreign to
it also: consequently in the countless appearances of this world of the

senses it can really be only one, and only the one and identical essence
can manifest itself in all of these”.
4. In the second volume of the World as Will and Representation (chap.
18), Schopenhauer wrote that we are not merely “the knowing subject”,
but we are also amongst the things to be known, “we ourselves are the
thing-in-itself ”. Consequently, he writes, “a way from within stands
open to us” to access the essence of things: “the thing in itself can come
into consciousness only quite directly, namely by itself being conscious
of itself ”.
5. NF-1887,9[30] (WP§785, pp. 412–413).
6. See also NF-1887,9[7] (WP§687, p. 366): “We are more than indi-
viduals: we are the whole chain as well [Wir sind mehr als das Individuum,
wir sind die ganze Kette]”, and NF-1887,10[136] (WP§682, p. 361):
“The ego is a hundred times more than merely a unit in the chain of
members; it is this chain itself, entirely [Das ego ist hundert Mal mehr als
bloß eine Einheit in der Kette von Gliedern; es ist die Kette selbst, ganz
und gar]”.
7. NF-1888,14[29] (WP§373, p. 200).
9. I will not take up the topic of “sick” selfishness here in any detail.
10. Z “On the Gift-Giving Virtue” §1, pp. 74–74.
11. This is made plain by the fact that this discussion occurs in a section on
“The Gift-Giving Virtue”, which is described as “useless”. It is not cal-
culated, or aimed towards some definite end. Elsewhere in Zarathustra,
this is described as squandering as distinct from sacrificing (See “The
Honey Sacrifice”, p. 238). Bazzano makes a useful distinction here
between gift giving and gift bestowing, writing that the latter is “un-self-
conscious, and far removed from the “altruistic” shadow of guilt, debt
and bad conscience which characterizes many of our charitable, good-
intentioned forms of giving”. See: M. Bazzano, Buddha is Dead:
Nietzsche and the Dawn of European Zen, Sussex Academic Press,
2006, p. 82.
12. Z “Prologue” §1, p. 10.
15. NF-1887,10[128] (WP§388, p. 209).
16. NF-1887,10[125] (WP§932, p. 492).
138 A. Milne
17. BGE§257, p. 201.

20. BGE§221, p. 149. Nietzsche concludes that moralities should bow
before the “order of rank” and accept that “it is immoral to say “what is
right for one is fair for the other””. But that it is in the nature of certain
moralities to construe themselves as universal is perhaps a part of
Nietzsche’s point in teasing himself here for “admonishing moralities to
become moral”.
21. NF-1884,26[3].
23. NF-1887,11[226] (WP§339, p. 185).
24. Nietzsche’s view here was partly anticipated by Goethe. According to
Goethe, the Christian insistence on equality leads to a situation in
which “all the individuals who are really more powerful are endan-
gered” because they are forbidden to use their powers (Riemer, 15 Feb.,
1813. See C&E§102, p. 90). On Nietzsche’s analysis, these powers seek
expression, and hence turn back on themselves.
25. Nietzsche quotes Pascal as saying “le moi est toujours haïssable” in the
epilogue to the Case of Wagner, and then in altered form with respect to
Flaubert in the section “We Antipodes” (adapted from GS§370). As for
the accuracy of the quote, I have not found any French version of the
Pensées which has toujours. It is standardly printed “Le moi est haïssable”
(Sellier #494, Lafuma #597). But Pascal’s claim is not weaker than the
one Nietzsche attributes to him, given that he goes on to say that “I will
always hate it [je le haïrai toujours]”.
26. NF-1887,11[55] (WP§252, p. 145). In Beyond Good and Evil
(BGE§62, p. 75), Nietzsche described how Christianity corrupted “all
the instincts of the highest and best-turned out type of man” by bend-
ing “everything haughty, manly, conquering, domineering” into
“unsureness, agony of conscience, self-destruction”.
27. NF-1884,26[3]. Similarly, in Twilight we read that “a Christian who
would at the same time be an artist simply does not occur”: TI
“Skirmishes of an Untimely Man” §9, p. 519.
28. Nietzsche had read Tolstoy’s My Religion in its French translation (see
the transcriptions in NF-1887,11). In the second chapter, Tolstoy
describes “resist not evil” as “verily the key to the whole mystery”. See:
L. Tolstoy, My Religion, trans. H. Smith, Thomas Y. Crowell & Co,
1885, p. 17.
29. AC§29, p. 600.

30. NF-1881,11[43]: “Für sich etwas tun, bei Seite bringen, schaffen—das
wäre alles mit bösem Gewissen”.
31. NF-1886,7[3] (WP§677, p. 358–359) speaks of the “absolute egoism
of the artist”.
32. NF-1887,10[128] (WP§388, pp. 208–209).
33. AC§39, p. 613.
34. The notebook which discusses Pascal’s will to power being turned upon
itself contains several other notes on the importance of respect for
types. For example, in NF-1887,11[226] (WP§339, pp. 185–186),
Nietzsche criticises the assumptions of one who believes “first, that an
approach to one type is desirable; secondly, that one knows what this
type is like; thirdly, that every deviation from this type is a regression”.
See also NF-1887,11[153] (WP§871, p. 466) and NF-1887,11[156]
(TLN, p. 232). This is a familiar theme elsewhere in Nietzsche, and can
be found for example in Twilight (TI “Morality as Anti-Nature” §6,
p. 491) where he writes “Let us finally consider how naïve it is alto-
gether to say: ‘Man ought to be such and such!’ Reality shows us an
enchanting wealth of types, the abundance of a lavish play and change
of forms”.
35. Z “On the Spirit of Gravity” §2, p. 195.
36. See BGE§225, pp. 153–154.
37. See for example a draft for a new preface of Daybreak where Nietzsche
applies this critique specifically to Hegel: NF-1885,2[165] (WP§253,
p. 147).
38. See for example NF-1887,9[44] (WP§901, p. 479).
39. See: J. Gray, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals,
London, Granta, 2003; and J. Gray, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion
and the Death of Utopia, London, Allen Lane, 2007. Gray falsely charges
Nietzsche with this very faith in history, claiming that Nietzsche “devel-
oped the Übermensch in an attempt to restore belief in the meaning of
history”. See: J. Gray, “Reply to Critics”, Critical Review of International
Social and Political Philosophy, vol. 9, no. 2, 2006, p. 340. Gray has
made similar claims in Straw Dogs, p. 128, and most recently in his
Seven Types of Atheism, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018.
40. NF-1887,11[226] (WP§339.III, p. 186).
41. J. Young, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Religion, Cambridge University Press,
2006, pp. 2–3.
140 A. Milne
42. GM.III§14, p. 124.

43. NF-1886,4[7] (WP§395, p. 213).
44. Letter to Charlotte von Stein, May 27, 1787: “Auch, muß ich selbst
sagen, halt ich es für wahr, daß die Humanität endlich siegen wird, nur
fürcht ich, daß zu gleicher Zeit die Welt ein großes Hospital und einer des
andern humaner Krankenwärter sein werde”. Nietzsche also quotes the
vision of each man as the other’s humane nurse in a letter to Rée a
decade earlier, writing of Seydlitz and himself tending to each other at
the Villa Rubinacci in Sorrento. See: BVN-1877,606.
45. A. Herzen, “Year LVII of the Republic”, in From the Other Shore, trans.
M. Budberg, Oxford University Press, 1979, p. 63.
46. AC§57, pp. 646–647.
47. NF-1886,7[6] (WP§269, pp. 153–154).
48. UM§II.9, p. 111.
49. See Nietzsche’s famous rejection of the Darwinian interpretation by
“scholarly oxen” in EH “Why I Write Such Good Books” §1, p. 261.
Nietzsche most likely borrowed the term Übermensch from the first
part of Faust, where it is mockingly used to address Faust. But rather
than applying it to the one-sided Faust, Nietzsche applauds Goethe
himself as a full man in whom “animal and angel” meet in good con-
science (GM.III§2, pp. 98–99). C.f. NF-1887,9[154] where Nietzsche
writes that “Untier and Übertier”, “Unmensch and Übermensch”, belong
together.
50. L. Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, trans. R. Strunsky, University of
Michigan Press, 1960, p. 256.
51. AC§57, pp. 646–647.
52. AC§4, p. 571.
53. NF-1888,14[133].
54. BGE§207, p. 128.
55. Nietzsche’s view of all things as “enamored” and “enchained” means, if
we are able to say “yes” to one of these highest exemplars, we have also
affirmed everything lower. For these are the necessary conditions for
bringing about what is higher. This is another way of looking at
Nietzsche’s phrase discussed above (see Chapter 3.2) with regard to
Goethe’s “Dionysian” faith that “only the particular is loathsome, and
that everything is redeemed in the whole” (TI “Skirmishes of an
Untimely Man” §49, p. 554).
56. NF-1887,9[30] (WP§785, pp. 412–413).

58. NF-1888,14[29] (WP§373, p. 200).
59. GM.III§14, p. 124.
61. Nietzsche uses this phrase with respect to the rapture with which men
throw themselves into war in the service of the fatherland. He claims
that they want a “detour to suicide”, but one with a “good
conscience”.
62. Z “On the Love of the Neighbor”, p. 60.
63. BGE§33, p. 45.
64. BGE§143, p. 89: “Our vanity desires that what we do best should be
considered what is hardest for us. Concerning the origin of many a
morality”; c.f. BGE§11 on Kant, pp. 17–19.
65. Quoted in S.L. Gilman (ed.), Conversations with Nietzsche, trans.
D. Parent, Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 192.
66. GS§271, p. 220: “Where Are Your Greatest Dangers?—In pity”.
67. BVN-1884,533.
68. See GS§276, p. 223 on “looking away” as negation.
69. Letter of July 9, 1881: BVN-1881,125.
70. The letter comes just weeks before Nietzsche’s first writings about the
eternal recurrence, and his letter to Gast (BVN-1881,136) reporting
the danger and intensity of his thoughts.
71. Z “On the Mount of Olives”, pp. 172–175. This remarkably personal
section plainly deals with Nietzsche’s relations to his mother and sister.
He writes of allowing them to pity his suffering while he, from his
mount of olives, sings and mocks all pity. Nietzsche speaks of having
“mercy on their pity”—allowing them to pity his poor health, his petty
suffering, as they could not understand his happiness.
72. O. Schrader, The Religion of Goethe, Adyar, 1914.
73. Knebel wrote “Goethe war Egoist im höchsten Grad; aber er mußte es sein;
denn er wußte welchen Schatz er zu verwahren hatte”. Schiller once
described Goethe in very similar terms as “ein Egoist in ungewöhnlichem
Grade”: see his letter to Körner, Feb. 2, 1789. But unlike Knebel,
Schiller meant this as a criticism, and said it before his intimate friend-
ship with Goethe.
74. Letter to Müller, Mar. 28, 1830: “Ich habe Natur und Kunst eigentlich
immer egoistisch studirt, nämlich um mich zu unterrichten. Ich schrieb
auch nur darüber, um mich immer weiter zu bilden. Was die Leute daraus
142 A. Milne
machen, ist mir einerlei”. Goethe also wrote that Goethe also wrote that
“the more unselfish a man is, the more he is… subjected to the selfish
[Je uneigennütziger der Mensch ist, desto mehr ist der… unterworfen den
Eigennützigen]” (M&R§1319, p. 168 [TM]).
75. R. Safranski, Goethe: Life as a Work of Art, trans. D. Dollenmayer,
Liveright Publishing Co., 2017, preface.
76. J.D. Falk and F. Müller, Characteristics of Goethe: Vol. I, trans. S. Austin,
Lea & Blanchard, 1841, pp. 25–26.
77. See Goethe’s essay on Manzoni’s tragedy Il Conte di Carmagnola. An
English translation can be found in The London Magazine, Baldwin,
Cradock, and Joy, vol. 3, 1821, pp. 423–426.
78. R. Safranski, Goethe: Life as a Work of Art, op. cit., chap. 31. Safranski
writes, “The analogy to the mineral world was so obvious to Goethe
that in his last novel… he depicts Montan (the former Jarno)—the
protagonist and embodiment of the hard, impervious aspects of the
selfish principle—as a man of the mountains and stones”. This bears
comparison with Nietzsche’s famous calls for hardness, particularly the
conversation between the diamond and the coal in Zarathustra (“Old
and New Tablets” §29).
79. NF-1884,27[12]; cited in M. Gendre’s translation of M. Haar, “Life
and Natural Totality”, in Nietzsche and Metaphysics, op. cit.,
pp. 113–114.
80. D&W, book 13. Nietzsche paraphrases this in the foreword to “On the
Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life”. See UM.II, p. 60.
81. Goethe wrote in his Venetian Epigrams that a free man could not choose
to be either Christian or Stoic: “Was vom Christentum gilt, gilt von den
Stoikern, freien / Menschen geziemet es nicht, Christ oder Stoiker sein”.
Goethe’s use in his youth of Stoic-desensitising exercises are discussed
in D&W, book 9, with respect to repeatedly climbing the tower of the
Strasbourg cathedral (then the world’s tallest building) and sitting out
on the exposed crown until he overcome his acrophobia.
82. NF-1888,15[113] (WP§351, pp. 191–193).
83. NF-1884,26[119] (WP§259, p. 150).
84. NF-1887,10[111] (WP§881, p. 470).
85. NF-1885,1[89].
86. GM.III§2, pp. 98–99.
87. Giorgio Colli wrote that “Dionysus gathers within himself all contra-
dictions” and thus is one with his apparent contrary, Apollo. See:
G. Colli, La Sapienza greca: I, Adelphi, 2005, p. 25: “Dioniso, che rac-

coglie in sé tutte le contraddizioni, è una cosa sola con Apollo, che è la
sua contraddizione”.
88. NF-1888,14[89] (WP§1052, p. 542).
89. This is a loose translation of a stanza from Goethe’s poem
“Generalbeichte”: “Uns vom Halben zu entwöhnen / Und im Ganzen
Guten Schönen / Resolut zu leben”. This poem was of significance to
Nietzsche. He alludes to it in BT§18, p. 113—though he drops the
part about living in goodness and beauty and replaces this with “full-
ness”. Nietzsche and Salome took these lines as their “motto
[Wahlspruch]” (BVN-1882,234).
90. I. Murdoch, “On ‘God’ and ‘Good’”, in The Sovereignty of the Good,
Routledge, 2014, p. 51.
91. M. Johnston, Saving God: Religion after Idolatry, Princeton University
Press, 2011, pp. 23–24.
92. Ibid, p. 86, p. 90.
93. I. Murdoch, “The Sovereignty of the Good Over Other Concepts”, in
op. cit., p. 91. In this essay (p. 82), Murdoch refers to Beauty as “an
occasion for ‘unselfing’”.
94. GS§368, p. 326.
95. M. Johnston, op. cit, p. 90.
97. NF-1887,9[156] (WP§296, pp. 166–167).
98. NF-1887,10[128] (WP§388, p. 209).
99. In GS§338, p. 269f (discussed below), Nietzsche writes that these igno-
rant preachers of pity “believe they have helped most when they have
helped most quickly”—that is, by dispensing analgesia. They do not
appreciate the “personal necessity of distress”, that the “path to one’s
heaven always leads through the voluptuousness of one’s own hell”.
100. GS§338, p. 271.
102. AC§7, p. 573.
103. AC§57, p. 647.
104. C.f. GM.III§28, p. 162: “Man, the bravest of animals and the one most
accustomed to suffering, does not repudiate suffering as such; he desires
it, he even seeks it out, provided he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose
of suffering”.
105. GS§338, p. 271.
144 A. Milne
106. It bears mentioning that Nietzsche admired just this hardness in

