INTRODUCTION

It is equally disastrous for the mind to have a system and to have none. Surely,
then, it will have to decide to combine the two.

Friedrich Schlegel, Athenäum-Fragment, 53

The contradictions inherent in Nietzsche's works have given his interpreters a

great deal of trouble from the first. In many cases these inconsistencies can be
arranged a in a temporal sequence and regarded as phases in Nietzsche's
philosophical development. The most drastic changes or reorientations can
usually be divided into three to five phases. Upon closer examination other
contradictions in this philosopher's thinking prove to be merely apparent,
resulting from his use of the same general term to designate differently valued
specifications of single state of affairs,' to judge one state of affairs in terms of
its varying relationships to states of affairs,2 or to characterize it with regard to
its own different intrinsic aspects.' Yet inconsistencies in Nietzsche'
fundamental discourse remain. Nietzsche scholars have displayed broad range
of reactions. Some have held that because of his confusing statements
Nietzsche cannot be ranked among the great philosophical thinkers.4 Others
have valued him as an artist who should not be mistaken for a philosopher, ' a
philosophical poet from whom conceptual rigor can- not be expected,° or an
over-imaginative writer who did not subject the 'ethereal offspring" ('luftigen
Kinder'] of his mind to "critique and control by reality" and therefore achieved
no "harmony" either with reality or with himself.7 He has also been misused as
a writer of a aphorisms whose thinking offers "a random selection of timely
sayings."8
Finally, various scholars have attempted either to show that Nietzsche's
thinking is coherent in its essential lines or to systematize him after the fact.
The scholars who seek overall coherence in Nietzsche's works differ in their
approach to the problem. The most extreme position denies that any
significant contradictions can be found in Nietzsche. Thus Hans Vaihinger
states that Nietzsche’s Ideas, "despite their aphoristic form and unsystematic
sequence, form a strictly coherent, logically satisfactory whole; they flow with
immanent necessity from single basic principle and combine into a seamless
circle." Vaihinger sees his task as to assemble "the splinters scattered in
apparent disorder, the disjecta membra, into a strictly coherent system."10 Of
course, he must admit that besides the "main stream" elaborated by himself all
sorts of "secondary sub-currents" can be found in Nietzsche. However, when
he adds that this is the case with other ten be thinkers too,'1 he trivializes the
nearly incomparable difficulties faced by Nietzsche-interpretation.

