Michael Platt
I
In Zarathustra, which Nietzsche called “the greatest gift ever given to mankind,” the word “Natur” does not appear.1 This omission would seem to be explained by the disgust and hostility Zarathustra feels for things as they are or as they are at the present time, the time when the thousand goals of the various peoples have lost their binding and elevating power and, as yet, no single, earthwide goal has replaced them, the time when the news “God is dead” is about to spread through the world and when men, having discovered that they have made God and all “gods,” will either blink in wretched contentment or make themselves into something nobler than man so far, into what Zarathustra calls the Übermensch.2 According to Zarathustra, man is an unfixed animal, who is just now about to discover that he is unfixed, and therefore able to make himself into almost anything he wants. Small wonder, then, these being the things Zarathustra proclaims, that the word “nature,” with its sense of limit, or law, or condition, or kind, or order of rank is not mentioned in Zarathustra, for nature would seem to go along with the other stable, abiding, and guiding things, like God, the afterlife, and the soul, that Zarathustra so often criticizes. Small wonder, if it were not for the fact that although Nietzsche elsewhere criticizes nature, along with these other abiding things, he does not do so here. Indeed, Zarathustra urges men to be loyal to the earth, telling them of its heart of gold, and praises the body with its various virtues, such as courage and generosity. The omission of “nature” from Zarathustra is more curious than it at first seems.
Perhaps it is in some way linked with a surprising inclusion in Zarathustra. Zarathustra is filled with women. Elsewhere Nietzsche says much about women; only here do various women—a little old woman. Life, Wisdom, My Stillest Hour, and Eternity—speak or appear. Moreover, not one of them is a disciple or follower of Zarathustra, and among the higher men who drift up his way there are no women. In Zarathustra the women seem decidedly higher than the men. To investigate these curiosities, let us turn to the episode in Zarathustra in which a woman first appears.
II
Given the sweeping and vehement character of Nietzsche’s challenge to the idea of nature in his prose works, we might expect his Zarathustra to call the distinction between the sexes unnatural or to advocate its extinction. Will the coming of the Übermenschen obliterate the natural distinction of man and woman? Apparently not, for we never hear Zarathustra advocating the erasure of the difference between the sexes either in the name of “equal rights,” or “control over one’s body”; we never hear him advocating sex-operations, genetic engineering, easy, safe, and cheap contraception, or abortion. That we should construe his failure to advocate these things as deriving from an acknowledgment of the distinction between the sexes as natural, necessary and good is suggested by what his Zarathustra has to say about marriage and children.4 Zarathustra, like Plato and everybody’s grandmother, does not separate discussion of marriage from discussion of children. He would not call a childless friendship a marriage. Zarathustra asks those who would marry: Have you a right to bear children? He seems to think this question comprehends the others which are sometimes put before it: Will you be happy? What will you live on? Do you have the same interests? Zarathustra asks those who would marry to justify their union by a child. Zarathustra seems to be a midwife.
No wonder Nietzsche’s views will be anathema to most of those who seek to improve the situation of woman today—both those who regard that situation as created by man, especially by men, and those who regard it as created by nature. The former hail the destruction of men, or isolation from them, as liberation; the latter hail the devices and doings of modern scientific medicine, such as contraception and safe abortion, as liberation. Perhaps the desire to be liberated from men and from such a natural thing as one’s body are at bottom the same, for a world without sexual relations and a world without bodies seem equally unnatural. In any case, in such dreams of liberation, Nietzsche would detect a resentment incompatible with the strong joy he praises as the only noble response to our suffering. What Nietzsche says about women will also offend others, such as those who defend natural childbirth and regard the interventions of modern scientific medicine as the encroachments of a would-be tyrant. For though Nietzsche sides with them in regarding something natural, a birth, as good, he also offends them with other remarks. Two of them seem most offensive. I am told that both are written on the wall of a woman’s centre in a college town in New England.
The first remark reads: “There has been no woman philosopher.” I do not know if Nietzsche actually said this. It certainly accords with what he did say or is alleged to have said of women. However, even if he said it, I am not sure it can be taken as a censure of women. Given what he says about men and philosophers, it is not necessarily a compliment to men that there have been only men philosophers. For example, in the preface to Beyond Good and Evil, he says that the error of all previous philosophers has been that they conceived truth to be male: hard, enduring, and unchanging; wherefore, the philosophers of the future must discover that truth is a woman: fickle, changing, and fruitful. As such, truth demands a love at once more ardent and more skeptical than that which the male philosophers had devoted to their unchanging forms. But since the remark is not Nietzsche’s for sure, I will return to it later in a more Nietzschean form, as the question: Will there be women Übermenschen?
