The author of this piece is Kuo-Ping Claudia Tai; Claudia has just submitted her Phd thesis at Cardiff University, and, if all goes according to plan, she will be awarded the degree in September of this year. She currently resides in Taiwan, and she feels that her understanding of Ancient Chinese thought is important to her interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy. Claudia is a fervent writer of fiction, writing in both Chinese and English, and she also maintains her own blog.

A Path to be a Self-Respecting Individual

Nietzsche in an entry from his late notebooks says:

I wish men would begin by respecting themselves: everything else follows from that…This is something different from the blind drive to love oneself: nothing is more common, both in the love of the sexes and in that duality named ‘I’, than contempt for what one loves, fatalism in love-. (Notebook 1888, 14: 205)

 

This exemplifies Nietzsche’s view of mankind. On the one hand, he proclaims the difference between blind self-love and self-respect and on the other hand, he stresses the importance of self-respect. We can respond to his wish in two ways. The first way is to find out if we are able to evade the blind drive that seduces us into loving ourselves for our own benefit, and start instead to respect ourselves, as autonomous and responsible individuals. The second is to regard Nietzsche’s claim as only his wish and thereby ignore the possibility of fulfilling this wish. I prefer the first option. Nietzsche distinguishes self-love from self-respect on account of his understanding of humanity on two levels. At one level, he points out that humankind automatically loves itself. At another level, he emphasises that self-respect is more important than self-love, for self-respect helps to develop humanity to a higher level of self-realisation. But we have to bear in mind that Nietzsche does not say that self-respect is for everyone. Only those rare individuals with the capacity for self-realisation and self-overcoming would be able to perceive it, knowing how important self-respect is. Nietzsche’s understanding of humanity in Twilight of the Idols can inspire and help us develop ourselves to a higher level as a self-respecting individual.

 

In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche attempts to offer a possible means of approaching the question of self-knowledge, seeing if man is able to take off the mask of limited consciousness, reconcile himself with his human animality, and then follow his own instinct as an autonomous individual. But Nietzsche knows how great the difficulty of being a real individual is, as he claims,

 

The harshest daylight, rationality at any cost, life bright, cold, circumspect, conscious, without instinct, in opposition to the instincts, has itself been no more than a form of sickness, another form of sickness – and by no means a way back to ‘virtue’, to ‘health’, to happiness….To have to combat one’s instincts – that is the formula for décadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness and instinct are one. (TI 2: 11)

 

It is, indeed, rare and difficult to find the way to Nietzsche’s “happiness” but he argues that the self can possibly be developed and overcome. In other words, the possibility can be attained when the individual conceives of his need for combat, knowing how to identify himself in the decadent modern epoch. For Nietzsche, courage is essential. Though he realises human nature is limited and imperfect, Nietzsche does not deny the greatness of humanity; his idea of human nature could be seen as a reflection of his own expectation of humanity.

 

Nietzsche likewise argues why knowledge and consciousness restrict us. At first, he criticises philosophers whose dialectics and reason not only inhibit development but also lead us to falsify our conception of the real world. As he explains,

 

One chooses dialectics only when one has no other expedient. One knows that dialectics inspire mistrust, that they are not very convincing. Nothing is easier to expunge than the effect of a dialectician, as is proved by the experience of every speech-making assembly. Dialectics can be only a last-ditch weapon in the hands of those who have no other weapon left. (TI 2: 6)

 

Dialectics and reason, in Nietzsche’s view, are the means that philosophers use to convince. However, he questions the purpose of using dialectics and reason. Taking the conception of ‘the real world’ as an example, Nietzsche argues that “the ‘real world’ has been constructed out of the contradiction to the actual world: an apparent world indeed, in so far as it is no more than a moral-optical illusion” (TI 3: 6). Nietzsche considers the real world as an illusion that can neither be precisely estimated by judgement of consciousness, nor by senses. He goes on,  

 

I set apart with high reverence that name of Heraclitus. When the rest of the philosopher crowd rejected the evidence of the senses because these showed plurality and change, he rejected their evidence because they showed things as if they possessed duration and unity…But Heraclitus will always be right in this, that being is an empty fiction. The ‘apparent’ world is the only one: the ‘real’ world has only been lyingly added. (TI 3: 2)

 

Nietzsche agrees with Heraclitus who regards the world as appearance which cannot be judged by means of consciousness. At this point, he also observes that humankind is entangled in the decadence through the false conception derived from philosophy and Christianity: “To divide the world into a ‘real’ and an ‘apparent’ world, whether in the manner of Christianity or in the manner of Kant is only a suggestion of décadence – a symptom of declining life” (TI 3: 6). For Nietzsche, we are restricted in an erroneous conception which denies life and restricts the mind. This is why Nietzsche strongly criticises modern culture.