Goethe. Nietzsche wrote in Beyond Good and Evil (BGE§244, p. 178)
of Goethe’s “impatient hardness” towards German pride in their cult of
“Gemüt”, which Goethe defined as “indulgence toward the weaknesses
of others as well as one’s own”. Nietzsche, as usual, slightly but unim-
portantly misquotes Goethe here. “Nachsicht mit Schwächen, eigen und
fremden” (see M&R§340) becomes “Nachsicht mit fremden und eignen
Schwächen”.
108. BGE§225, p. 154.
109. GS§162, p. 199.
110. Nietzsche saw this perspectival character as basic. In NF-1885,36[20],
he wrote that even in the inorganic realm, an “atom of force” only ‘con-
siders’ its own “neighbourhood”, whereas distant forces get evened out.
Nietzsche writes that in this lies the “kernel of the perspectival” and
also accounts for why “a living being is ‘egoistic’ through and through”.
See also NF-1886,5[12] on the generality of “perspective optics”. This
helps us to get a sense of why Nietzsche thought that “egoism is not a
principle, but rather the one fact” NF-1883,7[256].
111. EH “Preface” §2, p. 218.
112. TI “How the ‘True World’ Finally Became a Fable”, p. 486; c.f. TI
“‘Reason’ in Philosophy” §2, p. 481.
114. NF-1884,26[231] (WP§686, p. 365).
115. NF-1887,9[30] (WP§785, pp. 412–413).
116. NF-1885,36[21] (WP§655, p. 346); c.f. NF-1886,7[9] (WP§644,
p. 342).
117. I. Murdoch, “The Sovereignty of the Good Over Other Concepts”, in
op. cit., p. 99.
118. AC§43, p. 618: “When one places life’s center of gravity not in life but
in the ‘beyond’—in nothingness—one deprives life of its center of grav-
ity altogether”. C.f. AC§58, p. 650: “with the ‘beyond’ one kills life”.
119. NF-1887,11[99] (WP§12, p. 12).
120. See for example NF-1886,7[62] (WP§331, p. 181).
121. BGE§205, pp. 124–125.
123. “Generalbeichte”: “Ja, wir haben, seis bekannt, / Wachend oft geträumet. /
Nicht geleert das frische Glas, / Wenn der Wein geschäumet”.
Bibliography
Falk, J.D., and Müller, F., Characteristics of Goethe: Vol. I, trans. S. Austin, Lea &
Blanchard, 1841.
Gilman, S.L. (ed.), Conversations with Nietzsche, trans. D. Parent, Oxford
Herzen, A., From the Other Shore, trans. M. Budberg, Oxford University
Press, 1979.
Johnston, M., Saving God: Religion after Idolatry, Princeton University
Press, 2011.
Murdoch, I., The Sovereignty of the Good, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970.
Safranski, R., Goethe: Life as a Work of Art, trans. D. Dollenmayer, Liveright
Publishing Co., 2017.
Schopenhauer, A., Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics, trans. C. Janaway,
Schrader, O., The Religion of Goethe, Adyar, 1914.
Trotsky, L., Literature and Revolution, trans. R. Strunsky, University of Michigan
Press, 1960.
7
On Being Enamoured
Some of Nietzsche’s most surprising claims about the identification of

part and whole come in the context of his discussions of fate. The most
obviously mystical images in Nietzsche’s works revolve around the eternal
recurrence. For example, in Zarathustra, we read “In every Now, being
begins; round every Here rolls the sphere There. The center is everywhere.
Bent is the path of eternity”.1 This is transformed in Nietzsche’s use from
an image of God to an image of fate, just as Spinoza’s amor dei intellectua-
lis becomes Nietzsche’s amor fati.
Nietzsche claimed in a note, “fate is an elevating thought for one who
understands that he belongs to it”.2 It was his contention that this con-
ception of fate lead to the sort of “self-esteem” which the mystics lacked.
A careful examination of Nietzsche’s fatalism reveals that his amor fati has
a close connection to the love of self.
* * *
In a note from the period of Zarathustra, Nietzsche argues that from “the
enormously chance [zufälligen] character of all combinations”, it follows
that each action has an “infinitely great influence on everything to come”.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75007-7_7
148 A. Milne
Whatever reverence a man feels for the whole of fate, “he must also dedi-
cate to himself. Ego fatum”.3 This strange thought, which Nietzsche spins
out of the recurrence,4 presents an image of the individual not as fated
but as fate itself, and implies that amor fati is the love of oneself.
Certain scholars have wrestled with this thought since the middle of
last century. In The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, Nishitani spoke of
“Nietzsche’s idea that ‘self is fate’ (ego fatum)”. Nishitani claimed a close
association between this concept, according to which “all things become
the fate of the self, and the self becomes the fate of all things”, and the
notion of karma in Buddhist thought.5
More recently, both Stambaugh and Haar have sought to make sense
of the concept of fate as identity. Stambaugh claims that Nietzsche’s con-
ception of fate is not as “something outside or above us to which we are
subject”, but rather as something “within us, as our innermost being”.6
Haar has sketched a similar interpretation, claiming that the ego is capa-
ble of experiencing itself not only as “inseparable” from “the chain of all
living beings”, but also of knowing that “it is part of the universal fatum,
that it is this fatum”.7 Elsewhere, Haar claims, “in the formula ego fatum
it is impossible to separate what belongs to the ‘subject ego’ and what
belongs to the fatum, which is no ‘object’, but more intimately the ‘sub-
ject’ than the subject”.8
I think that Stambaugh and Haar are right that ego fatum means that
the ego is not something fated, but that the ego is fate. I will try to make
sense of this position below, taking into account textual evidence that has
not been considered before. But I will also raise concerns for their inter-
pretation of fate as “innermost being” and “more intimately the ‘subject’
than the subject”. In brief, I suggest that we think of fate as identity with-
out thinking of it as ultimate identity.
* * *
The phrase “ego fatum” is dark, perhaps darker even than Heraclitus’
“ethos anthropoi daimon”.9 It is not a phrase Nietzsche uses often,10 how-
ever we do find a number of similar expressions in the drafts of Zarathustra.
In one note, we find the phrase “I as fatum [Ich als fatum]”.11 In a plan for
7 On Being Enamoured 149
the third part of Zarathustra, we read, “hymn to the primordial nature. “I

as fatum” [Hymnus auf die urbestimmte Natur. “ich als fatum”]”.12
In these notes, we also find “I am the fatum [Ich bin das Fatum]”
twice,13 one of these appearing in the same notebook as the ego fatum
fragment. The very next notebook is the one in which Nietzsche speaks
of the lack of self-esteem of the German mystics and concludes, “fate is
an elevating thought for one who understands that he belongs to it”.14 In
that same notebook,15 Nietzsche also writes the three stages on the way to
wisdom (the overcoming of morality): worship and assimilation, icono-
clasm and independence, and the great responsibility and innocence.
These of course are familiar to us as the three metamorphoses of spirit in
Zarathustra: the camel, the lion, and the child. Nietzsche says of the man
of the third and final stage that he is not “humiliated by fate: he is fate [er
ist Schicksal]”.16 Fate becomes uplifting when a person no longer feels
under it, or subjected to it, but realises that he is it.
* * *
The concept of self as fate goes a long way back in Nietzsche’s thought.
For example, in a well-known passage of The Wanderer, we read that the
fear a man experiences in the face of belief in fate is itself fate. The man
fearing fate is fearing himself:
You yourself, poor fearful man, are the implacable Moira enthroned even
above the gods that governs all that happens; you are the blessing or the
curse [Fluch] and in any event the fetters in which the strongest lies captive;
in you the whole future of the world of man is predetermined: it is of no
use for you to shudder when you look upon yourself.17
The thought that in observing fate, one is observing oneself makes it

clear that the individual is not to be thought of as acted on by fate, but
that the individual is fate itself.
In a draft for Zarathustra, Nietzsche writes that we speak falsely of
incidents and accidents, because “nothing will ever happen to you but
your own selves. And as for what you call ‘accident’ [Zufall]—you your-
selves are what falls to you and falls upon you!”.18 This sounds a great deal
150 A. Milne
like the Wanderer passage. The individual is not subject to chance, but
chance is the subject. Similarly, in the published version, Nietzsche writes,
“in the end, one experiences only oneself ”.19
In “On the Great Longing”, Zarathustra tells his soul that he has taken
from it “all obeying, knee-bending, and ‘Lord’-saying”. Rather,
Zarathustra has given his soul the names “turning of need”, “fate”, “cir-
cumference of circumferences”, “umbilical cord of time”, and “azure
bell”.20 These mystical names have been discussed at some length by other
authors,21 but let me just say something briefly about the first two. The
soul isn’t presented as determined, but rather is called “Wende der Not”, a
play on “Notwendigkeit”, the German term for necessity.22 The soul doesn’t
bend its knees in obedience to fate, for it isn’t lorded over by fate. The soul
isn’t fated at all. Rather, the soul is named fate—the soul is fate.
* * *
In Twilight, Nietzsche writes that the individual is “a piece of fatum”. He

is so intimately connected to everything else that were one to say to him
“change yourself ”, one would be demanding everything be changed, even
retroactively”.23 In a second passage, we read that “the fatality [die
Fatalität]” of man’s essence cannot be “disentangled from the fatality of
all that has been or will be”. Nietzsche continues by claiming, “one is
necessary, one is a piece of fatefulness [ein Stück Verhängnis], one belongs
to the whole, one is in the whole”.24 In a third passage, we read that the
“individual” is “an error after all” since “he is nothing by himself, no
atom, no ‘link in the chain,’ nothing merely inherited from former times;
he is the whole single line of humanity up to himself ”.25
Here we can see Nietzsche’s conception of part and whole which has
been discussed in the foregoing. The whole is not apart from the parts,
but the parts belong to the whole, they are in the whole. If we think of
Fate as the whole, then it is not something foreign that acts on one, or
even acts through one. The whole is not behind the parts, which are its
passive manifestations, but rather, the whole is in the parts, which are its
expressions.
These claims in Twilight are made even more strongly in notes from
the period. In one fragment, Nietzsche claims that “We are more than
individuals: we are the whole chain as well”.26 In this same notebook, he
writes that the individual “constitutes the entire process” of life “in its
entire course”, and not merely as its “inheritor”, but that the individual is
“the process itself ”.27 Another note reads that “the ego is… more than
merely a unit in the chain of links; it is this chain itself, entirely”.28
These ideas are bound up in Nietzsche’s great notion of inextricable
binding, the eternal recurrence of the same. As we have seen, the recur-
rence is an idea which was first described in the 1881 notebook in which
Nietzsche discusses the “error” of the individual and claims, “we are buds
on one tree”.29 It was then discussed in print in The Gay Science before
becoming the “fundamental conception” of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.30
* * *
In Zarathustra’s “Drunken Song”, we are told that to say “Yes to a single

joy” is to say “Yes too to all woe” since “all things are entangled, ensnared,
enamoured”.31 The claim that all things are “verkettet”—enchained,
chained together—sounds like the assertion of the inseparability of dis-
tinct things: if you lift one link, then the rest of the chain follows. This
view is articulated quite clearly in a note in which Nietzsche writes that
in the “total course of things… nothing exists in isolation: the smallest
things bear the greatest”.32 The word rendered “bears” here is “trägt”,
which is related to the English “drags”. Nietzsche is saying that the small-
est “part” (he simply writes das Kleinste, the smallest) drags the whole
along with it—as link does chain. The claim here seems to be that to
change one thing is to change everything,33 but Nietzsche’s view is both
subtler and more challenging than this. Nietzsche does not believe that
there are distinct things which are inseparable because he does not believe
that there are things at all.
According to Ansell-Pearson, Nietzsche’s belief in the eternal recur-
rence committed him to “the conception of matter as made up of discrete
and persistent entities”.34 Ansell-Pearson believes that the eternal recur-
rence is only possible “on the basis of such entities… which are finite in
152 A. Milne
number”, as opposed to processes or events. But Nietzsche in many places

denies the existence of such “discrete and persistent entities”, speaking for
example of beings as “complexes of events”35 and of “processes as ‘enti-
ties’”.36 The eternal recurrence of the same cannot be eternal recurrence
of the same things.37 For Nietzsche, things are conventional, and we
shouldn’t let noun-sense seduce us to nonsense.
Nietzsche conceived of a “relations world”,38 a world of becoming in
which “there are no things”.39 We may take ourselves to be carving the
world along its joints, but these joints are created by the coarseness of our
vision.40 Nietzsche did think, however, that we can speak of “degrees of
being”41—those becomings with a “slower tempo of becoming”42 being
closer to beings than those which become rapidly. Similarly, he wrote that
while “units” are “nowhere present in the nature of becoming”, we may
nonetheless speak of “atoms and monads in a relative sense”.43
In the note immediately following Nietzsche’s claim that “there are no
things”, he writes that “if A exerts an effect on B, then only as localised is
A separated from B”.44 That is, what we call cause and effect are conven-
tionally separated; they are parts of a single process. Similarly, what we
identify as links in a chain are ultimately fictions, but they are yet rela-
tively distinct individuals.
It seems one could thus say that there is only one thing, only one pro-
cess, which is conventionally broken up into all of the entities that we
recognise, all of the “seeming individuals”.45 But we have to be careful: in
what sense is that single process something singular, a unity?
* * *
It is worth noting is that in the fragments discussed above, the apparent

individual is the whole lineage, not the whole simpliciter or the whole
enchilada. One way of putting this is to say that the continuity of part
and whole suggested is vertical but not horizontal. Indeed, while the indi-
vidual is not a link but the chain, Nietzsche speaks of the “multiplicity of
these chains”.46 So, while there is an identification between part and
whole, it seems like this is a circumscribed whole: a whole line.47
Since Nietzsche does claim that all of these lines are entangled, we
might ask why he doesn’t affirm the unrestricted identity of part and
whole. One reason for this is that Nietzsche did not believe that a whole
exists. The lines are fragmented—the tangled mass of threads does not
form a single skein. There are rare exceptions to this. For example, one
note in the drafts for Zarathustra says that whether we know it or not,
“each individual acts with the entire cosmic being”.48 In the sense that
every movement of any part drags the whole with it, this is true of all
Nietzsche’s remarks about the recurrence. But the idea of a “cosmic being”
is very unusual for Nietzsche, and is plainly contradicted by his denial
that the whole is an organism,49 such as when he writes in a late note, “the
world is not an organism at all, but chaos”.50
In this same note, Nietzsche writes, “a total process… does not exist at
all”. That is, the one is not a one, a unity. In another fragment from the
same notebook, we read that the belief in “some sort of unity” or “monism”
gives man a “profound feeling” of his connection to “some whole which
is infinitely superior to him”: a deity of which “he sees himself as a mode”.
But Nietzsche makes plain that he believes in no such whole. We should
not imagine that a man’s value is dependent on some “infinitely valuable
whole” which “works through him”.51
In a slightly earlier note, Nietzsche says plainly, “there is no all”.52 The
claim here is that there is no whole apart from the parts, and by virtue of
which the parts gain their value. Furthermore, in saying that there is no
totalising “unity”, Nietzsche is affirming a view of the world which is not
only lacking in “discrete and persistent entities”, but also lacking a coher-
ent one of which the many are parts. That is, as I said earlier, the parts are
not parts, not discrete; the whole is not whole, not unified.
In conceiving of the individual as fate, Nietzsche is not saying that the
individual is a mode of fate. Fate is not something singular that manifests
as the many. I think this is an issue for the interpretations of both Haar
and Stambaugh in considering fate as something like “ultimate identity”.
For Stambaugh, fate is one’s “innermost being”,53 and for Haar, fate is
“more intimately the ‘subject’ than the subject”.54
Haar’s line in particular echoes Eckhart’s claim that “God is closer to
me than I am to myself ”.55 This is problematic because it is based on a
conception of a one behind the many. It claims that the part is more the
154 A. Milne
whole than it is the parts, but this makes no sense unless the whole is
apart (or has a part apart56) from the parts. This is just what Nietzsche
plainly denies. The value of the parts is not that they are modes or mani-
festations of the whole;57 rather, the parts are the whole.
* * *
In The Wanderer and his Shadow, Nietzsche speaks of “Turkish fatalism”.

Much later, in the Genealogy and Ecce Homo, Nietzsche discusses “Russian
fatalism”. Though Nietzsche never draws an explicit contrast between
these two forms of fatalism, it may help to do so in order to bring out
Nietzsche’s own position.58
Nietzsche described Turkish fatalism as embodying the “fundamental
error” of “setting man and fate over against one another as two separate
things”. The Turkish fatalist sees fate as something external to himself,
and he tries to “resist fate and seek to frustrate it”. Ultimately, however,
the Turkish fatalist finds that fate always wins out, and so comes to believe
that it is most reasonable to become resigned. Nietzsche claimed that this
view is mistaken since in reality “every man is himself a piece of fate”.
Thus, when the Turkish fatalist believes he is resisting fate, it is “precisely
fate that is fulfilling itself ”. The “struggle is imaginary”: it is fate that here
resists itself. Equally, when one resigns oneself to fate, this is fate that has
become resigned. Man is himself “the implacable Moira” which, not
knowing his identity with it, he fears and seeks to resist or resign him-
self to.59
The Turkish fatalist feels lorded over by fate. He experiences fate as
pushing him around. After a period of resistance, he comes to believe that
the only sensible thing to do is to resign himself to fate. Nietzsche’s claim
is that this is itself futile: the Turkish fatalist cannot resign himself to fate,
for this implies that he is something separate from fate. The feeling of
determinacy rests on a mistaken understanding of agency, of identity.
When one apprehends that one is “enclosed within fate”, that one is a
“piece of fate”—that, in Nietzsche’s later terms, one “belongs to” fate60—
then fate loses its fearful character: one ought not be afraid of that
which one is.
In the Genealogy, Nietzsche speaks of the Russian’s “stout-hearted

fatalism without rebellion” which gives then “an advantage over us
Westerners in dealing with life”. This Russian fatalism is treated more
extensively in Ecce Homo in Nietzsche’s discussion of the relationship
between sickness and ressentiment:
The sick person has only one great remedy: I call it Russian fatalism, that
fatalism without revolt which is exemplified by a Russian soldier who, find-
ing a campaign too strenuous, finally lies down in the snow. No longer to
accept anything at all, no longer to take anything, no longer to absorb
anything—to cease reacting altogether. This fatalism is not always merely
the courage to die; it can also preserve life under the most perilous condi-
tions by reducing the metabolism, slowing it down, as a kind of will to
hibernate.61
The basic thought is that a sick person, through futile resistance of

their illness, will become used up too quickly. The sense that the situation
could be otherwise produces a futile rebellion, and the inevitable failure
generates ressentiment. In turn, this ressentiment will consume the sufferer,
being toxic for such an organism. As Nietzsche says, “ressentiment is what
is forbidden par excellence for the sick—it is their specific evil—unfortu-
nately also their most natural inclination”. This ressentiment generated by
futile resistance will ultimately amplify the sick person’s morbidity. The
possibility of recovery lies in apprehending this futility and hence ceasing
all resistance. Nietzsche saw this as a useful strategy during his own ill-
ness, writing, “Accepting oneself as if fated, not wishing oneself ‘differ-
ent’—that is in such cases great reason itself ”.
* * *
In her essay “Amor Dei and Amor Fati”, Stambaugh writes:
Let us now make the linguistic distinction that Nietzsche did not make and
call this Turkish fatalism fatalism as opposed to what he describes under the
term Russian fatalism, which we shall henceforth call fate. Fate is his own
156 A. Milne
positive concept; fatalism is his polemical target. He loved fate, not

fatalism.62
I believe that Stambaugh is right to claim that Nietzsche’s conception

of fate “lies in understanding oneself as fate”. However, I think that she
errs in construing this as equivalent with Russian fatalism. I do not deny
that there are some passages in Nietzsche’s works that sound like Russian
fatalism. For example, in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche says that “no trace of
struggle can be demonstrated in my life; I am the opposite of a heroic
nature”.63 Also, in a draft for the paean to Goethe in Twilight,
Nietzsche writes:
In Goethe a kind of almost joyous and trusting fatalism that does not revolt,
that does not flag, that seeks to form a totality out of himself, in the faith
that only in the totality everything redeems itself and appears good and
justified.64
But Goethe’s own claims clarify Nietzsche’s meaning here. Goethe