The second offensive remark on the wall of that women’s centre reads: “You are going to women? Do not forget the whip!” This statement is undeniably Nietzsche’s. It would seem that nothing could either excuse or mitigate the offence it arouses and seems designed to arouse, for it suggests that women are not only slaves but slaves who like to be beaten. For these remarks are confided to Zarathustra by a woman—something that is often forgotten, even by those who take offence. Nietzsche has arranged it so that out of the mouth of a woman comes the condemnation of womankind. Perhaps this is more offensive than if he had spoken in his own name.
Perhaps. We cannot assume so. These words come at the end of a long dialogue, itself embedded in the first part of a long work. Moreover, they are spoken to Zarathustra. It cannot be assumed, without examination, that Zarathustra is the spokesman for Nietzsche. In all his other books, Nietzsche is his own spokesman, which suggests that he could speak for himself if he wished. As well, Nietzsche writes differently when he speaks for himself; the nervy, tender, masked and explosive style of his aphoristic works is replaced in Zarathustra by something more musical, earnest and exalted.
The distinction between Nietzsche and Zarathustra is something like the distinction between Plato and Socrates. Zarathustra and Socrates do not write; Nietzsche and Plato do. Zarathustra and Socrates teach; Nietzsche and Plato say they are not teachers or do not teach in their writing. These similarities do, of course, point us to a difference. Socrates speaks ironically, thus removing Plato even further from him and balking even more the reader’s wish to identify the two; Zarathustra speaks openly, as does Nietzsche in his works. Perhaps this is connected with Nietzsche’s substitution of solitude for moderation as a virtue among the Platonic Socratic quartet of virtues. But perhaps this is connected with something else. Nietzsche says that Zarathustra is a younger and stronger version of himself, while one might say that for Plato, Socrates is an older and wiser Plato. Be that as it may, Nietzsche does recognize a distinction between himself and Zarathustra and this ought make us wary readers of Zarathustra, neither quick to take offence, nor to assign blame to Nietzsche.
III.
Let us turn warily then to the episode of Zarathustra in which a woman first and appears and consider the speech “Von alten und jungen Weiblein” [On Little Old and Young Women] in which the remark that has offended so many occurs. The speech itself occurs toward the end of part 1 and is one of the many speeches that Zarathustra, having failed to lead the multitude, directs to potential companions or brothers in his quest for the Übermensch. These speeches have an order: The earlier speeches seek to disengage the potential companion from his allegiance to the values which have so far prevailed on earth; now that the companion is disengaged and vulnerable, the latter speeches seek to win his heart to the Übermensch and a new tablet of values. Accordingly, the early speeches make an appeal primarily to the will and to self-contempt, while the latter speeches appeal primarily to ardour and creativity. The turning point in this development seem to be the speech “Von tausend und Einen Ziele” [On the Thousand and One Goals] where we first hear of creating as the fundamental ground. After this speech, we hear even more about creating and even more appeals to create; before it, we hear none or few. Woman seems to be connected to this development, for in “Vom Freunde” [On the Friend] (which comes before the turning point), we hear the scornful remark, “woman is not yet capable of friendship,” while in our speech (which comes after the turning point), we hear that woman is a greater lover than man. Given the connection between love and creation stressed by Zarathustra in, for example, “Vom Wege des Schaffenden” [On the Way of the Creator], this must be a praise of woman.
Our speech, “On Little Old and Young Women,” immediately follows “On the Way of the Creator.” In the latter speech, Zarathustra has addressed his “brother” as “lonely one” and has encouraged him to remain “in your loneliness” for loneliness goes with love and creating;
Einsamer, du gehst den Weg des Liebenden: dich selbst liebst du und deshalb verachtest du dich, wie nur Liebende verachten.
[Lonely one, you are going the way of the lover: you yourself you love, and therefore you despise yourself, as only lovers despise.] (Kaufmann edition. 1963, p. 177)
In putting creating with loneliness this speech seems to regard both marriage and friendship as impediments to creation. We shall see.