 

In order to emphasise the view that life should not be denied but be affirmed, Nietzsche proclaims the importance of experiencing life by action as an artist, even in the tragic way: “The tragic artist is not a pessimist – it is precisely he who affirms all that is questionable and terrible in existence, he is Dionysian” (TI 3: 6). Nietzsche is concerned with defining life in a new perspective, that is to say, in a natural and healthy way with “an instinct of life” (TI 5: 4). Life does not need to be denied by Christianity but to be affirmed with bravery and vitality: “The Church combats the passions with excision in every sense of the word: its practice, its ‘cure’ castration. It never asks: ‘How can one spiritualize, beautify, deify a desire?”…But to attach the passions at their roots means to attach life as its roots: the practice of the Church is hostile to life” (TI 5:1). Nietzsche claims that traditional philosophy and Christian morality mislead us to deny life. But on the other hand, he argues that the need of self-awakening that raises the mind to a higher level of self-knowledge is important. Nietzsche also claims: “Even the bravest of us rarely has the courage for what he really knows” (TI 1: 2). He implies that man is so limited and cowardly that he is unable to grasp his own motives; therefore, man habitually succumbs to the weakness of human nature when he is under the influence of traditional philosophy and Christian morality. Here is Nietzsche’s perspective of knowing life:

 

One would have to be situated outside life, and on the other hand to know it as thoroughly as any, as many, as all who have experienced it, to be permitted to touch on the problem of the value of life at all: sufficient reason for understanding that this problem is for us an inaccessible problem. When we speak of values we do so under the inspiration and from the perspective of life: life itself evaluates through us when we establish values. (TI 5: 5)

 

In this view, there are two main implications of Nietzsche’s perspective on life. Firstly, it is better to detach one’s true self from the limited human mind, understanding that everything cannot completely be measured by reason and language. Secondly, life can be perceived when the individual knows himself, creating the value of life through experience. In other words, there is no other way that knows the value of life except experiencing life thoroughly. As Nietzsche says: “Nothing can be predicted, but with a certain heightening of the human type a new force may reveal itself of which we have preciously known nothing” (Notebook 1885, 34: 125). Life, according to Nietzsche, is the force that inspires us to develop, in order to affirm life with action.

 

Nietzsche stresses the improvement of humanity, questioning if it can possibly be achieved by breaking with any conception of morality in human history, such as Indian morality, “the morality of breeding”, and Christian morality, “the morality of taming”(TI 7: 5). Regarding himself as “an immoralist”, Nietzsche offers a new perspective on the improvement of humanity. Thus: “every means hitherto employed with the intention of making mankind moral has been thoroughly immoral” (TI 7: 5). However, we must be careful when we define Nietzsche’s metaphysical conception of immorality, which has to be interpreted at least to some extent in his own terms. To be immoral is not to act without due disciplines but rather to improve the mind and know how to be a better individual with self-development. As he argues,

 

In so far as morality condemns as morality and not with regard to the aims and objects of life, it is a specific error with which one should show no sympathy, an idiosyncrasy of the degenerate which has caused an unspeakable amount of harm!… We others, we immoralists, have on the contrary opened wide our hearts to every kind of understanding, comprehension, approval. We do not readily deny, we seek our honour in affirming. (TI 5: 6)

 

To be immoral, for Nietzsche, is to experience life, affirming it through every circumstance as a Dionysian hero.

 

Understanding the limits of the conscious mind, Nietzsche creates a battlefield in which the mind has to struggle and develop itself, in order to affirm life with the self-disciplined soul. As Thiele argues: “The battlefield is within the self, and the corpus of knowledge supplies all the mysteries and intrigue of uncharted water” (23). According to Thiele, Nietzsche creates a self-reflexive and self-overcoming battlefield: “The greatest struggles are not to be witnessed on the battlefield or in the sociopolitical arena, but in the rule of the self. The greatest victory is a well-ordered soul” (65). Nietzsche suggests that the mind needs to be developed to a higher level, through its inner struggle, in order to understand how to affirm life with courage. Furthermore, Nietzsche urges to establish a new conception, i.e. the reinterpretation of man and the world. Christianity dominates the human mind by spreading a false conception of God and humanity. As he says, “Christianity presupposes that man does not know, cannot know what is good for him and what evil: he believes in God, who alone knows. Christianity morality is a command: its origin is transcendental; it is beyond all criticism, all right to criticize; it possesses truth only if God is truth” (TI 9: 5). Christianity imposes a doctrine that on the one hand devalues humanity and misleads man to believe in innate sin. The doctrine, on the other hand, controls the human mind by means of the conception of Christian God. Christian doctrine inculcates the need for redemption to the human mind, leaving us entrapped by the domination of Christianity. At this point, Nietzsche explicates his view of humanity as follows, 