spoke of his own acceptance of fate “without caprice or reluctance [ohne
Willkühr und Widerstreben]”.65 Elsewhere, Goethe wrote. “our whole art-
istry consists in ceasing to cling to existence so that we may exist”.66 That
is, it has to do with not seeking self-preservation. This is echoed in Goethe’s
West-East Divan poem “Blessed Longing”, where he writes that we must
be prepared to “die and become” lest we live as “merely dreary guests / on
the dark earth”. The point seems to be that embracing one’s fate requires
that one does not resist suffering.
A strong indication that Nietzsche’s fatalism is not “Russian fatalism”
is that his discussion of the latter is closely linked with Tolstoy’s reading
of non-resistance as Jesus’ central teaching.67 Insofar as the Redeemer
type, as discussed in The Antichrist,68 fails to articulate Nietzsche’s ideal,
so too does Russian fatalism. Certainly, Nietzsche saw this non-resistance
as appropriate—“even necessary”69—for certain times and types, but it
was not his ideal.
Nietzsche’s emphasis on the aptness of Russian fatalism “in such cases”
of illness is important. Non-resistance is what we might call a seasonal
virtue. It bears comparison with Nietzsche’s discussion of a stable being
behind appearances as a “winter doctrine” which is “a good thing for ster-

ile times” and “a fine comfort for hibernators and hearth-squatters”.70 It
is a notion that allows one to cope, to survive. But Nietzsche saw survival
as an appropriate aim only in periods of distress.71 This non-resistance is
a “peace as a means to new wars”.72 So what is the fatalism appropriate to
more fertile seasons?
During periods of sickness, Nietzsche forbade himself feelings of
resentment as “harmful”, and upon recuperation “forbade myself such
feelings as beneath me”.73 When one lacks the strength, attempting to
resist will wear one out. When one is strong, one can overcome resis-
tances,74 and in such cases, resistance generates health, not ressentiment.75
The sick must see themselves “as if fated”, whereas the healthy must see
themselves as fate. But, as Stambaugh asks, “what does it mean to under-
stand oneself as fate?”.76 This goes to the heart of the matter, and raises
the question of the relation of whole to part, and one to many. For the
Russian fatalist, fate is something to which one submits. The whole is
something outside of the parts to which the parts must conform.77 In speak-
ing of one’s ultimate identification with fate, Stambaugh suggests an
identification with the whole as opposed to the part.
Immediately after describing Russian fatalism, Nietzsche writes, “war
is another matter”. He claims that “being able to be an enemy, being an
enemy” is a quality that “belongs to every strong nature”, and perhaps
“presupposes a strong nature”.78 Whereas the weak are incapable of resis-
tance, a strong nature “needs objects of resistance” and hence “looks for
what resists”. The strong desire resistance, while, as Nietzsche says else-
where, those in distress experience all resistance as an “unendurable
displeasure”.79
Individuality involves resistance. So the question is immediately raised:
how can an individual successfully resist fate if they are fate? What one
resists is not fate as a whole, but rather those “pieces of fate” that are other
“supposed individuals”.80 Far from treating the other as oneself, Nietzsche
here talks of treating the other as enemy. This idea, along with the praise
of the warlike as an expression of health, may suggest all of the most per-
nicious and pugnacious interpretations of will to power. We should not
be too eager to shirk those readings, which are closer to the truth than
158 A. Milne
presenting Nietzsche as advocate of the Bodhisattva ideal. But we should

also try to understand the conception of antipathy that is at play here.
In the section of Ecce Homo in which Nietzsche discusses Russian fatal-
ism, he writes that one ought not simply “master whatever happens to
resist”. Nietzsche says, “one has no business waging war” against that for
which one feels contempt. Rather, the task is to seek out an “equal oppo-
nent” against whom one must pit all of one’s strength and suppleness.81
The idea of war considered here is that of the agon. It is in these struggles
or contests at the limits of one’s capacities that one expands oneself, over-
comes oneself, and hence enriches the whole which one is.
In Twilight, Nietzsche claims to have “spiritualized hostility” and says,
“one has renounced the great life when one renounces war”. Nietzsche
regards pity as life-depleting as it leads towards greater unification, while
hostility enriches the whole by leading to greater diversification. Rather
than merging with the whole, the warring parts enrich it through their
agon, becoming ever more sharply differentiated, and interacting to cre-
ate patterns ever more elaborate. This is the basis of Nietzsche’s “pro-
found appreciation of the value of having enemies”. In a sense, one’s
enemy is a partner or collaborator. It is against their resistance that one
flourishes. There is no contempt here; on the contrary, Nietzsche writes,
“attack is in my case a proof of good will, sometimes even of gratitude”.82
This praise of what is warlike is not, then, for something gravely adver-
sarial, but rather it is to be understood as something sportive, even a kind
of play. But this is not to mean it is not to be taken seriously. As Nietzsche
said in The Gay Science, it is in the realm of play that “great seriousness
really begins”.83
* * *
In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche discussed his (and presumably our)
time’s misconception of the philosopher. We falsely praise as wise the
man who finds ways of “getting well out of a wicked game”, and finding
for himself a sanitised, “desensualised” climate in which he can live “pru-
dently and apart”, dwelling in comfort and peace. Nietzsche argues on
the contrary that philosophy ought to heighten one’s engagement with
life. He claims that the “genuine philosopher” is one “feels the burden
and the duty of a hundred attempts and temptations of life—he risks
himself constantly, he plays the wicked game”.84
Nietzsche described himself in Ecce Homo as “the first tragic philoso-
pher”, saying that before him, the Dionysian had never been transposed
into a “philosophical pathos”, and that “tragic wisdom was lacking”.85
This tragic wisdom involves a sense of polarity: that a “one-sided” embrace
of life is in fact a negation of life, and that if one is to affirm life, one must
affirm even the most questionable aspects of existence. This wisdom also
includes a sense of one’s identity with fate which removes any distance
between oneself and life, between oneself and the “wicked game” that
some seek to avoid. Having seen the impossibility of stepping aside,
Nietzsche had come to believe that wisdom consists, as he put it in
Genealogy, in a “penetration into reality”, rather than a “flight from” it.86
In a note from the period of Zarathustra, Nietzsche claimed “I have
discovered Hellenism: they believed in the eternal recurrence! That is the
mystery faith!”.87 The very previous fragment is the one in which
Nietzsche defined the Dionysian as the “temporary identification with
the principle of life”.88 Nietzsche saw the Dionysian mysteries of Ancient
Greece as involving this kind of experiential identification of the part
with the whole—and here he claims that what was revealed in the
Mysteries was the reality of the recurrence, and hence the mutual entan-
glement of all “individuals”. With the Greeks, this temporary identifica-
tion did not lead to the deemphasising of everything individual. On the
contrary, in the note on the Greek’s belief in the recurrence, Nietzsche
wrote that nowhere in history have people gathered in such numbers to
“perfect their individual characteristics [or peculiarities, Eigentümlichkeit]
through competition”.89
In Twilight, Nietzsche again links the Greek mysteries with the eternal
recurrence, and claims that “the basic fact [Grundtatsache]” of the Greek
instinct finds expression only in the mysteries and “the psychology of the
Dionysian state”.90 The Greek’s religious impulse towards “the eternity of
[this] life” leads to pain being “pronounced holy”, with the mother’s birth
pangs “hallowing all pain”. Here Nietzsche points to the relatively well-
attested view that the initiation into the Mysteries involved witnessing a
woman giving birth. The initiates’ “temporary identification with the
160 A. Milne
principle of life” is here described as being “oneself the eternal joy in

becoming”.91 This identification with becoming leads to the affirmation
of the individuating instinct, of the “will to life”.
* * *
In the 1881 notebook where eternal the recurrence was first discussed,
Nietzsche wrote, “Far above Wagner I have seen music in tragedy—and
far above Schopenhauer heard the music in the tragedy of existence”.92
For Schopenhauer, music was an escape from phenomena into the pure
appearance of the Will. For Nietzsche, existence itself was treated as an
“aesthetic phenomenon”,93 and one at which he was prepared to shout
“da capo!”.94 The tragic insight of the recurrence leads not to Schopenhauer’s
praise of detachment and unselfing, but the “opposite ideal”, that of the
“most high-spirited, alive, and world-affirming human being”. This
Dionysian “religious affirmation of life, life whole and not denied or
halved”,95 involves, of course, the embrace of individuation and valuation.
Nietzsche’s early ideal was to stand in an aesthetic relationship to life,
as if one was always watching a play unfolding.96 But Nietzsche came to
believe that one simply cannot witness the game, one cannot spectate.
Even one’s apparent non-resistance is simply a kind of participation—and
it is a kind that diminishes the whole. Nietzsche’s tragic wisdom involves
insight into one’s relationship to the whole, to fate—insight which has
the effect of stopping one from seeking self-preservation and enabling
one to undertake great tasks through which life itself is enriched.
Tragic wisdom is not the Oedipal knowledge of one’s fate, but rather
knowledge that one is fate. One is willing to play the ‘wicked game’
because one knows oneself to be nothing other than that game. One
knows that one cannot stand aside from the whole which one ‘belongs to’,
from that game which one is. But in saying that one is the game itself, we
must understand that the whole is not manifesting itself as a part, but
expressing itself in a part. While the Turkish fatalist attempts to take sides
against fate, the Russian fatalist tries to take the side of fate. The Dionysian
fatalist sees the error in treating fate as a side. The whole exists nowhere
but in the parts, Fate nowhere but in those ‘“pieces of fate’. If one is to
yea-say the whole, one must yea-say one’s individuality.
While the “German mystic” lacks “self-esteem” and regards his indi-
viduality as wormlike, Nietzsche claims, “fate is an elevating thought for
one who understands that he belongs to it”.97 The Dionysian identifica-
tion with fate does not lead one to renounce one’s plans and projects. On
the contrary, the identification of part and whole that comes with accept-
ing oneself as fate leads to the sense of the “tremendously great signifi-
cance” of the individual as an elaboration of fate,98 and hence to egoism
with a good conscience.
Notes
1. Z, pp. 217–218. Nietzsche most likely encountered this thought in
Pascal’s Pensées rather than similar expressions in Eckhart, let alone the
Liber XXIV philosophorum. In §230, Pascal writes of “the reality of
things” that it is “an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and its
circumference nowhere [une sphère infinie dont le centre est partout, la
circonférence nulle part]”. B. Pascal, Pensées, trans. H. Levi, Oxford
University Press, 1995, p. 66 (§230). Some editions of the French do not
have infinite and so just read: “C’est une sphère dont le centre est partout, la
circonférence nulle part”.
2. NF-1884,26[442].
3. NF-1884,25[158].
4. In particular, the discussion of “looking backwards” and seeing that
everything which one does has an effect on not only what will happen
but on what has happened, relates to the idea of “willing backwards” in
Zarathustra (see esp. “On Redemption”).
5. See: K. Nishitani, The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, op. cit., pp. 49–50.
Nishitani treated “ego fatum” as implying that “the world moves at one
with the self, and the self moves at one with the world”.
6. J. Stambaugh, “The Other Nietzsche”, in The Other Nietzsche,
op. cit., p. 141.
7. M. Haar, “Critique and Subversion of Subjectivity”, in Nietzsche and
Metaphysics, op. cit., p. 87.
8. M. Haar, “Life and Natural Totality”, in ibid, pp. 109–110.
162 A. Milne
9. The Art and Thought of Heraclitus, CXIV. Kahn translates this as “Man’s

character is his fate” (pp. 80–81, commentary pp. 260–261). It would be
easy enough to interpret these as synonymous, but my suggestion is that
they are quite different indeed.
10. Stambaugh refers to Nietzsche’s “repeated use of the phrase ego fatum”
(“Zufall”, Philosophy Today, vol. 43, 1999, p. 97). C.f. Birault: “Ego
fatum, Nietzsche often says” (“Beatitude in Nietzsche”, in D. Allison
(ed.), The New Nietzsche, MIT Press, 1985, p. 225).
11. NF-1883,16[83], c.f. [64].
12. NF-1883,20[3]. The thought of fate as “primordial nature” could sug-
gest that fate is the “principle of life” with which, Nietzsche tells us in a
contemporaneous note, one temporarily identifies in the Dionysian state
(NF-1883,8[14] (WP§417, p. 224)). The view of fate as primordial
nature is repeated in another fragment, NF-1883,22[2]: “Lob der
urbestimmten Natura ls fatum”. In both of these plans, as in
NF-1883,16[83] and NF-1883,17[69], this hymn is slated to end the
third part of Zarathustra, as the “Yea and Amen Song” does in the pub-
lished version. This position is of significance given that on Loeb’s com-
pelling reading of Zarathustra, this is the chronological end of the book.
See P. Loeb, The Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, op. cit., p. 86f.
13. NF-1883,21[1] and NF-1884,25[249].
14. NF-1884,26[442].
15. In this notebook, see also [181] where Nietzsche titles a “Hymn to fate
and the happiness of irresponsibility [Hymnus auf das fatum und das Glück
der Unverantwortlichkeit]”.
16. NF-1884,26[47–48].
17. WS§61, p. 325 [TM].
18. NF-1883,22[1]. There is a wordplay here with Zufall (chance or acci-
dent) as falls-to.
19. Z “The Wanderer”, p. 152. Here this identity seems to be something of
an achievement, hence Zarathustra writes, “the time is gone when mere
accidents could still happen to me”. This passage bears comparison with
Hegel: “whatever it is that the individual does, and whatever happens to
him, that he has done himself, and he is that himself ” (G.W.F. Hegel,
Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller, Oxford University Press,
1977, p. 242). It is not difficult to see here why Nishitani saw the idea of
“ego fatum” as “close to the Buddhist idea of karma” (Nishitani,
op. cit., p. 50).
20. Z “On the Great Longing”, pp. 221–222. [TM: WK had “cessation of

need” for “Wende der Not” and “destiny” for “Schicksal”]. That the soul is
named here “azure bell” helps to explain the curious conversation with
the heavens in “At Noon”.
21. Stambaugh discusses these names in “Amor Dei and Amor Fati” and
“The Other Nietzsche” (both essays collected in The Other Nietzsche),
expanding on Nishitani’s discussion in §4.3 of The Self-Overcoming of
Nihilism.
22. This term is also used in “On the Gift-Giving Virtue” and “On Old and
New Tablets”. See The Other Nietzsche, op. cit., p. 141, where Stambaugh
claims this wordplay “distances necessity from any kind of determinism
and freshly reinterprets it as turning a need (Not) around to work for
you. It is a conception of fate, destiny, and necessity not as something
outside or above us to which we are subject, but as something within us,
as our innermost being”.
24. TI “The Four Great Errors” §8, p. 500 [TM to reflect the original italics:
“man ist im Ganzen”].
26. NF-1887,9[7] (WP§687, p. 366).
27. NF-1887,9[30] (WP§785, pp. 412–413).
28. NF-1887,10[136] (WP§682, p. 361) [TM].
29. NF-1881,11[7].
30. EH “Why I Write Such Good Books” Z§1, p. 295.
32. NF-1886,7[62] (WP§331, p. 180). The context here is Nietzsche’s claim
that every statement to the effect that some particular thing should have
been different is a condemnation on the total course of things, since
everything is linked. C.f. [2] in the same notebook, where there is a frag-
ment similar to those I discuss below: “Man is not only a single indi-
vidual but one particular line of the total living organic world [Der
Mensch ist nicht nur ein Individuum, sondern das Fortlebende Gesammt-
Organische in Einer bestimmten Linie]”.
33. Another passage that suggests a similar reading is NF-1886,7[38]
(WP§1032, p. 532): “nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves
nor in things; and if our soul trembled with happiness and sounded like
a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one
event—and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called
164 A. Milne
good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed” (c.f. EH “Why I Write Such