Our speech has some peculiarities and we must note them. It is a report of a dialogue and it is itself a dialogue. Neither the “inner” nor the “outer” dialogue seems to be initiated by Zarathustra, for in the inner dialogue Zarathustra is accosted by a little old woman who asks him to give a speech on women and in the outer dialogue he is halted by a brother who asks him to explain what he has under his coat. We owe it to the double accident of Zarathustra’s being halted twice by others during the twilight of the same day that we get to hear his thoughts on women at all. However, perhaps this is not as accidental as it looks. The old woman has heard some of Zarathustra’s other speeches, which ones we cannot be sure, thought we can guess that she was present in the marketplace when Zarathustra first spoke of the last man and the Übermensch. These speeches have aroused her curiosity. Likewise with the brother in the outer dialogue; again, something about Zarathustra, his sneaking along with something under his coat, arouses curiosity. There is something else peculiar about our speech. What Zarathustra thinks about women is only uttered to individuals, one at a time, first to a woman and second to a man. Perhaps the subject is very personal and speech about it must be tailored to each listener. Perhaps, but we cannot know, for we do not have two versions of Zarathustra’s thoughts. We do not know if he leaves something out when he retells the story of his encounter with the old woman to the brother. All of his indirection would seem, in any case, to place the shocker that ends this speech as far as possible from Nietzsche himself, were it not for the fact that this indirection is conspicuous. It imitates the conspicuously sneaky way Zarathustra walks in front of his “brother.” We are inclined to believe that just as Zarathustra walks so as to prompt inquiries from the brother, so Nietzsche writes so as to prompt inquiries from us, his readers. In such encounters we think we have the initiative, but actually that only proves that clever walkers like Zarathustra and clever writers like Nietzsche actually have the initiative.
We see Zarathustra stealing along with something under his coat. The last time we saw Zarathustra carrying something it was the corpse of the tight-rope walker. Thieves carry things this way. So do mothers; they carry their children this way so as to protect them.
One of those Zarathustra has addressed as brother spots Zarathustra stealing cautiously in the twilight. Is this brother the same brother Zarathustra has just advised to go into solitude? If so, then is Zarathustra going the same way? Where do they meet? We are not told. We only know that it is twilight and that the inner dialogue has taken place at the hour when the sun sinks, presumably only a little while ago. What sort of place can it be in the vicinity of which we find at sundown Zarathustra, a little old woman, and a “brother” of Zarathustra. We are not told and can only speculate. The brother asks Zarathustra five questions, without giving Zarathustra a chance to answer in between. First, he asks Zarathustra why he steals along so cautiously. Second, as if to explain “cautiously,” he asks Zarathustra what he conceals under his coat. Then, in the next three questions, he tries to find out what Zarathustra conceals by asking after its origin. Is it a treasure? Is it a child? Is it something stolen? By speaking this way, he implies that something cannot be simultaneously a treasure and a child and stolen. His exact words are interesting: In the first guess, he speaks of a “treasure given”; in the second, of a “child born to you”; and, in the third, of something stolen. Of the last, however, he speaks delicately; he says: “Or do you yourself now follow the ways of thieves, you friend of those who are evil?” He seems to hold back from saying “stolen”—the word required to maintain the parallelism with the previous questions. Nonetheless, the contrast which runs through the brother’s three guesses is between something given, something born to oneself, and something stolen. Something born to oneself seems to be the middle between something given and something stolen or acquired. In any case, it is striking that the brother does not think it impossible that Zarathustra (whom one always assumed to be male) might give birth.
In his initial reply, Zarathustra ignores the last question, about following the ways of thieves, and answers the other questions in a general way. Yes, what he carries is a treasure; it has been given to him. It is a truth, and, as such, it is like a troublesome child. Faced with a troublesome child, some persons try to soothe the child, make it comfortable. Not Zarathustra. He is anxious to prevent this truth from crying out overloudly. Given Zarathustra’s frank, not to say exaggerated, manner of speaking, we may wonder: Since when did Zarathustra ever refrain from saying something? However, such wonder would be imprecise; Zarathustra has refrained from telling the old hermit that “God is dead.” In any case, he holds his hand over this childlike truth, lest it cry out uberlaut. His hand, then, only muffles its cry so that it will not carry too far.