 

Man believes that the world itself is filled with beauty – he forgets that it is he who has created it…Man really mirrors himself in things, that which give him back his own reflection he considers beautiful: the judgement ‘beautiful’ is his conceit of his species…Man has humanized the world: that is all. But there is nothing, absolutely nothing, to guarantee to us that man constitutes the model for the beautiful. (TI 9: 19)

 

There are two levels that Nietzsche stresses in his argument. First, he reminds us that we create the beauty of the world through imagination. What we see in the world is a reflection of our thoughts. Second, although he mentions that we can create through imagination, he argues that there is nothing that can be constituted by us. To explain more clearly, everything is transitory and illusory in Nietzsche’s view. But he maintains his radically transformative attitude toward life, affirming every event that happens in it.

 

Nietzsche too points out that life should be represented as art, even represented tragically: “Art is the great stimulus to life” (TI 9: 24). He observes that it is an honour to be brave and experience life like a hero, though the soul needs to struggle itself: “In the face of tragedy the warlike in our soul celebrates its Saturnalias; whoever is accustomed to suffering, whoever seeks out suffering, the heroic man extols his existence by means of tragedy” (TI 9: 24). Nietzsche conceives that only certain individuals who understand the weakness of humanity can respond to life through self-overcoming. For example, Nietzsche reveals his admiration of Goethe as follows,

 

He bore within him its strongest instincts: sentimentality, nature-idolatry, the anti-historical, the idealistic, the unreal and revolutionary…he did not sever himself from life, he placed himself within it; nothing could discourage him and he took as much as possible upon himself, above himself, within himself. What he aspired to was totality; he strove against the separation of reason, sensuality, feeling, will; he disciplined himself to a whole, he created himself. (TI 9: 49)

 

From Nietzsche’s viewpoint, Goethe is an admirable individual who is responsible for his life; Goethe does not choose to evade any plight that happened in his life but experiences life wholeheartedly, creating his life with courage and vitality. This is also Nietzsche’s perspective on the individual, who is able to regard life as a battlefield. Nietzsche never guarantees that it is easy to win the war of the self; he only stresses the significance of freedom of the soul, as he proclaims, “war is a training in freedom. For what is freedom? That one has the will to self-responsibility. That one preserves the distance which divides us. That one has become more indifferent to hardship, toil, privation, even to life. That one is ready to sacrifice men to one’s cause, oneself not excepted” (TI 9: 38). In other words, the war of the self is necessary for self-transformation and self-realisation. In his critical view of western culture:

 

The entire West has lost those instincts out of which institutions grow, out of which the future grows: perhaps nothing goes so much against the grain of its ‘modern spirit’ as this. One lives today, one lives very fast – one lives very irresponsibility: it is precisely this which one calls ‘freedom’. That which makes institutions institutions is despised, hated, rejected. (TI 9: 39)

 

Nietzsche knows that it is really difficult to overcome the limits of humanity in modern culture, but he insists that life should not be evaded but treated as a constant challenge.

 

In Nietzsche’s view, life has to be honoured, even if we remain at a decadent stage of existence: “Affirmation of life even in its strangest and sternest problems, the will to life rejoicing in its own inexhaustibility through the sacrifice of its highest types” (TI 10: 5). At this point, Nietzsche offers his ideal of an honourable individual, who is courageous and self-disciplined to confront life. As he argues, the most spiritual human beings not only can assume they are the bravest but also have the most painful experience. But it is also for this reason that “they honour life, because it brings against them its most formidable weapons” (TI 9: 17). As Nietzsche claims: “For all creators are hard. And it must seem bliss to you to press your hand upon millennia as upon wax, bliss to write upon the will of millennia as upon metal – harder than metal, nobler than metal. Only the noblest is perfectly hard” (TI 11). Only the rare individual can stand firmly, experiencing life with courage and affirmation as the great hero. As Thiele argues, our limited capacity for knowledge “does not determine the boundaries of reality, but the boundaries of man – a particular species on a particular planet in a particular universe” (30), Nietzsche provides a self-reflexive perspective of the human mind, implying that it is humankind itself who is able to decide whether the self is to be developed and overcome. In following passages, let us conclude this paper by discussing Conway’s critique of Twilight of the Idols.