Good Books” BT§2, p. 272: “Nothing in existence may be subtracted,
nothing is dispensable”).
34. K. Ansell-Pearson, “Nietzsche’s Brave New World of Force”, Pli, vol. 9,
2000, pp. 33–34. Pearson is here engaging with Whitlock, who has done
a lot to show Nietzsche’s conceptual debt to Boscovich. See: G. Whitlock,
“Roger J. Boscovich and Friedrich Nietzsche: A Re-Examination”, in
B. Babich (ed.), Nietzsche, Epistemology, and Philosophy of Science, Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 1999, pp. 187–201; and G. Whitlock, ‘Examining
Nietzsche’s “Time Atom Theory” Fragment from 1873’, Nietzsche-
Studien, Band 26, 1997, pp. 350–360. Boscovich had offered a refuta-
tion of the corpuscular atom, and his views pointed towards a physics
that was at bottom dynamic, or rather, a physics that didn’t bottom out
in any thing. Nietzsche’s engagement with (and attempt to go beyond)
Boscovich’s views was enduring. See for example, NF-1884,26[432],
BGE§12 (pp. 19–20), NF-1888,14[79] (WP§634–635, pp. 338–339).
One point that causes pressing issues for Ansell-Pearson’s interpretation
is that on Nietzsche’s view, the number of becoming elements is not
constant” (NF-1886,7[54] (WP§617, p. 331)). In the final line,
Kaufmann has added the word “elements”—the German is simply “keine
constante Zahl der Werdenden”. We could say, “the number of those
becoming is not constant”; or perhaps both more accurately and more
clumsily, “the number of becomings is not constant”. C.f. NF-1885,36[23]
(WP§520, p. 281), where Nietzsche writes, “the “number” of beings is
itself in flux”.
35. NF-1887,9[91] (WP§552, p. 298).
36. NF-1885,36[21] (WP§655, p. 346).
37. GS§109 (p. 168) is the first place the E.R. is mentioned: “the whole
musical box repeats eternally its tune”. This section is very important for
it contains a denial of things (and of matter itself ), and says, “let us
beware of thinking that the world eternally creates new things”. We
should also beware of thinking that it eternally creates the same things. It
is processes that recur, patterns of force. I do not think that Nietzsche’s
view here causes insoluble problems for his theory of the eternal recur-
rence, but I cannot hope to argue that here.
38. NF-1888,14[93] (WP§568, p. 306).
39. NF-1888,14[79] (WP§634-5, pp. 337–339). Here the ego is given as
the first illusory “thing” on which our general belief in things is based.
But, as we have seen above, it does not follow from this that egoism (i.e.
the privileging of one’s centre of gravity) is an error. C.f. TI “‘Reason’ in
Philosophy” §5 (pp. 482–483): “the concept of being follows, and is
derivative of, the concept of ego” and TI “The Four Great Errors” §3
(p. 495).
40. NF-1887,9[62] (WP§580, p. 312).
41. NF-1887,10[18] (WP§485, p. 268).
42. NF-1887,9[62] (WP§580, p. 312).
43. NF-1887,11[73] (WP§715, p. 380). The immediately following note
[74] is the one denying that the world is an organism. C.f. [201].
44. NF-1888,14[80] (TLN p. 247; WP§693 (p. 369) excludes this line).
45. NF-1881,11[7].
46. NF-1887,10[136] (WP§682, p. 361).
47. The discreteness of this line perhaps immediately sounds problematical
given the conventional character of things (a line sounds decidedly like a
thing, insofar as it excludes other lines). I hope what I say below offers
some suggestion as to how this might be resolved.
48. NF-1883,15[55].
49. This is not only a later idea. Indeed, this thought goes back in Nietzsche
to the 1881 notebook discussed earlier, where he says that we need to
think of “the universe… as a whole as being as far as possible from an
organism” NF-1881,11[201]; C.f. also GS§109 (p. 167): “Let us beware
of thinking that the world is a living being. Where should it expand? On
what should it feed?” (Nietzsche would later offer ‘on itself ’ as an answer
the last question: “its excrements are its food” NF-1888,14[188]
(WP§1066, p. 548)).
50. NF-1887,11[74] (WP§711, pp. 378–379). Another important aspect of
Nietzsche’s denial of a whole is in his denial of a “great sensorium” or a
“total sensorium”. This can be found in Twilight, where he writes: “The
world does not form a unity either as a sensorium or as ‘spirit’” (TI “The
Four Great Errors” §8, p. 501), and also in the notes: “It seems to me
important that one should get rid of the all, the unity, some force, some-
thing unconditioned; otherwise one will never cease regarding it as the
highest court of appeal and baptizing it ‘God’. One must shatter the all;
unlearn respect for the all; take what we have given to the unknown and
the whole and give it back to what is nearest, what is ours. […] Therefore:
there is no all, there is no great sensorium or inventarium or storehouse
of force” (NF-1886,7[62] (WP§331, p. 181)). In another note, Nietzsche
166 A. Milne
writes of the “fundamental mistake” of positing consciousness as “the

standard and condition of life” instead of “as a tool and particular aspect
of the total life”. He says that it is this “erroneous perspective of a parte
ad totum” that leads philosophers to imagine “a total consciousness”
which is “involved in all life in will… a ‘spirit, God’” (NF-1887,10[137]
(WP§707, p. 376)). The sensorium is the place where sensory informa-
tion is unified, the common sense. Here, Nietzsche is clearly denying a
transpersonal sensorium, but this is not unrelated to his discussion of the
role of consciousness in the individual (note the similar language to the
previous fragment): “Usually, one takes consciousness itself as the gen-
eral sensorium and supreme court; nonetheless, it is only a means of
communication” (NF-1887,11[145] (WP§524, p. 284)). All of this
relates to Nietzsche’s conception that “the living is merely a type of what
is dead, and a very rare type” (GS§109, pp. 167–168)—to our overesti-
mation of the role of consciousness.
51. NF-1887,11[99] (WP§12, p. 12).
52. NF-1886,7[62] (WP§331, p. 181): “It seems to me important that one
should get rid of the all, the unity, some force, something uncondi-
tioned; otherwise one will never cease regarding it as the highest court of
appeal and baptizing it “God”. One must shatter the all; unlearn respect
for the all; take what we have given to the unknown and the whole and
give it back to what is nearest, what is ours. […] Therefore: there is no
all, there is no great sensorium or inventarium or storehouse of force”.
op. cit., p. 141.
54. M. Haar, “Life and Natural Totality”, in Nietzsche and Metaphysics,
op. cit., pp. 109–110.
56. As we saw above, this is Eckhart’s “panentheistic” view according to
which there the parts are in God, and God is in the parts, but the parts
do not exhaust God. God has a “ground” which is his “noblest part”. See
Complete Mystical Works, sermon 1, p. 30.
57. NF-1887,11[99] (WP§12, p. 12).
58. I follow Stambaugh in drawing this contrast, though my interpretation
is quite contrary to hers. See: J. Stambaugh, “Amor Dei and Amor Fati”,
in The Other Nietzsche, op. cit., pp. 75–93.
59. WS§61, p. 325 [TM: Hollingdale gave us “Mohammedan fatalism” for
“Türkenfatalismus”].
60. NF-1884,26[442].
61. EH “Why I Am So Wise” §6, pp. 230–231.
62. J. Stambaugh, “Amor Dei and Amor Fati”, in The Other Nietzsche,
op. cit., pp. 81–82.
64. NF-1887,9[178] (WP§95, p. 60), emphasis mine.
65. Letter to Willemer, Oct. 6, 1815. Though the letter is addressed to
Johann Jakob Willemer, it is more probably directed to his foster-
daughter-cum-wife, Marianne Willemer, from whom Goethe had to
flee. Marianne shared Goethe’s passion for Hafez, and it was she who
inspired much of Goethe’s West-East Divan, the Suleika to his Hatem.
The reasons for Goethe’s hasty departure are unclear, but Safranski’s dis-
cussion suggests it had nothing to do with the Willemers, but rather to
do with the Duke. See: R. Safranski, Goethe: Life as a Work of Art,
chap. 30.
66. M&R§302, p. 36 [TM].
67. Nietzsche had read My Religion in its French translation (see the tran-
scriptions in NF-1887,11). In the second chapter, Tolstoy describes,
“resist not evil” as “verily the key to the whole mystery”. See: L. Tolstoy,
My Religion, trans. H. Smith, Thomas Y. Crowell & Co, 1885, p. 17.
68. Nietzsche follows Tolstoy’s reading in AC§29, pp. 600–601.
69. AC§39, p. 613: “such a life [as Jesus’] is still possible today, for certain
people even necessary”.
70. Z “On Old and New Tablets” §8, p. 201.
71. C.f. GS§349, pp. 291–292.
72. Z “On War and Warriors”, p. 47.
73. EH “Why I Am So Wise” §6, p. 231.
74. See the discussion of the dynamics of this in B. Reginster, The Affirmation
of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism, Cambridge, Harvard
University Press, 2009, pp. 133–139.
75. C.f. GM.I§13, p. 45, AC§2, p. 570.
76. J. Stambaugh, “Amor Dei and Amor Fati”, in The Other Nietzsche,
op. cit., p. 82.
77. To be able to “accept” fate—that is, to not resist it—we must distinguish
ourselves from fate. Though for Nietzsche this is a mistake, as we have
seen, such a misconception is perhaps invaluable for one who is sick, for
he cannot trust his own organism and so entrusts it to the whole—not
seeing that his illness just is an expression of that whole.
168 A. Milne
78. EH “Why I Am So Wise” §7, pp. 231–232.

79. AC§30, p. 602. Emphasis added.
80. This uses the language of NF-1881,11[7], but once again, I caution
against seeming this as the mere semblance of individuality, as if their
being the whole were somehow more true than their being parts.
81. EH “Why I Am So Wise” §7, p. 232.
82. TI “Morality as Anti-Nature” §3, pp. 488–489. C.f. NF-1885,36[21]
(WP§655, p. 346).
83. GS§382, p. 347.
84. BGE§205, pp. 124–125.
85. EH “Why I Write Such Good Books” BT§3, p. 273. The sole possible
precursor Nietzsche considers here is Heraclitus. Nietzsche points not
only to Heraclitus’ possible belief in the recurrence (of which Nietzsche
finds traces in the Stoics), but to his general sense of polarity: that if one
is to affirm creation, one must affirm destruction.
86. GM.II§24, p. 96.
87. NF-1883,8[15].
88. NF-1883,8[14].
89. NF-1883,8[15]. This mutual perfection through agon is of significance
to what we have been discussing with regard to the parts enriching the
whole through hostility.
90. TI “What I Owe to the Ancients” §4, pp. 561–562. Here Nietzsche
writes that in excluding anything “orgiastic” from the Greek soul, Goethe
revealed that he “did not understand the Greeks”. Nietzsche is here chal-
lenging Winckelmann’s (and Goethe’s) characterisation of Ancient
Greece as “noble simplicity, calm grandeur [edle Einfalt, stille Grösse]”.
He had already done so in The Birth of Tragedy, seeing Winckelmann and
Goethe’s emphasis on proportion and harmony as Apollonian, and over-
looked the Dionysian element of Greek thought. Plainly, this criticism is
on point, though we should not deny that Goethe’s conception of the
Greeks did include an awful element, as seen in Phorcyas and the
Mothers in the second part of Faust. Moreover, Goethe’s 1817 poem
“Urworte. Orphisch” presents a much richer picture of the Greek soul.
This poem develops out of Goethe’s engagement with the views of
J.G.J. Hermann. C.f. CWG, Feb. 16, 1827 on scholars like Meyer going
beyond Winckelmann.
91. TI “What I Owe to the Ancients” §5, pp. 562–563.
92. NF-1881,11[257].
93. ASC§5, p. 22.

94. BGE§56, p. 68.
95. NF-1888,14[89] (WP§1052, p. 542).
96. BT§8, p. 64: “At bottom, the aesthetic phenomenon is simple: let any-
one have the ability to behold continually a vivid play and to live con-
stantly surrounded by hosts of spirits, and he will be a poet”. C.f.
NF-1881,11[285] for a sense of how concretely he conceived of this
“divine play” in his BT period.
97. NF-1884,26[442].
98. NF-1887,9[30] (WP§785, pp. 412–413).
Bibliography
Ansell-Pearson, K., “Nietzsche’s Brave New World of Force”, Pli, vol. 9,
2000, pp. 6–35.
Eckhart, The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart, ed. and trans.
M.O.’C. Walshe, Crossroad Publishing, 2007.
Haar, M., Nietzsche and Metaphysics, trans. M. Gendre, SUNY Press, 1996.
Heraclitus, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus, ed. and trans. C.H. Kahn,
Nishitani, K., The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, trans. G. Parkes with S. Aihara,
SUNY Press, 1990.
Stambaugh, J., The Other Nietzsche, SUNY Press, 1994.
———, “Zufall”, Philosophy Today, vol. 43, 1999, pp. 95–99.
Tolstoy, L., My Religion, trans. H. Smith, Thomas Y. Crowell & Co, 1885.
8
Hafez Shrugs the Cloak
The influence of the fourteenth century Persian poet Hafez

(1350–1390CE) on Nietzsche is often noted in passing, but has never
been explored in any depth. Given Nietzsche’s sustained engagement
with Hafez in his last lucid years, this influence begs to be addressed.
Those concerned with Nietzsche’s philosophy of religion should take a
particular interest in Nietzsche’s relationship to Hafez.
While a significant amount of scholarly attention has been paid to
putative affinities between Nietzsche and Meister Eckhart, almost none
has been given to Nietzsche and Hafez. Yet Hafez was a mystic with
whom Nietzsche engaged more often, and far more positively, than he
did with Eckhart. Furthermore, Hafez is exemplary of many features of
the sort of spirituality which I have discussed in the preceding chapters,
in which a mystical sense of the identity of part and whole is not linked
to a religion of renunciation, but rather to a good conscience in all sensu-
ality and individuality.
Nietzsche mentions Hafez in four published works: Beyond Good and
Evil, book five of The Gay Science, The Genealogy of Morals, and Nietzsche
Contra Wagner. There are also a few remarks in Nietzsche’s notebooks
from 1884–1888, including a poem addressed to Hafez. I shall look into
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75007-7_8
172 A. Milne
each of these references in turn, but before doing so, I will attempt to
make clear the intellectual context of Nietzsche’s encounter by describing
the reception of Hafez by his predecessors—including Hammer, Daumer,
Goethe, and Emerson.
Each of these interpreters rejected the pious prigs’ tendency of sheiking
and sufisticating Hafez into some spiritual mould, allegorising his poetry
and transmuting its sensualist sentiment into otherworldly nonsense.
Interpreting Hafez songs of earthly love straightforwardly, these readers
followed Hafez himself in despising the sanctimonious cant of the reli-
gious set. Yet they did not deny the strong mystical aspect to Hafez’
poetry, seeing that there was something deeply spiritual in his attempt to
“drain life to the lees”, though the spiritual here is not the ascetic’s subli-
mation of the sensual, but its consummation.
Nietzsche wrote, “the most spiritual men… are sensualists in the best
faith”.1 For Nietzsche, there was never a question of interpreting Hafez as
anything other than an exemplar of his own Dionysian ideal: he saw in
Hafez a “well-constituted” man, a “splendid animal” who had “deified
the body”2 and embraced the “unstable equilibrium”3 of the full range of
human sentiment as a seduction to existence, and a “blissfully mocking”4
attitude reflecting the greatest abundance.
In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche said that he wanted nothing to do with reli-
gions, which are “affairs of the rabble”. Nietzsche feared—and justifiably
so, as it turns out—that his words would be taken as holy, and wrote that
he would rather be a buffoon than a holy man.5 Yet elsewhere, Nietzsche
described “ingenious buffoonery” as the “highest form of spirituality”—
and here again saw Hafez as exemplary.6 An exploration of Nietzsche’s
reception of Hafez will thus improve our understanding of Nietzsche’s
conception of a Dionysian spirituality.
* * *
Nietzsche probably read Hafez in translation by both Hammer and

Daumer. While Hammer’s translation of the Divan is not listed in the
catalogue of Nietzsche’s books,7 this is no reason to think that he never
owned a copy of this text.8 Published in 1812, it was very popular in
Germany, and was influential on both Goethe and Emerson.
8 Hafez Shrugs the Cloak 173
Hammer treated Hafez’ poems’ content as “mostly bacchanalian and

erotic”. Hammer’s view was that Hafez is to be “understood neither
entirely literally, nor wholly allegorically”. At some times, Hafez was
“champion of sensual pleasures”, while at others he was “the voice of a
mystical world”.9 Hammer claimed that a strongly allegorical reading of
Hafez is a projection of a later and more puritanical time, and a means of
defusing Hafez’ popularity by reinterpretation. On Hammer’s analysis,
clerics had long criticised Hafez for “sensual excess and forbidden ideas”,
but they eventually came to see that they could not stop the public from
singing his songs. Thus they came upon the strategy of declaring Hafez’
“sensual images to be spiritual allegories” and therefore attenuating the
threat of his poems to orthodox opinion. For Hammer, it took both
“insight and courage” not to go in for such a sufisticated reading.
Daumer’s introduction to his translation of Hafez offers a very similar
analysis to Hammer’s.10 Besides speaking of Hafez as an “incomparable
genius” and exemplary of “pure, unclouded, divine bliss”, Daumer
described Hafez as the “sworn enemy” of “priests, monks, mystics, and
scholastic pedants”—and writing poetry that was “most free, bold and
cheerful”.11 As for the mystical interpretation of Hafez, Daumer writes
that the puritans found it “impossible to destroy his liberal-minded and
joyful songs” through brutality, and so turned to subtler means of neu-
tralising the poems’ power, declaring the apparently “sensuous and
worldly” to be “spiritual allegories” in much the same way as “our theolo-
gians adapted The Song of Solomon”. According to Daumer, this was a
shrewd sanitising and little more, for in the majority of Hafez’ poems, the
“ascetic and ethical abstraction of the supernatural and celestial is exactly
what Hafez denied”. Daumer then wrote that “a certain mysticism” can
also be found in these poems, but that it is a mysticism “quite different
from the monkish, gloomy, pious one”.
* * *
It seems worth mentioning in passing that Nietzsche’s appreciation of