Alfred Baeumler, although no less concerned than Vaihinger with

demonstrating the coherence of Nietzsche's work, expresses himself
somewhat more cautiously. According to him, "Nietzsche's intuitions" form a
system as long as one points knows how "to distinguish essential writings from
fleeting notes."12 To be sure, into the criterion for such a distinction seems
ultimately to reside in Baeumler's own "intuition." Since he sees the idea of
eternal recurrence as contradicting Nietzsche's fundamental doctrine of the
will to power, he is compelled to rank it among do the "fleeting" remarks that
cannot be fitted into "the system." He marginalizes it as the "expression of a
highly personal experience," that is, of a religious nature. 13 of my as The
insight that contradictory lines of thought do exist in Nietzsche's works back
does not necessarily require that one renounce "systematization." One can,
ences as Georg Simmel did, select from the totality of Nietzsche's statements
"those which ery provide a concise, unified, and meaningful intellectual
whole." Simmel admits has ti. Nietz that statements of Nietzsche's can be cited
that are "irreconcilably contrary" to disha. the interpretation he presents.14
Yet, despite his more cautious estimate of his own devel interpretation
compared with Vaihinger and Baeumler, Simmel too brackets out reflec the
problem of contradiction. Ernst Another possibility is to try to keep the
"whole" Nietzsche in view with all his contradictions while still asserting the
intrinsic, original unity of his work. This from futile has been done by positing as
the innermost core something not expressed by "task Nietzsche himself, at
least not in the sense of grounding the contradictions. At- tempts to lay bare
the hidden roots of Nietzsche's thinking have led to crude form devel
simplifications as well as to profound interpretations. Georg Lukács, for
instance, writes that "the system" of Nietzsche's "colorfully ing scintillating,
mutually contradictory myths" consists in their all being "myths of begu Bt the
imperialistic bourgeoisie to mobilize against its main enemy," socialism. 15 Karl
myti Jaspers, however, says that "the contradic and circularity in the
movement of Nietzsche's thought" are "in the last analysis merely the means
of treating in- appr IfNi directly something that lies beyond form, law, and what
is sayable," namely, the tem! most hidden ground of being.16 Martin Heidegger
foregoes seeking out "the vari- be ous discrepancies, contradictions, and,
oversights, the overhasty and often also Thit ****** Result for Image/Page 3
****** INtROdUCTIon 3 reces- linger superficial and accidental in Nietzsche's
representations" in order to discover, ' 0n isjecta the contrary, the realm of his
real inquiry."17 Heidegger thus seeks to penetrate into esides what is left
unsaid by Nietzsche, hidden from his own self, although it supplies -** can the
implicit underpinnings of his entire work, that is, a metaphysics of forgot- other
ten being. Vietz- Such interpretations disregard the problem of contradictions
in favor of an uncontradictory foundation of Nietzsche' philosophical thinking
that is not strat- elaborated or even considered by Nietzsche himself. The
various interpreters cau- identify very different things as that foundation,
depending on their own stand- 5 one points. Orienting oneself by the
multiplicity of such interpretations, one sinks into the quagmire of
contradictory Nietzsche-interpretations without having sure, own adequately
examined Nietzsche's philosophy of contradictions in its specificity. lietz-
Attempts to derive his way of thinking from his particular personality seem to
do more justice to its specific content. The philosopher's self-testimonials sug-
long zes it gest such a psychological grounding. "I would have perished from
each single one ure.13 of my affects," he writes, "I always played one off
against the other."18 Looking orks back upon his work, Nietzsche in Ecce Homo
speaks of "dual series of experi- ences," an "accessibility to apparently
separate worlds," that is repeated "in ev- 1, as hich ery respect" in his nature.
For he is both a decadent, and "its opposite: one who has turned out well."19
Even Lou Andreas-Salomé tried to grasp as the basis of mits )) to Nietzsche's
philosophy his "complex personality," which fell into an "ever deeper
disharmony" as a result of the "inner warfare of his drives."20 In the course of
its own development, she writes, his philosophy became more and more "a
monstrous out reflection of his self-image"; Nietzsche generalized "his soul
into the world soul."21 I his Ernst Bertram, too, in his striving for a mythic
transfiguration of Nietzsche, starts "his from his "duality of soul."22 While
Andreas-Salomé stresses that Nietzsche strove by futilely for the unity of his
personality, Bertram ascribes to the philosopher the At- "task of reconciliation,
of the unification of the incompatible."23 Apparently myth- formation is to take
on and advance this task. It seems to Bertram "as if the whole ude
development of the Nietzsche-image has run its course to a myth of the believ-
ally ing doubter, a legend of the God-seeking blasphemer, a figure of the
prophetic : of beginning of the end."24 Carl But whether the contradictions are
deduced from psychology or obfuscated by myths, the reduction to
Nietzsche's particular personality that underlies such ent 177- approaches
always begins by eliminating the philosophical state of the question. the If
Nietzsche's assertions are understood merely as emanating from his individual
ari- temperament, the truth claim of these conflicting series of ideas can no
longer Iso be examined seriously in terms of objective contents discussed by
Nietzsche. Things are different if, with Michael Landmann, one seeks to
understand Nietzsche's contradictions as stemming "not from personal
eccentricity," but rather as the "fateful expression of a late epoch." 25 This late
epoch is characterized by man awareness of increasing discrepancies because
since the Renaissance "cultural fields have acquired autonomy," shattering the
coherence of the cosmos that had previously been "possible."26 That being
the case, Nietzsche's self-contradictions are not essentially personal. They
express, rather, the contradictoriness of the modern world. And Landmann
rightly observes that Nietzsche's inner strife is "common to us all" and that
preoccupation with his thought therefore has a more than antiquarian
significance.27
Nietzsche understands himself essentially as a critic of his time. Yet he states:
"Whoever attacks his time, can attack only himself: what, then, can he see if
not himself?."28 But for one's own time to be attacked in the self, that self
must have been exposed to the various spiritual movements of the time and
thus expanded to complete awareness of the time. So Nietzsche's ambition,
his torment, and also his happiness consist in this: "To explore the whole
sphere of the modern soul, to have sat in its every nook" (WP 1031). Though
"impassioned for independence" he still has the "most dependent soul"
because he is so exposed to the present age and "more tormented by all the
smallest ropes than others are by chains."29

Reflecting on himself, that is, on his own time, he finds that "all of us have
unconsciously, involuntarily in our bodies values, words, formulas, moralities of
opposite origin (CW).30 He discovers that "the problem of the nineteenth
century" consists in the "difference between its ideals and their contradiction."
He is preoccupied with the question whether this contradictoriness must be
merely the expression of weakness, "sickness" or decay, which he sees in so
many forms in the phenomena of his time, or whether it also contains the
seeds of future strength and health, of a synthesis. And he concludes that it
"could be the precondition of greatness to grow to such an extent in violent
tension" (WP III). What Nietzsche here calls only a possibility, he expresses in
various contexts as his conviction, namely, that the contradictions in culture
and society must be enhanced and deepened, because only through them can
something higher be reached. He also states, conversely, that when opposites
approximate each other, this must lead to their degeneration (cf. WP 885).
General references to the origin of contradictions in Nietzsche's thinking can,
however, as little free us from the real philosophical problem as can allusions
to their overcoming in any future. The inconsistencies must be examined
closely. Nietzsche scholarship has hitherto concentrated mainly on the
contradiction between the doctrines of the will to power, or of the overman,
and the theory of the eternal recurrence of the same.