 

In Nietzsche’s Dangerous Game: Philosophy in the Twilight of the Idols, Conway remarks that Nietzsche in his late work from 1885 to 1888 “consistently treats individual human beings as the embodied media through which an age or people expresses its native vitality” (67). Conway defines Nietzsche’s “twilight of the idols” as follows,

 

The idols in question are the dominant values and sustaining ideals of modernity as a whole. The “twilight” of these idols signifies an advanced stage of decay, such that the age can express itself only in a self-destructive retreat from, and betrayal of, its founding ideals and values. The twilight of the idols thus characterizes late modernity, the epigonic epoch in which modernity attains its debilitating self-consciousness. (82)

 

When Nietzsche introduces his idea of decadence, according to Conway, he never expects to change the decadence in modern culture; therefore, Twilight of the Idols is a reflection of Nietzsche’s view of modernity. I think Conway is right; Nietzsche chooses to adopt an objective ever clinical stance, calmly observing that “we cannot reverse our decadence, though we can certainly and disastrously fool ourselves into believing otherwise” (90). When Nietzsche criticises modern culture as decadent, it is a reflection of his ideal of humanity, which cannot be fulfilled in modern culture. For Nietzsche, he knows some few individuals are great, but he also realises that it is too difficult for most people, especially his contemporary audience, to understand what he conceives. This is the reason why he claims: “Posthumous men – like me, for instance – are not so well understood as timely men…More precisely, we are never understood – and hence our authority…” (TI 1: 15). However, the crucial point is that Nietzsche resists decadent modernity. As Conway argues, “Nietzsche can do nothing to reverse or arrest the decay of modernity as a whole, but he believes that he can exert an indirect influence on the founding of the successor epoch by bequeathing his insights to those who can translate them into active legislation” (120). Nietzsche never intends to persuade others of his perspective; on the contrary, he criticises modernity and maintains his own stance on life. This is his responsibility for being himself. As Conway comments,

 

To Nietzsche and those like him, the twilight of the idols constitutes an entr’acte in which the resistance of decadence can perhaps effect indirect political change…Because Nietzsche’s volitional resources excel those of “average” individuals, the twilight of the idols affords him a modest window of opportunity within which he might act to exert an influence on the disposition of the successor epoch. (117)

 

Nietzsche knows that modernity is decadence, but he maintains his adversary stance against it. At least, he develops himself and confronts the reality of the modern age: “The age itself may be dying, but its besetting decay constitutes a thriving form (rather than an abject negation) of Life” (ibid.: 93). For Nietzsche, the self has to be combated in order to raise the mind to the higher level of awareness. Hence, the wars of humanity are crucial as “signs of renascent vitality, but they will in fact mark the spasmodic reflexes of a dying epoch” (ibid.: 93-94). Nietzsche knows that it is vain to expect to bring about an improvement in the human mind merely by his words. The possibility is not decided by him, but by the few self-respecting individuals who have self-realisation and self-knowledge. By showing the way to individuality, Nietzsche chooses to let us determine our own way of life, either ascending or descending. As Conway concludes,

 

He [Nietzsche] neither advocates a return to bygone standards of nobility and civility nor fatuously anticipates the redemption of his age. Simply waiting, whether in monkish repose or in preparing oneself to receive the gift of releasement, is as unacceptable to him as hastily implementing a half-baked scheme to revive an anemic epoch. (120)

 

Nietzsche, standing alone in isolation as a true individual with the soul, offers us a calmer, deeper and self-reflexive way to revalue and reinterpret humanity.

 

Reference

 

Conway, Daniel W. (1997) Nietzsche’s Dangerous Game: Philosophy in the Twilight of the Idols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nietzsche, Friederich. (1990) Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ. Trans. R. J. Hollingdale. Intro. Michael Tanner. London: Penguin.

Nietzsche, Friederich. (2003) Writings from the Late Notebooks. Trans. Kate Sturge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thiele, Leslie Paul. (1990) Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of the Soul: A Study of Heroic Individualism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.