Hafez may also have been fostered by Wagner, who strongly praised
Daumer’s translations. In a letter to Röckel, Wagner writes that he would
like to poet who he has “recently recognized to be the greatest of all poets;
174 A. Milne
it is the Persian poet ‘Hafiz’, whose poems now exist in a most enjoyable
German adaptation by Daumer”. Wagner also makes clear how he inter-
prets Hafez, speaking of the poet’s “self-assured and sublime tranquillity
of mind” and saying that while the “only merit of more recent develop-
ments in Europe seems to me to lie solely in a kind of universal disinte-
gration”, he admires in Hafez the “precocious striving after
individualism”.12
* * *
Goethe’s West-East Divan was largely inspired by Hammer’s Hafez, so it

is little surprise that his reading follows Hammer’s in all of the essen-
tials.13 In the Divan poem “Open Secret”, Goethe writes that scholars
have spoken of Hafez’ “mystical tongue”, but these “men of words” have
not understood the word “mystic”.14 They have adulterated Hafez’ pure
wine with their “nonsense” because they are incapable of understanding
that Hafez is “blessed without being pious”.
Goethe claims that the scholarly caste does not understand Hafez’
mysticism because they “cannot admit” the possibility of blessedness
without piety. We might rephrase this as saying that there is for such men
only a “gloomy, monkish, pious” mysticism. These prattling scholars
think that the spiritual reality is hidden behind or beyond the apparent
world, while for Goethe, as we have seen in the foregoing, nature is an
“open secret”.
Goethe was by no means uncritical of mysticism. In his expository
Notes & Essays, he writes that if one looks closely at his time’s mystical
sentiment, one will see that it only expresses “characterless and talentless
longing”.15 Goethe also writes of the mystic as generally one who attempts
to “creep past” or “sweep aside” all problems and evade the complexity of
the world. All of this is the opposite of what Goethe found in Hafez,
whom he admired for “taking part in the fullness of the world”.16
In his libretto for “Jery und Bätely”, Goethe wrote “A girl and a glass
of wine / cures all want; / and whoever doesn’t drink and doesn’t kiss / is
as good as dead [Ein Mädchen und ein Gläschen Wein / kurieren alle Not; /
und wer nicht trinkt, und wer nicht küßt, / der ist so gut wie todt]”. Goethe’s
own love of wine was renowned,17 and he was plainly not inclined to go
in for an otherworldly reading of Hafez.
However, Goethe also gestured to difficulties in trying to discover the
man beneath the poems. Goethe writes that Hafez seemed to “look from
afar into the secrets of the Godhead”, but also notes that Hafez at times
equally rejected both “religious practice” and “sensual pleasure”. Goethe
writes that we should maintain a “sceptical agility” with respect to any of
the particular claims that Hafez makes, given that “the lyrical poet has no
need to affirm in his own practice what he invokes to delight and flatter
singers and readers”.18 It is the fecundity that Goethe admires here, the
“restrained vitality” of the songs which flowed out of Hafez so easily that
he did not place a great value on them, with the poems only collected by
followers after his death.
In the poem Divan poem “Unbounded”, Goethe again praises of
Hafez’ greatness as consisting in his unstinting fecundity: that his lips are
always ready to kiss, and he always has a song welling from his breast.
Here Goethe says to Hafez, “with you alone I want to compete”. Goethe
declares his will to spend his life loving and drinking like Hafez, his
“twin”, with whom he hopes to share all “joy and woe”.19 This is plainly
not mysticism as evasion, as an escape from the wicked game, but an
embrace of the richness of life. This desire to both delight and despair,
not to withdraw but to “take his part in the world’s fullness”, is echoed in
Nietzsche’s praise of Goethe,20 and his description of the Dionysian faith
as “the religious affirmation of life, life whole and not denied or halved”.21
* * *
Emerson is another site of Nietzsche’s encounter with Hafez.22 Emerson

discusses Hafez in several essays which Nietzsche is known to have read,23
but the most important place is a lengthy discussion in his essay “Persian
Poetry” in Letters and Social Aims.
Emerson’s interpretation follows that of the Germans very closely. He
writes that “we do not wish to strew sugar on bottled spiders, or try to
make mystical divinity out of the Song of Solomon, much less out of the
erotic and bacchanalian songs of Hafiz.” Emerson praises Hafez’ “immense
hilarity and sympathy with every form of beauty and joy”, and notes
176 A. Milne
particularly Hafez’ “scorn of sanctimony and base prudence”. On

Emerson’s reading, Hafez was “determined to defy all such hypocritical
interpretation”. Yet he insists that Hafez’ love and wine are “not to be
confounded with vulgar debauch”.24 If one is tempted to mistake Hafez
for a “low rioter”, he “turns short on you with verses which express the
poverty of sensual joys, and to ejaculate with equal fire the most unpalat-
able affirmations of heroic sentiment and contempt for the world”.25
In an essay entitled “The Influence of Hafiz on Western Poetry”, Salami
discusses Emerson’s poem “Bacchus” and its provenance in Hafez.26
Salami writes that while Emerson adapted a Hafez poem which deeply
moved him, “he failed to grasp the very mystical overtones” of the origi-
nal. Salami suggests that this is because Emerson encountered Hafez’
poetry in German, a language which he knew imperfectly. Patchy though
Emerson’s translations are, Salami’s interpretation does not seem sound.
After all, as we have seen, Emerson’s German forerunners also emphasised
a fairly straightforward, “this-worldly” reading of Hafez. In denying the
“mystical” in Hafez, Emerson was pointing to the absence of an ascetic,
other-worldly conception of spirituality.27
In “Persian Poetry”, Emerson wrote that Hafez “has run through the
whole gamut of passion,—from the sacred to the borders, and over the
borders, of the profane.” Emerson saw such a “confusion of high and
low” as habitual to Hafez.28 It seems to me that this ‘confusion’ is pre-
cisely Hafez’ rejection of our easy distinctions between the sacred and
profane. It is our categories that are confounded when we face again and
again in Hafez the judgement that this too is divine. It is in this sense that
we can could call Hafez a mystic of an especially Dionysian kind where,
in Nietzsche’s words, life is affirmed “as a whole, not denied and halved”.
It is just this affirmation of the fullness of life that attracted Emerson to
Hafez, of whom he wrote in a journal note:
Nothing stops him. He makes the daregod & daredevil experiment. He is

not to be scared by a name, or a religion. He fears nothing. He sees too far;
he sees throughout; such is the only man I wish to see or be…29
* * *
Plenty of readers still try to sheikh Hafez into the Sufi habit he expressly
cast off. For example, one scholar claims that certain of Hafez’ poems
reveal that he was “steeped in the teachings” of the Great Sheikh Ibn
‘Arabi.30 But one contemporary interpreter of Hafez who may help to
substantiate the reading given by Nietzsche’s predecessors is the scholar of
Persian literature Dick Davis.
Davis has written at some length about interpreting and translating
Hafez,31 and his translations of Hafez in Faces of Love are easily the best
English versions. In the introduction to this work, Davis discusses the
tradition of Sufi interpretations of Persian poetry. Davis writes that read-
ing poems which ostensibly deal with earthly love and wine as being “in
reality mystical and Sufi” was well established in the century before Hafez
was born, noting a glossary written by the Sufi poet Eraqi which gave
translations of secular terms he used in his poems and their “actual” spiri-
tual meaning.
We have been told, for example, that the lover refers to God, wine to
spiritual exercise, and intoxication to religious experience. But as Davis
pointed out, this led to a lot of difficulties for subsequent poets and their
interpreters. After all, “if a poet wished to write a poem that was, simply
and plainly, about a sexual partner and wine, what vocabulary was avail-
able to him apart from that which the Sufi commentators were insisting
must be allegorical?”.32 According to Davis, these difficulties are height-
ened in the work of Hafez, “the Persian poet who more than any other
constantly suggests multiple and shifting possibilities of meaning”.
Davis’ analysis points to a shift in Hafez’ interpretation from typically
literal readings by Sudi and other early commentators to the insistence of
later readers that “mystical rather than secular concerns are what the
poems are ‘really’ about”. Davis defends a basically literal interpretation
of Hafez, and says that the sufisticated readers must face “strong contrary
evidence” from Hafez’ poems themselves. As Davis notes, Hafez’ discus-
sions of Sufis and Sufism are typically full of contempt: “the great sin for
Hafez is hypocrisy”, and he treats Sufis as chief amongst these.33 Davis
acknowledges that Hafez often claims to have “worn the distinctive Sufi
cloak himself ”, but points out that Hafez’ advice is to “shrug off the
cloak” as he himself had done: “If at some point in his life he had been
178 A. Milne
involved with Sufism, he seems to have thought better of it by the time

that most of his poems were written”.34
This kind of literal interpretation does not betray a failure to “grasp the
very mystical overtones” of Hafez’ poems.35 Rather, it sides with the poet’s
pointed disdain for pious cant. Hammer praised Sudi for having “suffi-
cient insight and courage” not to interpret Hafez’ poems as spiritual alle-
gories.36 This takes especial courage because it asks us to face up to the
rich sensuality of a spirituality that confounds our narrow categories,
while allegorical interpretations simply allow us to assimilate Hafez’
poems to these categories.
* * *
Nietzsche’s references to Hafez begin in the period preceding Beyond

Good and Evil and continue through to his last notebooks. Because I
hope to address a general scholarly neglect of Hafez’ influence, I will
work through each of these discussions chronologically.
Hafez is first mentioned by Nietzsche in the same notebook as the
fragment about the German mystics’ lack of self-esteem. There we find a
somewhat obscure note on “the varying degrees of enjoyment for ‘true’ [die
verschiedenen Grade des Genusses für ‘wahr’]”.37 Nietzsche lists four pairs
as examples: Kant and Schelling, Machiavelli and Seneca, Stendhal and
Scott, Plato and Hafez.
While the interpretation of this note is far from obvious, a brief look
at the surrounding context may prove helpful.38 If we look at other frag-
ments from this and the immediately previous notebook, we see some of
these same figures discussed: Machiavelli is praised as a “highlight of hon-
esty”39 and Seneca is described as a “culmination of ancient moral hypoc-
risy”.40 Nietzsche also quotes Stendhal’s characterisation of beauty as “the
promise of happiness”41 and contrasts this with the Kantian conception
of disinterest, just as he will later do at greater length in the third essay of
the Genealogy.42 Nietzsche labels Schelling a “theologian”43 and discusses
Scott’s unconcern for historical truth in his romantic mythologising of
the English middle-ages.44 Finally, he commends Plato’s view that know-
ingly lying is superior to involuntarily telling the truth.45
Since this fragment occurs in a book of notes and drafts towards Beyond
Good and Evil, the discussions of that text are also particularly relevant. I
take up Nietzsche’s discussion of Hafez in that text below, though this has
little to do with truth or truthfulness. Elsewhere in Beyond Good and Evil,
Nietzsche criticises the dishonesty of both Kant and Schelling.46 In
another passage, Nietzsche praises Machiavelli’s sprightly style and
humour in combination with his cold, hard honesty.47 In that same pas-
sage, the buffoonery of Petronius and Aristophanes—with whom
Nietzsche associated Hafez48—is praised, and Nietzsche discusses the
“sphinx nature” of Plato with regard to the legend of him dying with a
book of Aristophanes beneath his pillow.49
Our task of interpretation is not helped by the fact that Nietzsche pairs
Hafez with Plato. This is because, of all of these figures, Nietzsche’s treat-
ment of Plato is by far the most ambiguous. By his own admission,
Nietzsche had a tendency to caricature Plato50 as the epitome of the faith
that “God is the truth, that truth is divine”.51 Yet Nietzsche often suggests
that Plato knew much better than this.52 In one fragment, Nietzsche
writes, “being the artist that he was”, Plato preferred “appearance to
being”, “lie and invention to truth”, and “the unreal to the actual”.53 So,
we could read our fragment as suggesting that Plato had much less of an
appetite for truth—and was more of an artist; that is, more consciously
an artist.
The discussion of truth in the surrounding fragments is also helpful. In
the note that immediately precedes the first mention of Hafez, Nietzsche
evokes Christianity as explaining Pascal’s “deep interest in truth”.54 The
topic of the Christian deification of truth is a familiar topic, as with the
diagnosis of how this leads to the Christian as having an especial and
pathological interest in truth that eventually turns nihilistic.55 Three
notes later, “the faith in truth” is discussed.56 Here it is Homer that is
contrasted with Plato. Nietzsche writes that we have not appreciated the
flipside of the antagonism between philosophers and artists—the “friends
of deception”: “the unsuitability of truth to life”. This calls to mind a
well-known passage from the fifth book of The Gay Science, where
Nietzsche says that the will to truth may be “a principle that is hostile to
life… a concealed will to death”.57 This is also suggested in the note that
immediately follows ours, where Nietzsche questions motivations behind
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knowledge seeking, and asks whether it is true that one prefers truth.58 In
this notebook, Nietzsche also writes, “the will to truth and certainty is
born of a fear of uncertainty”.59
Such themes are discussed at length in later works, but of especial
interest to us now—given the contrast of Plato and Homer—is the third
essay of the Genealogy: in section 24, Nietzsche says that “the will to truth
requires a critique”, then in section 25 he speaks of the “overestimation of
truth” and says that in art, “the lie is sanctified” and “the will to deception
has a good conscience”. He says that it is art that is most firmly opposed
to the ascetic ideal, and that this was “instinctively sensed by Plato” who
is here characterised as Europe’s “greatest enemy of art”. The basic antag-
onism is set up between Plato and Homer: the former as “the sincerest
advocate of the ‘beyond’, the great slanderer of life” and the latter as “the
instinctive deifier, the golden nature”.60
“Kant and Schelling / Machiavelli and Seneca / Stendhal and Walter
Scott / Plato and Hafez”: When Nietzsche presents this list as an example
of the degrees of enjoyment of “truth”—which he places scare-quotes in
the original—our interpretation is extremely unclear. Perhaps this is sup-
posed to be read as an increasing scale, with Kant and Schelling having
the least taste for “truth”, and Plato and Hafez the most. Alternatively, the
scale could even be read in the opposite direction, with Plato and Hafez
the most “conscious” artists, and Kant and Schelling most duped by an
idea of objective reality. Still another reading would have the pairs as
being contrasted with each other. All of these are defensible, and I can’t
pretend to settle the matter here.
If we interpret the note as claiming that Hafez had a low degree of
enjoyment in truth, we might think that this has to do with his realisation
of its falsity. As Nietzsche puts it elsewhere, “Perhaps nobody yet has been
truthful enough about what ‘truthfulness’ is”.61 The artist doesn’t associate
truthfulness with “the affects grown cool, the tempo slowed down, dialec-
tics in place of instinct…”62 Hafez and the other “artists of apotheosis”63
who enrich what they see can be contrasted with the artists—like the
French naturalists—who naively think they are getting at the facts, and so
cheapen the phenomena they observe. In an unpublished poem,64
Nietzsche writes, “Where, where is the innocence of these lies? / […] The
poet who can lie knowingly, willingly / He alone can speak truthfully”.65
The idea of the “innocent lie”, and of lying knowingly as telling the truth
is relevant here. We might think of this as not being fooled into believing
that one’s interpretation is interpretation free, as an awareness that truth
doesn’t remain truth “when the veils are withdrawn”.66
Let us remember that for Nietzsche, seeing as beautiful makes beauti-
ful.67 The ‘neutral’ is not the true; this is Nietzsche’s critique of the ‘evil
eye’ of French naturalism. “The ‘impersonal’ is merely the personal weak-
ened”.68 On the other hand, what the artists of apotheosis take in flows
back out of their wells as gifts of their love.69 Theirs is a golden eye as
opposed to an evil one: it is not one that makes ugly, but makes perfect,
divine. It enriches rather than cheapens, “spreading a Homeric light and
glory over all things”.70
We have to understand that, for Nietzsche, there is no interpretation-
independent “truth”. As he writes, the “will to truth” is a “making firm, a
making true and durable, an abolition of the false character of things”.71
Truth is not found but created. The sense that we are discovering facts is
born of our own poverty and actually makes things “more meagre” as
opposed to “enrich[ing] everything out of one’s own fullness”. Nietzsche
says that this “having to transform into perfection is—art”.72 That is, the
abundant cannot but enrich, just as the hungry cannot but hollow out.
Nietzsche also writes of the artist infusing “a transfiguration and full-
ness into things” and poetising about them until they reflect the artist’s
own “fullness and joy in life”.73 However, and perhaps in tension to what
is said above, one aspect that often comes up in Nietzsche’s description of
the artist is his ignorance of this enriching. This is put quite clearly in a
late note which also speaks of “the inner need to make of things a reflex
of one’s own fullness and perfection”. Here it is said that “the artist who
began to understand himself would misunderstand himself: he ought not
to look back, he ought not to look at all, he ought to give”.74 That is, the
artist is not aware that he is lying. As Nietzsche writes in another note in
the same notebook, “artists should see nothing as it is, but fuller, simpler,
stronger”.75 We might wonder what is meant here by “as it is” here—for
it plainly is not the interpretation-independent reality which Nietzsche
denies. But the general point is fairly clear: the artist of apotheosis does
not experience the world in the same way as the evil eyed.
182 A. Milne
Nietzsche plainly regarded Hafez as one of these world-transfiguring

artists. But just what he meant in this fragment remains unclear.
Nietzsche’s general reception of the great Persian poet will, however,
when we consider his later references to Hafez.
* * *
In the autumn of 1884, Nietzsche drafted a poem titled “To Hafez: A

water drinker’s question [An Hafis: Frage eines Wassertrinkers]”:
Die Schenke, die du dir gebaut, The tavern you built yourself
ist größer als jedes Haus, Is greater than any alehouse.
Die Tränke, die du drin gebraut, The potions you brewed in there
die trinkt die Welt nicht aus. The world cannot drain dry.
Der Vogel, der einst Phönix war, The bird who was a phoenix
der wohnt bei dir zu Gast, Stays as your guest.
Die Maus, die einen Berg gebar, You yourself are the mouse
die – bist du selber fast! Who gave birth to a mountain!
Bist alles und keins, bist Schenke und You are all and nothing, tavern and
Wein, wine,
bist Phönix, Berg und Maus, Phoenix, mountain and mouse.
Fällst ewiglich in dich hinein, Into yourself you are always falling
fliegst ewig aus dir hinaus – Out of yourself you are always flying.
Bist aller Höhen Versunkenheit, You are absorbed in all heights
bist aller Tiefen Schein, You are all deep appearances.
Bist aller Trunkenen Trunkenheit You are the drunkard’s drunkenness
– wozu, wozu dir – Wein?”76 Why, why for you wine?
This odd poem, which Nietzsche plainly did not hold in high regard,
comes off far worse in my clumsy translation.77 One of the images deserves
immediate clarification: reference to the mountain and the mouse is an
inversion of the discussion of the mountain in labour in Aesop’s Fables:
great promise that delivers something trifling. In The Art of Poetry, Horace
advises against beginning “as the Cyclic poet of old: ‘Of Priam’s fate and
famous war I’ll sing’”. Horace says that such boastful mouthing will pro-
duce very little: “Mountains will labour, to birth will come a laughter-
rousing mouse!”.78 So we understand that Hafez’ poems are not at pains
to prove their own seriousness, but quite the reverse. They are unassum-
ing, yet deliver what is monumental.
Nietzsche’s question to Hafez—“why wine for you?”—can be unpacked

as asking, if Hafez is intoxication itself—is that upon which all others are
drunk—then why does he need wine?79 This question echoes an earlier
one in The Gay Science: “what need has the spirited of wine?”.80 In that
context, Nietzsche was talking about the way that stimulants—theatrical
or otherwise—work by “aping the high tide of the soul”. They allow us to
escape our colourless lives and, for a spell, experience the rich vibrancy of
life. But Nietzsche is not interested in the “poor in spirit”.81 Nietzsche
writes that for those whose lives are rich, these spectacles are “nauseat-
ing”. He recommends, “whoever finds enough tragedy and comedy in
himself, probably does best when he stays away from the theatre”. The
point here, as in the Hafez poem, is that intoxicants are substitutes for
impoverished spirits, and are best avoided by those whose nature is more
spiritual.82
* * *
Nietzsche’s third reference to Hafez comes in another unpublished frag-

ment. In it, he writes of how the “existence celebrates its own transfigura-
tion” in the highest joys, which are only experienced by “the rarest and
best-constituted men”. Such individuals overflow with the “most multi-
farious forces”. In such cases, the spirit is “as much at home in the senses
as the senses are at home in the spirit”. Here Nietzsche gives Hafez and
Goethe as two examples of how sensory stimulation leads to “extraordi-
nary joy and play” in the intellect. These richly sensual individuals are the
antithesis of the “ascetic philosophy of the proposition ‘God is a spirit’83”,
and experience in themselves a “deification of the body”:
From that height of joy where man feels himself to be altogether a deified
form and a self-justification of nature, down to the joy of healthy peasants
and healthy half-human animals, this whole, long, tremendous light and
color scale of happiness, the Greeks, not without the grateful shudder of
him who is initiated into a mystery, not without much caution and pious
silence, called by the divine name: Dionysus84
184 A. Milne
We can see here that Nietzsche’s association of Hafez with the