To discover this truth, we turn to the inner dialogue. The little old woman seems to have begun the conversation with the remark that Zarathustra has spoken to women as well as men, but has not yet spoken exclusively to women. It may be that the little old woman has been present at Zarathustra’s first speeches in the marketplace and it may be that she has either been present at some of the earlier speeches to his potential companions or has heard report of them. Her speech implies that the teaching of the Übermensch and the things that go with it are meant to be heard by women as well as men; in his reply, Zarathustra does not deny this implication: “About woman one should speak only to men.” This seems to be true; earlier in “On Chastity” he warns men about women: “Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer than into the dreams of a woman in heat?” Then, in the next speech, “On the Friend,” he again warns men about women: “Woman is not yet capable of friendship.” (However, lest the men he addresses feel an undeserved pride, Zarathustra immediately adds: “But tell me, you men, who among you is capable of friendship?”) It is true then that previously Zarathustra has only spoken of women to men. One wonders if Zarathustra has observed the same selectiveness with regard to the subject of men; does he only speak of men to women? If so, we have as yet no examples of such speech. So it would seem that he has not yet spoken of man at all. Of mankind, yes, but not of man. But perhaps the coming dialogue with the little old woman is his speech on men? It is surely a speech to a woman and, as we shall see, it does speak of men.
The little old woman sees a way to overcome Zarathustra’s rule with regard to whom he should speak about woman. She claims to be “old enough to forget it [whatever he wishes to say] immediately.” By saying this, she reassures him in two ways. On the surface she assures him that she is forgetful; what he says will be not passed along. (Here she is surely lying and he probably knows it.) We may guess that the ground of Zarathustra’s rule about not talking to women about men is that he, being male, cannot, when he talks to women, abstract from his maleness. What he might say about women (or men), then, would be a breach of loyalty to men, or hopelessly mixed with desire. However, these impediments would be obviated by the circumstance that the woman to whom he now talks is too old to bear a child. She, who can say that she is so old that she forgets things immediately, must surely be beyond the age of childbearing. In speaking the way she does, the little old woman assures Zarathustra on this point. (As we will see, she lies; later she claims to be old enough to bear a child.)
We do not know whether Zarathustra is taken in by the old woman or not. In any case he obliges her and speaks:
Alles am Weibe ist ein Rathsel, und Alles am Weibe hat Eine Losung: sie heist Schwangerschaft.
Der Mann ist fur das Weib ein Mittel: der Zweck ist immer das Kind.
[Everything about woman is a riddle, and everything about woman has one solution: that is pregnancy.]
[Man is for woman a means: the end is always a child.] (ibid, p.178)
That he begins with pregnancy confirms the conjecture that what qualifies the old woman as an hearer of his speech is that she is beyond the age of childbearing. And, as well, that in speaking of woman he immediately also speaks of man confirms the conjecture that this is the speech about men that Zarathustra would only present to a woman if he himself were a woman.
According to Zarathustra, everything about woman is a riddle. Later on, in part 3, he will name the eternal return of the same as “a vision and a riddle.” The peculiar thing about the riddle of woman is that it has one solution; although Zarathustra knows that its solution is pregnancy, the riddle remains. It must be that the riddle of woman IS pregnancy. Everything about woman centres on pregnancy; for her, man is nothing but a means toward the child. It is so striking to Zarathustra that woman has a nature, a nature inherent in her body, that it moves him to ask: “But what is woman for man?” Woman has a goal; man, by contrast, has no natural goal. He is undetermined. To what end does man seek woman? What means is she for him? According to Zarathustra, a real man wants two things: danger and play. These two things have one thing in common. Only those who lack a natural end of goal go to them. A woman giving birth does not want danger; she may meet it, but she does not want it; nor does she want play. It is the restless will that seeks out danger or recreates it in play, a kind of willing without danger. Zarathustra would maintain the distinction of the sexes; all else is folly. The body is destiny. Men are warriors; women are mothers and education should reflect this natural distinction. What of the relation between the sexes?
According to Zarathustra, the man will be a warrior with woman; in her he will seek danger and play; he will want her sweetness to always have a little bitterness; to be sure, man wants his conquest of woman, but he wants the pursuit to be hard. What of the women’s disposition toward the man? From him she will get a child; indeed, the warrior is her first child. Man, with his love of danger and play, is more childlike than woman, and woman, though not a child, understands children better than man. Man, it seems, does not understand himself very well.