Karl Löwith sees this as Nietzsche's "fundamental contradiction,' stemming

"from a basic conflict in the relation between man and the world ---without
God and a common order of creation."

This is Nietzsche' major contradiction, and it lies on a different plane than the
many resolvable "inconsistencies" found in his works. 31

According to Löwith, at the very zenith of modernity, Nietzsche, with his idea
of eternal recurrence, revives antiquity's view of the world but remains unable
to harmonize this notion with his remarks on the overman. With a penetrating
analysis of Nietzschean texts, Löwith ascribes particular significance to the
origin of the idea of eternal recurrence and confronts it with the "modern" idea
of the overman.

Eugen Fink, on the contrary, emphasizes the future of both of Nietzsche's

theories. As Fink claims, "in his concept of Dionysos" Nietzsche thinks "the two
have Janus-faces together"; he does not resort to "mythical memory" only
when he wants "to express his recalcitrant unitary basic conception of life";
rather, he stands in the "morning twilight of a new myth of the divinity of the
world." Nietzsche soul, does not suppress the contradiction between the will
to power and eternal recurrence; rather, he combines the two a in a unity. Of
course, he himself did not comprehend "the peculiar nature of this unity."32

The inherent deficiency in these and other attempts to reconcile the

contradictions [Gegensätze] in Nietzsche's philosophy is that they do not take
Nietzsche's philosophy of contradictions sufficiently into account. Nietzsche
sought to underscore contradictoriness [Gegensatz] as constitutive of the
world even more fundamentally than his above-cited remarks suggest. For
Nietzsche, the whole of reality is determined from the outset by the "struggle"
of opposites. In the course of his philosophizing he sees himself compelled to
describe the antitheses in detail with complete sharpness.

His goal, to be sure, is to synthesize things that stand in a peculiar relationship

by their very opposition. But again and again what Nietzsche tries to articulate
into a unity ultimately breaks apart. Incompatibility replaces mere opposition.
The more drastically he seeks to overcome it, the more clearly it emerges. His
philosophy of contradictions leads to insurmountable contradictions in his
philosophical thinking.

Nietzsche repeatedly thematized the problem of "contradictoriness"

[Gegensätzlichkeit]. The present book will examine the scope of this
thematization and the grounds and abysses to which it leads.

Inquiring into the nature of "real" oppositions, Nietzsche destroys

metaphysical convictions and logical validity-claims and fashions his theory of
“wills to power” (this use of the plural is deliberate) that interrelate in their
play of forces. Seeking the origin of the value-conflicts rampant in his century,
he is forced to elaborate his historico-philosophical ideas, which are oriented
primarily on the phenomenon of morality. His inquiry into the wills to power
that collapse under the struggle of contradictions opens up for him the
problem of nihilism.

The contradictoriness of wills to power as the ultimate reality transforms his

understanding of truth. But the two factors that constitute his “new truth”
turn out to be incompatible.

As Nietzsche tries to envisage the human being who will be able to master the
contradictions, he creates the image of the overman [Übermensch]. But this
figure splits into two mutually incompatible images. The one type of overman
he imagines is the synthesis of all opposites, the Yes to everything that was, is,
and will be, and so must be exposed to the claim of the theory of eternal
recurrence, which this Yes without restriction requires. The other type of
overman, the relentless strong man, also experiences his highest development
in confrontation with the theory of eternal recurrence. This theory itself,
moreover, turns out to be intrinsically contradictory, so that it cannot possibly
be thought of as the valid expression of the one world complex generated by
contradictions.

This book might seem to some, in the end, to reach the same results as prior
Nietzsche scholarship. That is not the case, as the book itself will show. For
example, the often repeated allegation that the theory of the will to power, or
that of the overman, is incompatible with eternal recurrence will be shown to
be merely apparent, while on the other hand essential inconsistencies not
previously noted by Nietzsche-interpreters will become evident.
The following chapters will seek to elucidate Nietzsche's work in terms of his
own philosophical point of departure and to trace it from there to the highest
developments of his reasoning. Only in this way can the interconnections of his
ideas, as well as his repeated failure on various levels of thought, be brought to
light. The question remains whether a philosopher inevitably fails if he
succumbs repeatedly to the "fascination of the opposing point of view" and
refuses to be deprived of the "stimulus of the enigmatic" character of
existence (WP 470).