Dionysian has little to do with the celebration of wine. Rather, he saw
Hafez as exemplary of the Dionysian embrace of the full range of instincts,
from the most base to the most spiritual. Indeed, he saw that for Hafez,
the sensual and the spiritual were not incompatible but mutually enrich-
ing. We will see this again in Nietzsche’s reference to Hafez in the
Genealogy, which I discuss below. The general idea here, though, is to
praise Goethe and Hafez as examples of Nietzsche’s thought that the
“most spiritual men are sensualists in the best faith”, and that the “strength
and power of the senses” is essential to a “well-constituted and complete”
character.85
* * *
Nietzsche’s first published reference to Hafez comes in Beyond Good and

Evil, where he speaks of moral systems as “recipes against passions” and
argues against the unconditionality of these codes which “address them-
selves to ‘all’” and “generalise where one should not generalise”. Here
Nietzsche criticises not only the other-worldly promises of Christian
morality, but the Stoic and Spinozan goal of indifference, and the
Aristotelian “tuning down of the affects to a harmless mean” where they
can be. The final example is of that “accommodating and playful surren-
der to the affects” as taught by Hafez and Goethe: the “bold dropping of
the reins” and the “spiritual-physical licentia morum in the exceptional
case of wise owls and drunkards [weiser Käuze und Trunkenbolde] for
whom it ‘holds little danger’”.86
How are we meant to understand this passage? The wise sot spoken of
here obviously refers to Hafez, and the wise old codger to Goethe. I sus-
pect that the quoted line is a reference to the proverbs in Goethe’s Divan,
where the Confidant speaks of the Vizier having granted many men’s
petitions even when this did him harm. But since the good man’s wishes
are small, small is the danger of granting them.87
Nietzsche seems to be saying here that it would be a mistake to think
that the “spiritual-physical” libertinism of Hafez and Goethe is appropri-
ate to everyone, when it is in fact appropriate only at a late stage of one’s
development. This fits with Nietzsche’s later praise in Twilight of Goethe

being sufficiently strong to “dare to afford the whole range and wealth of
being natural”.88 This dropping of the reins comes after a lengthy period
of discipline and self-control, thus Nietzsche uses Goethe as an example
of one who has “become free”. This passage then echoes Nietzsche’s gen-
eral attitude that the affects need to be dominated before they can be
given their freedom.89
* * *
In book five of The Gay Science, Nietzsche speaks of “two kinds of suffer-
ers”: those who suffer from the “over-fullness of life” and those who suffer
from “the impoverishment of life”. These two types will be attracted to a
different kind of art and knowledge: the hyper-abundant will desire “a
Dionysian art” and “a tragic view of life”, whereas the impoverished will
desire “redemption from themselves” or “intoxication, convulsions,
anaesthesia, and madness”.
Nietzsche claims that the main question he asks of every artwork is, “is
it hunger or superabundance that has here become creative?” He writes
that the desire for change and destruction can be the expression of
Dionysian “overflowing energy that is pregnant with the future”, but it
can equally be the expression of ressentiment: the ill-constituted are driven
to destroy because they are outraged by what exits, indeed by existence
itself. Nietzsche goes on to say that the will to immortalise requires a
similar dual interpretation: it can express a sufferer’s attempt to turn their
“idiosyncrasy… into a binding law and compulsion”, revenging himself
against life by “forcing his own image” onto it. But it can also express
“gratitude and love”:
art with this origin will always be an art of apotheoses, perhaps dithyram-
bic like Rubens, or blissfully mocking like Hafez, or bright and gracious
like Goethe, spreading a Homeric light and glory over all things.90
I will take up the specific point about Hafez’ “blissfully mocking [selig-
spöttisch]” character below, but here we see Nietzsche placing Hafez in the
most highly esteemed company as an artist of apotheosis: artists who
186 A. Milne
make divine, taking all things into themselves that they may emerge,
transfigured, as gifts of their love.91
* * *
Nietzsche’s final published reference to Hafez comes in the Genealogy,

with the passage repeated with slight modifications in Nietzsche Contra
Wagner.92 In the essay on ascetic ideals, Nietzsche writes that there is “no
necessary antithesis between chastity and sensuality”.93 He goes on to
write that even in those cases where this antithesis does exist, it does not
need to be a “tragic antithesis”. This is true, he writes, of “all those well-
constituted and joyful mortals” who do not regard the “unstable equilib-
rium between ‘animal and angel’” as an objection to existence. The
“subtlest and brightest” among these joyful mortals have even found in
this antithesis a seduction to existence—and here again Goethe and Hafez
are the named examples.
We see here once more Nietzsche’s praise of fertile tensions. For
Nietzsche, the “wisest man” was the one “richest in contradictions”;94 the
highest man is the one who most strongly represents “the antithetical
character of existence”.95 This aligns closely with Nietzsche’s conception of
a Dionysian spirituality, which he characterises as “the religious affirma-
tion of life, of life as a whole, not denied and halved”.96 It is an attitude
which, as we have seen, stands in sharp contrast to the mystics who, lack-
ing “self-esteem”,97 think that by losing themselves they are “getting back
to wholeness”,98 when in fact they are diminishing the whole which exists
nowhere apart from the parts.
This embrace of all facets of one’s individuality can be contrasted with
what Nietzsche spoke of in the previous essay of the Genealogy as the
“morbid softening and moralization through which the animal ‘man’
finally learns to be ashamed of all his instincts”.99 Similarly, in Beyond
Good and Evil, Nietzsche writes that the “free spirit” is “grateful to god,
devil, sheep, and worm” in himself.100 There is no will to one-sidedness
here. Far from wishing to “divest life of its rich ambiguity”,101 such a well-
constituted individual sees, like Goethe and Hafez, that his fecundity
depends upon the “unstable equilibrium” of his “multifarious forces”.
It is necessary to understand this embrace of the full range of human

passions, the animalistic as much as the angelic, before we can see the
truth in Stambaugh’s characterisation of Nietzsche as “poetic mystic”.102
Similarly, to say simply that Hafez is a “Sufi” or a “mystic” is not at all
helpful if we do not try to distinguish this mysticism from, say, the very
different mysticism of Rumi. If we may call Hafez and Nietzsche mystics,
then we must say that these mystics reject neither their individuality, nor
their sensuality.
It is at this point that most attempts to situate Nietzsche, and I think
equally Hafez, into mystical milieus have gone badly awry. For example,
C.E. Rolt writes in his translations of the late fifth-century Christian
mystic Dionysius the Areopagite:
This path [of contemplative mysticism] is not for all men, but some are
impelled to seek it; and if it is denied them within the Christian pale, they
will go and look for it elsewhere. Nietzsche is but one of those who have
thus disastrously wandered afar in search of that which is actually to be
found within the fold. Had he but studied the Dionysian writings he might
have remained a Christian103
Rolt’s claim rings false, but why? What is it in Nietzsche that so resists
conciliation with the mysticism of Dionysius or Eckhart? Equally, why
do we have to squint to mediate between Hafez and Rumi? Selbstgefühl,
good conscience in individuality, in the fullness of one’s character, seems
to be a promising response. Unlike Dionysius, Nietzsche could never pre-
tend to be the convert of a man who equated self and sin, and claimed,
“the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit
are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other”.104 The
Areopagite only gives us a Pseudo-Dionysian mysticism, a one-sided yea
that amounts, on Nietzsche’s reading, to a denial of life.105
Nietzsche called Plato “the great slanderer of life”106 for fixing his eyes
on the beyond. But Nietzsche occasionally offered a very different reading.
For example, in the Gay Science, he writes that while philosophical ideal-
ism is generally “something like a disease”, this is not true in Plato’s case,
where it is “the caution of an over-rich and dangerous health, the fear of
over-powerful senses”.107 If this was true of Plato, however, it was not true
188 A. Milne
of many Platonists—and by this term, Nietzsche means not only obvious

Neoplatonists such as Plotinus, who judged that the godly life is one which
takes “no pleasure in the things of earth”. Nietzsche also means followers
of the Christian religion created by Paul: “Platonism for the people”.108
The mystics with whom Nietzsche has sometimes been compared
evinced a denial of the body equal to that of Paul. Eckhart, for example,
says, “body and flesh are always opposed to spirit”.109 For Eckhart, the
unitive goal requires one to become “unaware of all things”, which means
to “pass into an oblivion of your own body”.110 The spiritual life consists
in turning away from the shallow pleasures of the many towards the per-
fect emptiness of the one.
Even for the most genial of Christian mystics, the body is, as Francis of
Assisi put it, “Brother Ass”111—a beast of burden to be scourged or petted
as necessary. The body’s value is above all as an escape vehicle, and is only
to be strengthened insofar as will best serve that purpose. Here we are a
very far bray indeed from Nietzsche’s own conception of “the most spiri-
tual men” as “sensualists in the best faith”.112 Francis was driven by the
experience of lust to whip himself and plunge naked into the snow in
mortification. Renan spoke of Francis’ “delicate, pure, and tender com-
munion with universal life”.113 But for Nietzsche, this communion
seemed pale and hollow.114 Its very concept of purity was an “incitement
to anti-nature”.115 The acclaimed “innocence” of the saints was in fact a
product of the guilt of conceiving of the flesh (sarx) as something essen-
tially sinful. Nietzsche’s highest admiration was for those “well-constituted
and joyful mortals” like Goethe and Hafez whose spirituality was not that
of chaste self-denial but rather included a celebration of everything goat-
ish and appetitive in man.
Nietzsche claimed, “all genuine festive feelings go to the devil” under
the predominance of Christian values. The values expressed by feasts,
which are “pagan par excellence” are “pride, exuberance, wantonness;
mockery of everything serious and philistine; a divine affirmation of one-
self out of animal plenitude and perfection”.116 It was just these festive
values that Nietzsche found in Hafez.
* * *
There is one more reference to Hafez in Nietzsche’s works to consider. It

comes in a late note in which Nietzsche claims that the Jews are the only
modern Europeans to have “touched upon the highest form of spiritual-
ity: ingenious buffoonery”.117 Here Nietzsche writes that Offenbach and
Heine have surpassed the potency of European culture, and that their
achievement borders on that of Aristophanes, Petronius, and Hafez.
This note tells us a lot about how Nietzsche read and ranked Hafez: he
places Hafez in the contexts of satirists, not sages; and given Nietzsche’s
esteem for Aristophanes and Petronius,118 this is very high praise indeed.
The fragment ends with Nietzsche lamenting how “desperately seriously
[verzweifelt Ernst]” Germans of his day took themselves. A few years ear-
lier, in the same notebook that discussed the German mystic’s lack of
self-esteem, Nietzsche had commented on the “deep wistful seriousness
[tiefen träumerischen Ernst]” of German mystics and musicians.119 It is just
the absence of such a plaintive longing for another world that Nietzsche
is here admiring in these satirists and lyricists. To see this, it might help to
say a little bit about Nietzsche’s reception of both Offenbach and Heine.
Offenbach is rarely mentioned in Nietzsche’s published works, but his
“divine lightness” is praised frequently in the notebooks.120 Nietzsche
attended many of Offenbach’s opéras bouffes, and reported that Offenbach
achieved several “moments of high-spirited perfection” in each work.121
In a draft for Ecce Homo, Nietzsche described Offenbach as an “ingenious
buffoon [ein genialer Buffo]” and referred to him as the “last musician
that still created music”.122 Offenbach was, like Bizet, a point of compari-
son for Nietzsche to the tendencies of German music which found their
completion in Wagner. Nietzsche’s late aesthetic ideal is seen here
expressed in music, while in poetry it is expressed by Heine and Hafez.
Nietzsche saw the spirit of gaiety as the antidote to the German spirit
of gravity.123 In Nietzsche Contra Wagner, Mozart is described as having a
“cheerful, enthusiastic, tender, enamored spirit”. Mozart again was “hap-
pily no German”, and Nietzsche contrasted Mozart’s “gracious” and
“golden seriousness” with the “seriousness of a German philistine”. The
Germans falsely imagine that “all music must leap out of the wall and
shake the listener to his very intestines”, and consider this severity as the
mark of seriousness.124 Nietzsche, on the other hand, claims that it is with
play that “great seriousness really begins”.125 In the Case of Wagner, Nietzsche
190 A. Milne
talks about the decadent instincts of the German audience towards dishes
that are “ever more sharply spiced”,126 with their wearied nerves demand-
ing intensified stimuli.
Against this decadent ideal, Nietzsche set his own: a music which, like
Bizet’s and Offenbach’s, does not sweat.127 This is not a music which
addresses itself to those who “need dignity”, but rather those who “need
buffoonery”.128
How Nietzsche could take “ingenious buffoonery” as a spiritual ideal
is well seen in his discussions of Heine. In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche writes
that Heine provides the “highest concept of the lyrical poet”, and that
Nietzsche has discovered in all history no “equally sweet and passionate
music”.129 Nietzsche immediately goes on to say that Heine possessed
that “divine malice [göttliche Bosheit]” without which he “cannot imagine
perfection”. For Nietzsche, the value of a man or race is determined by
their incapacity to “conceive god apart from the satyr”.
This linking of the religious with the satyric and satiric is a fairly com-
mon theme in Nietzsche’s mature thought. As we saw above, he treated
“ingenious buffoonery” as the “highest form of spirituality”.130 The con-
nection between Hafez and Heine as ideal lyric-satyric poets is strength-
ened when we recall Nietzsche had earlier praised Hafez’ “blissfully
mocking” character.131 This nature is “spöttisch”—scornful and sarcastic,
yet it is “selig”—blessed. The echo here is quite strong to Goethe’s praise of
Hafez as being selig without being fromm132: this is an impious blessedness.
But for Nietzsche, this description takes on another aspect that we find
surprising: an association with scorn. How, we might wonder, can some-
thing be scornful and blissful? But that is exactly what Nietzsche has in
mind. For Nietzsche, perfection is not the absence of hostility, but a certain
playful attitude towards it.133 He finds this spirit in both Heine and Hafez.
Bicknell described Hafez as one of the only poets of “unadulterated
gladsomeness” ever known to world history: “there is no shadow in his
sky, no discord in his music, no bitterness in his cup”.134 There is some
truth in this description, though it is a vast oversimplification, for there
certainly is much antipathy in Hafez’ poetry, particularly in his constant
railing against the hypocrisy of the “pious prigs”.135 These poems are glad-
some without being pacifistic, and it was just combination—an amiabil-
ity that did not exclude enmity—that Nietzsche admired.
Like Heine, Hafez could be said to “possess that divine malice” that
Nietzsche sees as an aspect of perfection.136 Nietzsche refers to Heine’s
“crime” of laughing—a crime, that is, in the eyes of the modern Germans
who, Nietzsche tells us, take themselves “desperately seriously”.137 Again
like Heine, Hafez’ antipathy is one that laughs. There is something unmis-
takably joyful about it. That we find something incommensurable about
these qualities reveals something about our sensibility. Those who would
turn all of Hafez’ exuberance into allegory, all of his intoxication into
sobriety, betray that they, like Chairman Mao,138 venerate only that which
grows in a furrowed brow.139
* * *
In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche speaks of the “golden laughter” of the
“mockery-loving [spottlustig]” gods who “cannot suppress laughter even
during holy rites”.140 It is this tendency towards a spirituality that is not
grim but gay that those with two-thousand years of Christian gravity on
their conscience cannot confess: that one can be blessed without being
pious.141
In a late note, Nietzsche writes of the “stuffy, sickroom air” that arises
from the otherworldly Christian “chatter”. As a point of contrast,
Nietzsche takes Petronius’ Satyricon, a “truly pagan book” in which “noth-
ing is done, said, desired and valued but what by peevish Christian stan-
dards is sin”. Yet, Nietzsche continues, the air here is far “purer” than in
the New Testament—a book which is refuted by the fact that in it there
is “not one single bouffonnerie”.142
Reading the Satyricon, one feels that Petronius is neither condemning
nor merely cataloguing the excesses of the Roman aristocracy.143 Nietzsche
found in Petronius a very different and richer conception of innocence
than what we are accustomed to, writing that “compared with this happy
man, a Christian is absolutely without innocence”.144 In Hafez, too, we
find an innocence and purity that “remains faithful to the earth”, we
behold a man who sounded out the hypocrites, a man who exposed the
falsity of our opposition between deep spirituality and rich sensuality, a
lover who “drains life to the lees”.145 In Hafez, we find a man capable of
an honest boast, with a pride that needs seek no recourse to the
192 A. Milne
convolutions of those for whom self is sin. In Hafez, we find both clear
sky and railing jibe, dirty hands, and “seventh day”; and to all of this, to
enmity and amity, to life’s polarity, we hear a resounding yea.
Notes
1. NF-1886,5[34] (WP§1045, pp. 537–538).
2. NF-1885,41[6] (WP§1051, pp. 540–541).
3. GM.III§2, pp. 98–99.
4. GS§370, pp. 329–330.
5. EH “Why I Am A Destiny” §1, p. 326. These fears of canonisation
proved well-founded when Nietzsche’s close friend Gast pronounced
his name holy at his funeral.
6. NF-1888,18[3].
7. See: C. Giuliano, P. D’Iorio, M.C. Fornari, F. Fronterotta, and
A. Orsucci (eds.), Nietzsches persönliche Bibliothek, De Gruyter, 2003.
8. That Nietzsche would have been familiar with Hammer perhaps does
not need proving. But I think it is worth mentioning here that I believe
that Hammer is the source for Nietzsche’s mention of the Order of
Assassins in the GM.III§24, with the slogan “nothing is true, every-
thing is permitted” [“Nichts ist wahr, Alles ist erlaubt”] (p. 150). In his
footnote to this passage, Kaufmann correctly identifies that this is nei-
ther Nietzsche’s coinage nor a paraphrase from Dostoevsky’s Brothers
Karamazov—but he does not identify the source. See: J. Hammer-
Purgstall, Die Geschichte der Assassinen, aus morgenländischen Quellen,
J. G. Cotta’schen Buchhandlung, 1818, p. 50: “Dass Nichts wahr und
Alles erlaubt sei” Wood’s English translation renders this “Nothing is
true and all is allowed”. See: J. Hammer-Purgstall, The History of the
Assassins, trans. O.C. Wood, Smith and Elder, 1835, p. 55.
9. Quoted in K. Mommsen, Goethe and the Poets of Arabia, trans.
M. Metzger, Camden House, 2014, p. 200. The original, from
Hammer’s Der Diwan des Mohammed Schemsed-din Hafis, is quoted in
K. Mommsen, Goethe und die arabische Welt, Insel, 1988, p. 410f.
10. Nietzsche’s edition of Daumer’s Hafis: Eine Sammlung persischer
Gedichte survives, and is heavily bookmarked. See: C. Giuliano, et al.
(eds.), op. cit., p. 178; according to the catalogue, Nietzsche had the
1846 edition published by Hoffmann und Campe. For those inter-
ested, the marked pages were pgs. 20, 22, 25, 32, 35, 37, 42, 54, 57,
64, 65, 67, 69, 70, 77, 80, 81, 84, 89, 105, 142, 146, 177, 183, 202,
213, 241, and 271.
11. Daumer’s foreword. See: Hafis, Eine Sammlung persischer Gedichte, ed.
and trans. G.F. Daumer, Hoffmann und Campe, 1846, pp. i–ix.
12. Letter to Röckel, Sep. 12, 1852. R. Wagner, Selected Letters of Richard
Wagner, ed. and trans. S. Spencer and B. Millington, J.M. Dent and
Sons, 1987, p. 270. On the influence of Hafez on Wagner, see also
A.D. Aberach, Richard Wagner’s Religious Ideas, Edwin Mellen Press,
1996, pp. 131–158.
13. Goethe’s admiration for Hafez is invariably the beginning (and often
the end) of discussions of Nietzsche and Hafez. See for example, Iqbal:
“Nietzsche grew up on translations of Goethe and Hammer-
Purgstall…” (Z. Iqbal, Iqbal, self-published, 2012), Salami: “Thanks to
the translation of Hammer-Purgstall and Goethe’s Divan, Nietzsche
became deeply interested in Hafiz…” (I. Salami, “The Influence of
Hafiz on Western Poetry”, Sarjana, vol. 24, no. 2, 2009, p. 6); Ashouri:
“Obviously, Goethe’s admiration for Hafez and his “Oriental” wisdom,
as expressed in West-östlisches Divan, has been the main source of
attracting Nietzsche to the Persian poet” (D. Ashouri, “Nietzsche and
Persia”, Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2003 (updated 2010)).
14. “Offenbar Geheimnis”, in “Hafis Nameh”, West-Östlicher Divan.
15. Bidney gives us “spineless and inept yearning” for “charakter- und tal-
entlose Sehnsucht”. See: J.W. Goethe, “Notes and Essays for a Better
Understanding of the West-East Divan”, trans. M. Bidney and P.A
Armin, in WED, pp. 211–212.
16. WED, pp. 203–204.
17. A recollection of Goethe’s discernment as a wine connoisseur is given
by Schwabe in C&E§236, p. 181.
18. It is worth mentioning that Goethe himself emphasised the “spiritual
significance” in some of his most erotic poems for Marianne in the
“Suleika Nameh”, writing that “auch hier dringt sich manchmal eine geis-
tige Bedeutung auf und der Schleier irdischer Liebe scheint höhere
Verhältnisse zu verhüllen”.
19. “Unbegrenzt” in “Hafis Nameh”, West-Östlicher Divan.
21. NF-1888,14[89] (WP§1052, p. 542).
194 A. Milne
22. Nietzsche read Emerson quite extensively in German translation.