Because this is so, Zarathustra turns to women, and addresses them directly. What he says to them could not have been a part of what he has said about them to his exclusively male audiences. He could not address them, “you women,” and exhort them as he does. The women he exhorts are not old women but women of childbearing age. (He has momentarily forgotten that he is speaking to an old woman, or he trusts that she will convey his words to younger women.) He exhorts the young women: “Go to it, women, discover the child in man.” First bring out the child in the warrior; be his danger and his play. Then, now pregnant from play, bring forth a child and let your hope be that you give birth to the Übermensch.
From the series of hortatory subjunctives which follow, all addressed to young women, we gather two things. Woman does not understand honour very well, while man does. However, woman is superior to man in one decisive respect. She loves more. The sacrifices she will make for her love are greater than those a man will make. Hence, she is much to be feared by man. Should she be disappointed in love, she will hate more than man. That deep down she is bad, while man is merely evil, stems from her superiority in love. (However, in Nietzsche’s lexicon, it is not a compliment to call something bad rather than evil, for bad is the opposite of noble, and evil, the opposite of good, is the name nihilists give to the noble. Woman is bad or slavish, yet this does not contradict her superiority in love; it seems to go with it.) Zarathustra goes on to say:
Wen hasst das Weib meisten?—Also sprach das Eisen zum Magneten: “ich hasse dich am meisten, weil du anziehst, aber nicht stark genug bist, an dich zu ziehen.”
[Whom does woman hate most? Thus spoke the iron to the magnet: “I hate you most because you attract, but are not strong enough to pull me to you.”] (ibid, p. 178)
His speech reminds us of those women of the nineteenth century novel, such as Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina, who sacrificing all, family, honour, children, for love (or loves in Emma’s case), never meet a man who is their equal and destroy themselves, half in order to destroy the weak magnets who cannot match their ardour. According to Zarathustra, what woman wants is a man who attracts her like a strong magnet. The happiness of man is: I will. The happiness of woman is: he wills. Taken at face value, the description does not fit Emma Bovary whose love is of the kind that looks to man as a savior. She cannot imagine herself becoming strong; she seeks strength in others. But it will not fit Anna Karenina and it does not fit Zarathustra’s meaning, for having said that the happiness of woman is “he wills,” he goes on to explain this:
“Siehe, jetzt eben ward die Welt vollkommen!”—also denkt ein jedes Weib, wenn es aus ganzer Liebe gehorcht.
[“Behold, just now the world became perfect!”—thus thinks every woman when she obeys out of entire love.] (ibid, p. 179)
When she says “he wills,” she loves. She loves first him and later the child. She feels the world is justified, first, when he wants her and, later, when a child comes.
Zarathustra’s speech concludes with a unifying image of willing man and loving woman. Woman is surface and shallow; man is current and depth. When other authors employ such an image they almost invariably wish to suggest that what is deep is superior to what is shallow. In this respect, as in so many others, Nietzsche does not resemble “other authors.” He often praises surfaces and appearances at the expense of depths and invisible forms. Here his emphasis is upon the harmony of man and woman, a harmony that never erases their distinction. Here as elsewhere he views the distinction from the point of view of the Übermensch. From that point of view both lack something. In the light of what he has his Zarathustra say to the old woman, we are tempted to call the Übermensch “man with the soul of woman.” The accuracy of this description depends upon whether the Übermensch will himself be creative. It is hard to say. It would help if we could discover whether the child in “The Three Metamorphoses” is identical with the Übermensch or only a step toward him. Perhaps we can only say that the way to the Übermensch leads through a creative person, a man with the soul of a woman (or its nearest substitute, a marriage). For Zarathustra, creation is a combination of will and love. Man wills. Woman loves. Man is more like the child, but it is woman who wants to have a child. The will of man lacks ardour for the Übermensch; the ardour of woman lacks the will to will the Übermensch. If woman longs for the Übermensch, it is as a savior; she cannot imagine becoming the Übermensch. Man is more like the Übermensch; he is willful; we may say, therefore, that he is closer to the Übermensch, but he will never get there. While he says “I will,” he cannot contemn himself and love the Übermensch closer, into being. The union of the imperfect will of man and imperfect love of woman will create something more nearly perfect and that will create the Übermensch.