Nietzsche bought a copy of Fabricius’ translation of the Essays in the
1860s, and replaced it after it was lost in 1874. He owned a copy of
Mühlberg’s translation of The Conduct of Life, as well as Grimm’s trans-
lation of two essays from Representative Men, published as Über Goethe
und Shakespeare. Nietzsche also had a copy of Emerson’s essay “Historic
Notes of Life and Letters in Massachusetts” which he paid to have pri-
vately translated. He also owned Schmidt’s 1876 translation of Letters
and Social Aims. Emerson’s influence on Nietzsche has often been dis-
cussed (and sometimes over-emphasised), but his influence with respect
to Hafez has not been adequately noted. See: Hubbard’s Nietzsche und
Emerson (1958), Kaufmann’s introduction to his translation of The Gay
Science (1974), Stack’s Nietzsche and Emerson: An Elective Affinity
(1992), Parkes’ Composing the Soul (1994), and Golden’s “Emerson-
Exemplar” (2013).
23. In Essays: First Series, Hafez was mentioned in “History”. In Essays:
Second Series, “Manners”. In The Conduct of Life, “Fate”, “Considerations
by the Way”, “Power”, and “Worship”. In Letters and Social Aims,
“Poetry and Imagination”, “Quotation and Originality”, “Progress of
Culture”, and “Inspiration”, and “Persian Poetry”. See T.H. Brobjer,
Nietzsche’s Philosophical Context, University of Illinois Press, 2008,
p. 119. Schmidt’s introduction to Neue Essays discusses both the Essays
and Representative Men—in the case of the latter, spending some time
on Emerson’s discussion of Swedenborg and discussing the differences
of Representative Men from Carlyle’s On Heroes.
24. C.f. Daumer on “vulgar intoxication” above. Emerson also writes here,
“Hafiz does not write of wine and love in any mystical sense, further
than that he uses wine as the symbol of intellectual freedom”.
25. R.W. Emerson, “Persian Poetry”, in Letters and Social Aims, The
Waverley Book Co., 1883, pp. 223–251.
26. I. Salami, “The Influence of Hafiz on Western Poetry”, op. cit., p. 8.
27. I certainly don’t mean to suggest that Emerson had a thorough under-
standing of Hafez. Indeed, of those I mention here, Emerson strikes me
as having the least feeling for Hafez, and largely seems to be following
the lead of the German interpreters.
28. R.W. Emerson, “Persian Poetry”, op. cit., p. 246.
29. R.W. Emerson, The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo
Emerson: Vol. 10, ed. M. Sealts, Harvard University Press, 1973, p. 165.
30. See: H. Ilahi-Ghomshei, “The Principles of the Religion of Love in

Classical Persian Poetry”, trans. L. Lewisohn, in L. Lewisohn (ed.),
Ḥ āfiẓ and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry, I.B. Taurus,
2010, pp. 77–106. The footnote supporting this claim simply cites two
other assertions of Ibn Arabi’s influence. One says that it is an “extreme
probability” that Hafez was “well versed” in the school of the Great
Sheikh, while the other claims that Hafez’ “mystical philosophy” is the
“complicated speculative theosophy of Ibn ‘Arabi and his followers”.
31. See in particular D. Davis, “On Not Translating Hafez”, New England
Review, vol. 25, 1990, pp. 310–318; “Sufism and Poetry: A Marriage of
Convenience?”, Edebiyât, vol. 10, 1999, pp. 279–292; and also the
introduction to Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz, Mage
Publishers, 2012.
32. D. Davis, Faces of Love, op. cit., pp. xxx–xxxvi.
33. See for example, Faces of Love, pp. 36–37 and p. 68. In the former
poem, Hafez speaks of hypocrisy as ruining the harvest reaped by reli-
gion. In the latter, he writes that many Sufi’s deserve to be burned, and
that he has sold his own cloak and prayer rug to buy wine.
34. D. Davis, Faces of Love, op. cit., pp. xxx–xxxvi.
35. I. Salami, “The Influence of Hafiz on Western Poetry”, op. cit., p. 8.
36. Quoted in K. Mommsen, op. cit., p. 200.
37. NF-1884,26[331].
38. A couple of discussions beyond the immediate context and BGE are
worth mentioning. In TI “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man” §1 (p. 513),
Kant, Schelling, and Seneca all feature amongst Nietzsche’s “impossible
ones”. In EH “Why I Write Such Good Books” CW§3 (p. 321), Kant
and Schelling are amongst the dishonest “veil-makers”.
39. NF-1884,25[74]. Machiavelli’s honesty is highlighted along with that
of the Jesuits, Montaigne, and La Rochefoucauld.
40. NF-1884,25[347].
41. NF-1884,25[154].
42. GM.III§6, p. 104. In BGE§39 (p. 50), Nietzsche quotes Stendhal on
the need to be “dry, clear, without illusion” in order to be a philosopher.
This comes in the midst of Nietzsche’s discussion about the necessity of
mask for truth. In EH “Why I Am So Clever” §3 (p. 244), Nietzsche
speaks of Stendhal as one of the “most beautiful accidents” of his life,
and praises Stendhal as an “honest atheist”.
43. NF-1884,26[8] and [412].
196 A. Milne
44. NF-1884,26[331] and [393]. C.f. the later note NF-1887,11[330]

(WP§830).
45. NF-1884,26[152]. The reference is possibly to Hippias Minor.
46. BGE§11, pp. 17–19. In BGE§211 (p. 136), Kant is given as a model
of philosophical labourers who, unlike “genuine philosophers”, do not
posit the values that we christen “truths” but rather attempt to press
given values into formulas. In BGE§220 (p. 148), Nietzsche criticises
the naivety of Kant’s conception of disinterest.
47. BGE§28, pp. 40–41.
48. NF-1888,18[3].
49. Nietzsche speaks of the legend that beneath Plato’s pillow there was
“nothing Egyptian, Pythagorean, or Platonic—but a volume of
Aristophanes”—i.e., buffoonery, rather than piety. This caused
Nietzsche to ruminate on Plato’s “secrecy and sphinx nature”: to reflect,
that is, that Plato’s proclaimed veneration of truth was not what it
appeared to be.
50. In a fragment discussing the tendency to caricature opponents,
Nietzsche writes, “Plato… becomes a caricature in my hands”. See:
NF-1887,10[112] (WP§374, p. 202).
51. GS§344, p. 283.
52. See NF-1886,7[2] (WP§572, p. 308) and NF-1885,34[195] (WP§409,
p. 221) on Plato’s tendency to lie.
53. NF-1886,7[2] (WP§572, p. 308).
54. NF-1884,26[330].
55. As Nietzsche notes elsewhere, “One interpretation has collapsed; but
because it was considered the interpretation, it now seems as if there
were no meaning at all in existence, as if everything were in vain”. See:
NF-1886,5[71] (WP§55, p. 35).
56. NF-1884,26[334].
57. GS§344, p. 282.
58. NF-1884,26[332]. In the preceding notebook (NF-1884,25[505]
(WP§602, p. 326)), Nietzsche had written that the “reverence for
truth… is the consequence of an illusion”, and said that we should
value “the force that forms, simplifies, shapes, and invents” more than
truth. C.f. also the beginning of Beyond Good and Evil: the first section
asks “why not rather untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance?”, and
the fourth speaks of untruth as a “condition of life”.
59. NF-1884,26[301].
60. GM.III§24, pp. 153–154.

61. BGE§177, p. 93.
62. GM.III§25, p. 154; on this different evaluation, see GS§88 on “being
serious about truth”.
63. The association of Hafez with Homer will be touched on in what
follows.
64. This is evidently a draft for what would become the “The Song of
Melancholy” appended to the forth part of Zarathustra, where the poet
is described as “An animal, cunning, preying, prowling, / That must lie,
/ That must knowingly, willingly lie” (Z, p. 298).
65. NF-1884,28[20]: “Wohin‚ wohin ist die Unschuld aller dieser Lügen! /
[…] Der Dichter‚ der lügen kann / wissentlich‚ willentlich / Der kann
allein Wahrheit reden”.
66. GS§P.4, p. 38.
67. GS§276, p. 223.
68. NF-1881,11[65]; c.f. GM.III.2.
69. Z “On the Gift Giving Virtue” §1, p. 75.
70. GS§370, p. 330.
71. NF-1887,9[91] (WP§552, p. 298).
72. TI “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man” §9, pp. 518–519.
73. NF-1887,9[102] (WP§801, pp. 421–422).
74. NF-1888,14[170]; WP§811; c.f. the description in Zarathustra of the
child as “innocence and forgetting” (Z “On the Three
Metamorphoses”, p. 27).
75. NF-1888,14[117] (WP§800, p. 421).
76. NF-1884,28[42]. For interesting variations, see: F. Nietzsche, Werke:
Bd. 4.2 (Nachgelassene Fragmente Frühjahr 1884—Herbst 1885), ed.
G. Colli et al., De Gruyter, 1986, pp. 224–227.
77. I am only aware of two English translations of this poem. See P.V. Cohn’s
translation in The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche: Vol. 17, ed.
O. Levy, trans. A.M. Ludovici et al., Macmillan, 1911, p. 168; and
Luchte’s translation in The Peacock and the Buffalo: The Poetry of
Nietzsche, Continuum, 2008, p. 125.
78. Horace, Satires, Epistles, Ars Poetica, trans. H.R. Fairclough, Harvard
University Press, 1942, p. 463.
79. This point has somehow been entirely lost on Prof. Ahmed, who writes,
“Nietzsche wrote a poem extolling the heroic virtues of Hafiz including
the fact that Hafiz was a ‘water drinker’”. See: A. Ahmed, “Nietzsche’s
198 A. Milne
Superman, Islam and Covid-19”, Clarion India, Aug. 18, 2020 [avail-
able at https://clarionindia.net/nietzsches-superman-islam-and-
covid-19/]. Ahmed somehow manages to miss the point that Hafez was
constantly bending the elbow, and that Nietzsche was criticising him
for doing so. I suppose Ahmed must belong to the school that rebottles
Hafez’ fondness for fermented fruit as a penchant for prayer.
80. GS§86, pp. 141–142: “does he that is enthusiastic need wine?” The
original has “Was braucht der Begeisterte den Wein!”
81. The appeal of intoxicants to the spiritless is discussed in the fourth part
of Zarathustra where the Schopenhauerian Soothsayer says: “Not every-
body is a born water drinker like Zarathustra. Nor is water fit for the
weary and wilted: we deserve wine”. See: Z “The Last Supper”, p. 284.
82. In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche advises “all more spiritual natures” to “abstain
entirely from alcohol”. With respect to the saying “in vino veritas”,
Nietzsche writes that here, too, he finds himself “at odds with all the
world about the concept of ‘truth’” and says that in his own case, “the
spirit moves over water.” See: EH “Why I Am So Clever” §1,
pp. 238–239. Nietzsche’s general criticism of stimulant-seeking has not
stopped him from being characterised as a “psychonaut”. See P. Peter
Sjostedt-H, Noumenautics, The Psychedelic Press, 2015, Chap. 6.
Nietzsche was no puritan, and he did frequently self-medicate with
opiates and other sedatives to treat his insomnia, but the claim that
Nietzsche had a significant interest in mind altering drugs is largely
unsupported, and is another example of the implausible projection of
one’s own interests onto an author one admires. I’m surprised the
author hasn’t said that “one cannot help” taking the “poisonous fungus”
of Nietzsche’s “Song of a Theocritical Goatherd” (GS, pp. 360–363) as
proof of his use of magic mushrooms.
83. The quote here is, of course, from John 4:24. In Luther’s 1522 transla-
tion, we read “Gott ist Geist” (as in the NIV), while in Luther’s 1545
edition, we read “Gott ist ein Geist” (as in the KJV).
84. NF-1885,41[6] (WP§1051, pp. 540–541); Kaufmann’s version con-
tinues beyond this point, however I follow the Colli and Montinari
edition by seeing these as distinct fragments. This fragment reads quite
like a draft of GM.III§2, which we shall consider shortly.
85. NF-1886,5[34] (WP§1045, pp. 537–538).
86. BGE§198, p. 110 [TM].
87. J.W. Goethe, West-östlicher Divan, “Hikmet Nameh”: “Du hast so man-

che Bitte gewährt, /Und wenn sie dir auch schädlich war; / Der gute Mann
da hat wenig begehrt, / Dabei hat es doch wenig Gefahr”. Another version
I recall seeing has “keine Gefahr” (no danger) rather than “wenig Gefahr”
(little danger). For comparison, the quoted phrase in Nietzsche’s origi-
nal is “wenig Gefahr mehr hat”.
89. For example, NF-1885,1[122] (WP§384, p. 207): “Overcoming the
affects?—Not if what is implied is their weakening or extirpation. But
putting them into service: which may also mean subjecting them to a
protracted tyranny… At last they are confidently granted freedom
again: they love us as good servants and go voluntarily wherever our
best interests lie”. C.f. Z “On Enjoying and Suffering the Passions”,
pp. 36–37; and NF-1887,9[139] (WP§933, p. 492).
90. GS§370, pp. 329–330; c.f. WP§1009 and WP§845–846.
91. C.f. Z “On the Gift-Giving Virtue”.
92. See: NCW§Apostle.2, p. 674. GS§370 is also repeated in NCW with
modification, though the remark about Hafez is dropped: see the sec-
tion titled “We Antipodes”, pp. 669–671.
93. GM.III§2, pp. 98–99. Nietzsche goes on in this passage to criticise
those who “worship chastity”, treating it as if it were an end in itself.
Here we can see Nietzsche’s desire—as he put it in a famous late frag-
ment--make “asceticism natural again”: NF-1887,9[93] (WP§915,
p. 483). C.f. NF-1888,14[117] (WP§800, p. 421): “Chastity is merely
the economy of an artist—and in any event, even the artist’s fruitful-
ness ceases when potency ceases”
94. NF-1884,26[119] (WP§259, p. 150).
95. NF-1887,10[111] (WP§881, p. 470).
96. NF-1888,14[89] (TLN p. 249, WP§1052).
97. NF-1884,26[442].
98. NF-1888,15[113] (WP§351, pp. 191–193).
99. GM.II§7, p. 67. Nietzsche writes that on the way to becoming an
“angel”, man has lost all of the animal’s “joy and innocence”, and even
“life itself has become repugnant to him”. He cites as an example Pope
Innocent III who offered a catalogue of his repugnant, animal aspects:
“impure begetting, disgusting means of nutrition in his mother’s womb,
baseness of the matter out of which man evolves, hideous stink, secre-
tion of saliva, urine, and filth”.
200 A. Milne
100. BGE§44, p. 55.