One finishes Zarathustra’s speech to the old woman with the impression that the imperfect love of woman is less imperfect than the imperfect will of man. In terms of “The Three Metamorphoses,” man is a lion, but a lion who is never going to become the child, while woman is a riddle, for pregnancy partakes of the camel and the child. Woman says “he wills” and that makes her like the camel. But she also loves and that points toward the child. The fact that she remains a riddle even adds to her praiseworthiness. If there is a danger in Zarathustra’s speech about woman to woman, it is that he praises too much. This danger will be removed by what the little old woman says.
Unlike Zarathustra’s speech and unlike his retelling of the encounter to the brother, the little old woman’s response to Zarathustra’s speech is unrequested. It is a free gift. Or rather a gift given in gratitude, if we take her word for it. That we have reason to doubt her sincerity is suggested by a comment which precedes her gift. She has noted that Zarathustra has almost totally addressed young women, women of childbearing age:
Vieles Artige sagte Zarathustra und sonderlich fur Die, welche jung genug dazu sind.
[Many fine things has Zarathustra said, especially for those who are young enough for them.] (ibid, p. 179)
That she keeps this in mind and perhaps resents her own age is suggested by what follows:
Seltsam ist’s, Zarathustra kennt wenig die Weiber, und doch hat er uber sie Recht! Geschieht diess desshalb, weil beim Weibe kein Ding unmoglich ist?
[It is strange: Zarathustra knows women little, and yet he is right about them. Is this because nothing is impossible with women.] (ibid, p. 179)
And now to prove that nothing is impossible for woman, even for an old woman beyond childbearing age, she will give Zarathustra a child:
Und nun nimm zum Danke eine kleine Wahrheit! Bin ich doch alt genug fur sie!
Wickle sie ein und halte ihr den Mund: sonst schreit sie uberlaut, diese kleine Wahrheit.
[And now, as a token of gratitude, accept a little truth. After all, I am old enough for it.]
[Wrap it up and hold your hand over its mouth: else it will cry out over loudly, this little truth.] (ibid, p. 179)
Zarathustra must sense a challenge in this gift for before she can give it to him he commands her to give it up:
“Giebe mir, Weib, deine kleine Wahrheit!” sagte ich.
[Then I said: “Woman, give me your little truth.”] (ibid, p. 179)
Through this command, the love of woman which he expressed in his speech is balanced by an assertation of will. The truth offered him is about the will.
Zarathustra is a lover and his speech on woman expresses a qualified love. Zarathustra is more like a woman than is the old woman. Her truth is wrapped in the image of a child, but it is a truth about the will. She turns the tables on him, first, by claiming to be changeable in the highest respect, with regard to childbearing, and, second, by giving him a masculine truth. (He turns the tables on her; he shows that he understands both what he has said and what she has said by repeating her truth to the brother, even imitating the way she has wrapped her truth as if it were a child.) True as her truth is there is something nasty about her. Having heard Zarathustra’s praise of women has not brightened her day. She will darken his day, even if that means deprecating woman. That she says what she says, says as much as what she says, “Even though you are inexperienced with women, you are right about them. However, in your ardour you forget something. Listen, lover, don’t forget that women can be bitches”:
“Du gehst zu Frauen? Vergiss die Peitsche nicht!”
[“You are going to women? Don’t forget the whip!”] (ibid, p. 179)
That SHE SAYS what she says, says as much as what she says. She is being bitchy.
What does Zarathustra make of this? He chooses to imitate her. Like her, he presents this truth as if it were a troublesome child. He even uses the same words she has used. What does his imitation mean? To answer this, we must first notice that while her truth has consisted of the single remark, “You are going to women? Do not forget the whip!”, his truth consists of the whole story of his meeting, his speeches and her whole reply. Her nasty reminder, “Don’t forget to say ‘I will’,” is balanced by all that Zarathustra says in praise of love. By repeating the whole story, with her truth as the punch line, he gives her, her due; he gives the will its due; but, by sneaking along as if he had a child under his coat, he gives due to the love that sacrifices itself for the child. Zarathustra’s sneaking along, looking like a mother protecting an infant, is an image of that union of will and love that will give birth to the Übermensch.
Since birth presupposes the natural distinction of the sexes, since the highest creation (the Übermensch) has this natural starting point, and since the highest in Nietzsche never leaves behind its starting point, one is inclined to say that the coming of the Übermensch will also be the coming of the Überfrau and Übermann and that between them there will be marriage. It is hard to be certain. Zarathustra never marries, but this may only mean that he simply never meets his equal. Who could that be? Anna Karenina? Helene from Goethe’s Faust? Shakespeare’s Cordelia or his shrew? Or Chaucer’s wife of Bath? Colette? Simone Weil? Tracy Nelson? Hannah Arendt? Circumspect Penelope? Or perhaps the Nausikaa who blessed Odysseus and did not cling to him as he left her? It is very hard to say. Even if his equal could be found it is not clear that Zarathustra’s love of solitude and the companionship of his animals would permit marriage.
The difficulty of saying who Zarathustra’s female equal is would seem to be evidence that Zarathustra’s severe judgment on man and woman is correct. The absence of the word “nature” from Zarathustra is a sign not only of Nietzsche’s criticism of previous interpretations of nature, but of his perception of the enigmatic fact that nature has not yet become what it truly is. Nature is on the way to itself, much in the way Zarathustra is on the way to himself throughout Zarathustra such that he describes himself as pregnant (part 3, section 3) and awaiting his children (part 4, end). Nietzsche’s philosophy of nature, unlike its predecessors, is a philosophy of the future, without being a philosophy of history, at least in Zarathustra. Yet by virtue of Zarathustra’s transfer of his love from Life to an Eternity that is not superterrestrial (part 3, end), Nietzsche’s philosophy of a future nature acknowledges nature as what endures from of old. The Übermensch will be child and also mother; it will be both. Nature, for Nietzsche, is a mother on the way to becoming the child she truly is.9
IV.
Nietzsche would prefer we write on the wall of our centre, our study, our cave, or our tent: There has never been an Übermensch.” It is a sign of our smallness that for every one person who will take offence at this sentence, there will be one hundred more who will take offence at the others he has written about women. Nietzsche would prefer us to stare at this sentence, measure ourselves by it, find ourselves wanting by it, and driven by both self-contempt and ardour, reach for the Übermensch. Should we? Perhaps we should merely take offence: “You say the Übermensch belongs to the future and that everything now existing is worthy of going under. We grant that where there are men there will be vices, but is not your condemnation of man too sweeping? Hasn’t the Übermensch existed before? What of Socrates? You devote many sparkling sentences to unmasking him, but is that a substitute for careful reading? What of Aristotle? Did you read him for fifteen years, at least, before dismissing him? What of Rembrandt and Bach? You hardly mention them. What of Goethe? Doesn’t his Faust embrace your Zarathustra? And what of Shakespeare? Doesn’t he understand life through art? Isn’t he utterly without religion? And yet isn’t he more truly loyal to the earth than the excitable Zarathustra? Can you, finally, claim to be loyal to the earth while overlooking these noble spirits of the earth? In only having eyes for the Übermensch, have you not been blind to the best of those who have dwelt here?”
With this fabricated speech, I have tried to bring out the nature of the issue dividing Nietzsche, who declares that Nature has not yet become what it is, from those who indicate that nature has for a long time been, still is, and very likely will always be the measure of the highest human endeavors, even where one works through will, art and chance to achieve its ends.10 Perhaps this, my fabricated speech, will suffice then to remind the reader: “You are going to Nietzsche; remember the whip.”11
University of Dallas
Notes
I would like to thank Erich Heller for criticizing—the word is deliberately chosen—an earlier version of this paper.
- On “nature” I have found the following instructive: Martin Heidegger, “On the being and conception of phusis in Aristotle’s physics” and “Die Frage nach der Tecknik” (translated in Basic writings); Jacob Klein, “On the nature of Nature” and C.S. Lewis, Studies in words and The abolition of man. During World War II, two thinkers, one German and one English, came to regard the abuse of nature—stemming from its modern scientific interpretation-as by far the most dangerous thing furthered by the war and of far more importance than whoever the victor might turn out to be. As far as I know, Jacob Klein never addressed the question that had occupied his teacher Heidegger: Klein left Germany and, on the basis of his Greek mathematical thought and the origin of algebra (1968; originally published in German in 1934), established the mathematical and scientific core for the St. John’s curriculum, and, yet, in the spirit of his Commentary on Plato’s Meno (1965), made “by Zeus, I don’t know!” the motto of the school. Winston Churchill had considered the question in 1932 in a collection of essays entitled, Amid these storms: thoughts and adventures. See especially the essay, “Shall we all commit suicide?”