101. GS§373, p. 335.
op. cit., p. 135.
103. Dionysius the Areopagite, On the Divine Names and the Mystical
Theology, ed. and trans. C.E. Rolt, SPCK, 1920, p. 2.
104. Gal. 5:17, RSV.
105. NF-1888,15[113] (WP§351, pp. 191–193).
106. GM.III§24, pp. 153–154.
107. GS§372, p. 333.
108. BGE§P, p. 3.
111. Bonaventura, The Life of Saint Francis, trans. E.G. Salter, J.M. Dent
and Co., 1904, pp. 47–48.
112. NF-1886,5[34] (WP§1045, pp. 537–538).
113. E. Renan, Vie de Jésus, 1863, quoted by Nietzsche in NF-1887,11[390].
114. On the twisted eroticism of Francis and other saints, see NF-1887,10[51].
116. NF-1887,10[165] (WP§916, pp. 483–484).
117. NF-1888,18[3]. C.f. NF-1887,9[53] (WP§832, p. 439).
118. See for example BGE§28, NF-1885,34[80], NF-1887,10[193]
(WP§147) and NF-1887,9[157] (WP§380).
119. NF-1884,26[341].
120. NF-1888,16[37] (WP§834 [TM]): “göttliche Leichtigkeit”. C.f.
NF-1887,10[116] (“Offenbach was more ingenious than Wagner”).
See also: NF-1887,9[53] (WP§832), and NF-1887,9[12] (WP§833).
121. In a letter to Gast (BVN-1888,1007), Nietzsche is specific as to what of
Offenbach’s music he had recently enjoyed: the operettas La Périchole,
La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, and La fille du tambour-major.
Nietzsche also reports similarly here that “four or five times in each
work”, Offenbach “attains a state of high-spirited buffoonery”.
122. NF-1888,24[1]. C.f. Nietzsche’s praise in NF-1888,18[3] of
Offenbach’s “ingenious buffoonery” [geniale Buffonerie].
123. C.f. BVN-1887,948, a letter to Gast in which Nietzsche talks of oppos-
ing the spirit of gaiety to all “German seriousness” in music. Nietzsche
praised Mendelssohn, another Jewish composer, for his halcyon nature
(BGE§245, p. 181) and for bringing Goethe’s spirit into music
(NF-1885,2[66]), while he lamented the large dose of Schiller even in

Beethoven (NF-1887,11[315] (WP§106, pp. 66–67)). C.f.
BVN-1888,1214, a late letter to the organist Fuchs, in which Nietzsche
writes that he must not take his praise of Bizet too seriously; he simply
served as a useful foil to Wagner where it would have been tasteless to
summon Beethoven.
124. NCW, “Wagner as a Danger” §2, p. 667.
125. GS§382, p. 347.
126. CW§5, p. 166.
127. CW.Preface§1, p. 157.
128. NF-1887,10[145] (WP§1009, p. 552).
129. EH “Why I Am So Clever” §4, p. 245. Here Nietzsche claims that
Heine and he are the two best stylists of German—and yet one is a Jew
and the other a self-proclaimed Pole (EH “Why I Am So Wise” §3,
p. 255).
130. NF-1888,18[3]. C.f. NF-1887,9[53] (WP§832, p. 439).
131. GS§370, pp. 329–330; c.f. WP§1009 and WP§845–846.
132. “Offenbar Geheimnis”, in “Hafis Nameh”, West-Östlicher Divan.
133. See my discussion above (Chap. 7) on how Nietzsche’s attempt at say-
ing yes to everything does not exclude enmity, and is not an incapacity
to say no.
134. See Bicknell’s introduction: Hafiz, The Divan, trans. H Bicknell, in The
Literature of Persia: Part I, The Colonial Press, 1900, p. 367.
135. D. Davis, Faces of Love, op. cit., p. 34.
136. EH ““Why I Am So Clever” §4, p. 245. This idea of divine malice
opposed to the malice of weakness, and golden seriousness as opposed
to gravity, suggests the contrast of forms of lightness: the lightness of
not having responsibility versus the light feet of those with a heavy
pack. For Nietzsche, it is a matter of extending responsibility: “What is
noble?—…that one instinctively seeks heavy responsibilities”
(NF-1888,15[115] (WP§944), c.f. BGE§212). This is what he praises
Goethe for in Twilight: not being “fainthearted” but for taking “as
much as possible upon himself ” (TI “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man”
§49). For Nietzsche, it is not about shirking weight, not about the
dandy’s lightness, but about “transforming all that we are into light and
flame” (GS§P.3), about the “art of apotheosis” and “aureole” that over-
comes weight, not bypasses it (NF-1885,2[114] (WP§845)).
202 A. Milne
137. NF-1888,18[3]: “Heute macht man Heine in Deutschland ein Verbrechen

daraus, Geschmack gehabt zu haben—gelacht zu haben: die Deutschen
selbst nämlich nehmen sich heute verzweifelt ernst”.
138. Mao endorsed the saying “knit your brows and you will hit upon a
stratagem”, claiming that those who “think hard” are “sure to triumph”.
See: Mao Zedong, “Our Study and the Current Situation”, in Selected
Works: Vol. III, Pergamon Press, 1965, pp. 174–175.
139. C.f. GS§327, p. 257.
140. BGE§294, p. 233.
141. C.f. NF-1887,11[148].
142. NF-1887,9[143] (WP§187, p. 112).
143. In the introduction to his excellent translation of The Satyricon,
Arrowsmith writes that if one compares Petronius to the major Roman
satirists, one finds that “the crucial difference is surely that the Satyricon
is unmistakably comic, everywhere shot through with a gusto and a
verve and a grace of humor that is almost totally absent from the toler-
ant strictures of Horace or the gentle, crabbed austerity of Persius or the
enormous savagery of Juvenal. After all, one laughs with Petronius; the
effect of the Satyricon is neither scorn nor indignation, but the laughter
appropriate to good satire enlarged by the final gaiety of comedy”.
Petronius, The Satyricon, trans. W. Arrowsmith, The University of
Michigan Press, 1959, p. xi. See also Arrowsmith’s comparison of
Petronius’ Satyricon to Rabelais’ Gargantua and Apuleius’ Golden Ass at
pp. xvi–xvii.
144. NF-1887,10[193] (WP§147, p. 94). C.f. EH “Why I Write Such
Good Books” §5 (p. 268) on how our concept of sex as impure is “the
crime against life par excellence” and “the real sin against the holy spirit
of life”.
145. D. Davis, Faces of Love, op. cit., p. 4 and pp. 34–35.
Bibliography
Bonaventura, The Life of Saint Francis, trans. E.G. Salter, J.M. Dent and
Co., 1904.
Davis, D., Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz, Mage Publishers, 2012.
Emerson, R.W., “Persian Poetry”, in Letters and Social Aims, The Waverley Book
Co., 1883, pp. 223–251.
———, The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Vol.
10, ed. M. Sealts, Harvard University Press, 1973.
Hafis, Eine Sammlung persischer Gedichte, ed. and trans. G.F. Daumer, Hoffmann
und Campe, 1846.
Horace, Satires, Epistles, Ars Poetica, trans. H.R. Fairclough, Harvard University
Press, 1942.
Mommsen, K., Goethe and the Poets of Arabia, trans. M. Metzger, Camden
House, 2014.
Petronius, The Satyricon, trans. W. Arrowsmith, The University of Michigan
Press, 1959.
Salami, I., “The Influence of Hafiz on Western Poetry”, Sarjana, vol. 24, no. 2,
2009, pp. 1–10.
Wagner, R., Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, ed. and trans. S. Spencer and
B. Millington, J.M. Dent and Sons, 1987.
Index1
A Davis, B. W., 116n102,

Ansell-Pearson, K., 151, 164n34 117n102, 117n107
Aristophanes, 6, 179, 189, 196n49 Davis, D., 177
Dionysius the Areopagite,
100, 187
B Dostoyevsky, F., 81
Bizet, G., 102, 189, 190, 201n123
Bodhisattva, 3, 93, 101, 104–106,
115n87, 158 E
Eckhart, 5, 8, 18, 93–100,
108n1, 109n9, 109n10,
C 109n11, 109n12, 110n18,
Clark, T. J., 102, 114n72 110n22, 111n34, 112n51,
Comte, A., 125 153, 161n1, 166n56, 171,
187, 188
Emerson, R. W., 172, 175, 176,
D 194n22, 194n23,
Daumer, G. F., 6, 172–174 194n24, 194n27
Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75007-7
206 Index
Empedocles, 3, 4, 35, 40–45, 49, K

57n35, 58n37, 58n44, 59n48, Kant, I., 8, 46, 48, 54, 56n21,
59n54, 60n61 63n108, 67, 83–84n18,
84n20, 178–180, 196n46
Kaufmann, W., 7–9,
F 11n36, 13, 15, 164n34,
Francis of Assisi, 188 192n8, 198n84
G L
Goethe, J. W., 3, 13, 35, 78, 126, Laozi, 14, 93, 101
156, 172 Lessing, G. E., 33n61, 46, 47
Gray, J., 125, 139n39 Loeb, P., 87n61, 113n60, 162n12
H M
Haar, M., 148, 153 Machiavelli, N., 178–180, 195n39
Hafez, 6, 7, 61n78, 131, 136, Mozart, W. A., 114n70, 189
167n65, 171–192 Murdoch, I., 132, 133
Hakuin, 104
Hammer, J., 6, 172–174, 178,
192n8, 192n9 N
Hegel, G. W. F., 48, 56n18, Nagarjuna, 104
125, 162n19 Nishitani, K., 93, 96, 103,
Heine, H., 189–191, 105, 108n1, 117n102,
201n129, 202n137 148, 161n5, 162n19,
Heraclitus, 3, 4, 29, 35–40, 42, 49, 163n21
55n6, 55–56n14, 57n28,
91n107, 101, 148, 168n85
Herder, J. G., 28, 33n61, 54 O
Herzen, A., 126, 127 Offenbach, J., 189, 190, 200n120,
Horace, 7, 182, 202n143 200n121, 200n122
Huangbo, 105
P
J Parkes, G., 10n13, 83n1, 85n26,
Jacobi, C. G. J., 25, 29, 33n61, 46, 85n32, 85–86n37, 89n81, 93,
47, 49, 51, 53 103, 106, 107, 115n90,
Johnston, M., 132 115n92, 116–117n102,
Jung, C. G., 9, 14, 15, 18–20, 31n24 117n107, 194n22
Index 207
Pascal, B., 10n16, 94, 98, 124, Spencer, H., 76, 77, 79, 88n79,
138n25, 139n34, 161n1, 179 89n80, 89n81, 89n82, 89n88
Petronius, 6, 179, 189, Spinoza, B., 4, 10n16, 25, 28,
191, 202n143 33n61, 35, 45–54, 56n21,
Plato, 10n16, 23, 178–180, 58n35, 60n68, 61n72,
187, 196n50 63n106, 63n108, 63n109,
Plotinus, 66, 83n11, 95, 188 75, 87n52, 88n71,
Proclus, 95 88n72, 147
Stambaugh, J., 93, 101, 113n61,
148, 153, 155–157, 162n10,
R 163n21, 163n22, 166n58, 187
Rée, P., 76, 77, 89n80, 140n44 Steiner, R., 1, 14–16, 18, 20, 30n11,
Richardson, J., 55n6, 73, 87n53 48, 58n44, 63n107
Rubens, P. P., 7, 185 Stendhal, 178, 180, 195n42
S T
Salomé, L., 75, 76, 88n73 Tolstoy, L., 124, 138n28,
Schelling, F. W. J., 83n12, 156, 167n67
178–180, 195n38 Trotsky, L., 127
Schopenhauer, A., 2, 40, 46, 48,
58n36, 67, 70, 71, 83n12,
84n19, 84n20, 84n21, 94, W
105, 106, 109n9, 109n10, Wagner, R., 109n10, 160, 173, 174,
109n11, 109n12, 121, 122, 189, 200n120, 201n123
129, 132, 137n4, 160
Scott, W., 178, 180
Seneca, 178, 180, 195n38 Z
Shang, G., 101 Zhuangzi, 14, 93, 101

Nietzsche As Egoist and Mystic

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Egoist and Mystic

ISBN 978-3-030-75006-0 ISBN 978-3-030-75007-7 (eBook)

Nietzsche’s works are referred to in the footnotes using the following

BT The Birth of Tragedy, in The Birth of Tragedy and the Case of

Z Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. W. Kaufmann, Penguin, 1978.

Nothing comparable to the scholarly English translations of Nietzsche’s

GF Goethe’s Faust, ed. and trans. W. Kaufmann, Anchor Books, 1963.

1 The Sanctification of Nietzsche 1

2 Ancestors, Part I 13

3 Ancestors, Part II 35

4 Mysticism from Birth to Breakdown 65

6 The Great Hospital121

7 On Being Enamoured147

8 Hafez Shrugs the Cloak171

It is hardly anything new to present Nietzsche as a religious figure. While

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 1

Each of Nietzsche’s self-proclaimed ‘ancestors’ may be regarded not only

Previous scholarly attempts to mediate between Nietzsche and mystics

of having a right to everything”.26 They must also be willing to look away

Hafez an example of that “ingenious buffoonery” that he called the high-

In closing this introduction, and by way of briefly addressing my

bound to invite unflattering comparisons. It is not merely the poverty of

Finally, I am indebted to Kaufmann for my belated realisation that

fundamentally misguided Young’s contention that Nietzsche advocated

17. This borrows Kaufmann’s divinely malicious translation of Goethe’s

Kaufmann claimed that “immersion” in Goethe is “precisely what is

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 13

particular attention to Goethe’s conception of the one and the many. In

In English-language scholarship, there are a fair number of quality liter-

un-Christian, nor anti-Christian, but am a committed non-Christian

These two aspects were closely intertwined. Creuzer was a Neoplatonist,

be straightforwardly interpreted. These men think that “there is some-

following Herbert Silberer, gives a psychological interpretation of

Nietzsche knew himself to be a decadent and, constantly wary of self-­

universal manifesting under different conditions [Das Allgemeine und

not therefore expect to find that a single, definitive expression of Goethe’s

can, for example, be seen in several of Michelangelo’s poems, which

To understand what it means to claim that the whole is in the parts, it

Blatt]”. In Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären, Goethe

theological or metaphysical speculation. Thus, in a famous letter to

Even if we keep in mind Cassirer’s warnings about the originality of

tormented himself with philosophical disquisitions which could in no

47. Jan. 6, 1813. C.f. “Wir sind naturforschend Pantheisten, dichtend

In Chap. 2, I began to develop an account of Goethe’s conception of the

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 35

In the Pre-Platonic Philosophers, Nietzsche discusses Heraclitus’ rejec-

In his 1959 Heraclitus, Wheelwright claims that Goethe “evinced a lively

ears”.27 Similarly for Goethe, nature is essentially mysterious, but best

It is worth mentioning that Nietzsche’s conception of the world as will to

The confusion is, I think, understandable. The identification of one

Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditation on “Schopenhauer as Educator” presents

heroic, struggling incessantly and finding relief only in death. Once

In the Pre-Platonic Philosophers, Empedocles is presented as “the tragic

If we look further back in Nietzsche’s work, we do not find an extensive

This is a quotation from Goethe, and shows that Nietzsche associated

Everything that a man undertakes to achieve, whether through act, word,

Goethe says that this is “a splendid maxim! [eine herrliche Maxime!]”,

only—expressed in the parts. Thus, “instinct speaks quite correctly” in

In Dichtung und Wahrheit, Goethe reflected on the appeal Spinoza had

and foremost”. Jacobi, typically a far more scrupulous reader of Spinoza

Nietzsche first mentioned Spinoza in print in the 1870s, including in

themselves—deification is felt “in the greatest abundance”. For the anae-

1 The Sanctification of Nietzsche 1

2 Ancestors, Part I 13

3 Ancestors, Part II 35

4 Mysticism from Birth to Breakdown 65

6 The Great Hospital121

7 On Being Enamoured147

8 Hafez Shrugs the Cloak171

Nietzsche knew himself to be a decadent and, constantly wary of self-