- What is the relation between the Übermensch and the eternal return of the same? By announcing the eternal return of the same, then living with it, does Zarathustra become the Übermensch? It is hard to say. The fact that as Zarathustra proceeds, talk of the Übermensch disappears might mean either that such talk is important only as an introduction or that Zarathustra has indeed become the Übermensch. If the latter, Nietzsche must have appreciated that an Übermensch would not talk much about being an Übermensch—something Nietzsche seems to have forgotten, not when he wrote Ecce Homo, but when he wrote it for publication. Is not Ecce Homo lacking in precisely that solitude which Nietzsche lauds in Frohliche Wissenschaft (hereafter referred to as FW), no. 367?
- Nietzsche’s prevailing criticism of the idea of nature is evident in Jenseits von Gut and Bose (hereafter referred to as JGB), no. 9, where “life” is offered as a challenging substitute for the “nature” in accord with which the Stoic tries to live; see also no. 188, where every morality out of which anything good has come is declared to be a tyranny against nature and no. 264, where plebs are the “nature” that cannot be expelled with an Horatian pitchfork. In FW, see no. 109, where the idea of natural law, with its concomitants, purpose and command, is criticized as an error arising from treating the universe as a living being and expecting it to provide the dubious comforts once provided by the idea of God; see also no. 301, where nature is asserted to receive value only from the creative contemplation of higher human natures who, since they do not notice the creativity in their contemplation or in their searching, are neither as proud nor as happy as they ought be. Yet, elsewhere, Nietzsche inveighs against slanderers of nature (FW, no. 294; also Gotzen-Dammerung, “Moral als Widernatur”) and praises “man of prey” Cesare Borgia as natural (JGB, no. 197). Indeed, in view of Nietzsche’s abiding praise of the body, health, life and the virtues, it would be surprising if he did not spice his criticisms of nature with positive reevaluations, as in FW, no. 109, or with positive concessions, as in FW, no. 301, where higher human natures are conceded.
- CF. “Von Kind und Ehe” in part one of Also Sprach Zarathustra. All quotations from the German come from the new edition by Montinari, Colli, et al., now in progress with Walter de Gruyter & Co. in Berlin. All English translations are Walter Kaufmann’s.
- By titling his interpretation of the many places where Nietzsche compares truth to a woman, The question of style, Jacques Derrida appears to suggest that the sometimes enchanting, sometimes repelling, and always veiled style of Nietzsche is the style of a woman; if truth is a woman, then he who would speak of her in writing must speak like a woman. However, Derrida is no woman; his loud-speaker style and exaggerated concern with castration, reductive in the manner of Freud, carry him far from Nietzsche and his gaily knowing style. Indeed, if there is a truth that castrates, or, as Nietzsche says, plucks out the passions, it is male (see the preface to JGB). Nietzsche with his stylistic choosiness, grace, and pluck, would sniff at the doctrinaire conclusion (the rigidity of which is neither disguised nor saved by some clumsy playfulness) with which Derrida ends his essay. As Derrida seems to suggest, but does not seem to know, style has something to do with disposition toward the truth. One may begin to understand the difference between the dispositions of Nietzsche and the disposition of Derrida by observing that Derrida never refers to Zarathustra and his many meetings with women, especially Life, Wisdom, and Eternity.
- Cf. JGB, no. 284.
- In another study I intend to explore the sense in which Nietzsche understands himself as a second yet counter-Socrates, what this may suggest about his mode of writing, and its connection to the central ambiguity in his thought.
- Toward the end of Zarathustra III, after he has overcome his most abysmal thought, Zarathustra confronts “Life” with a whip as well as a tender eye; in this “Other Dancing Song” Zarathustra seems to have taken to heart the Old Woman’s truth, which he neglected in the earlier “Dancing Song.” One would like to know whether his tender regard for Life depends on his whip or on the fact that he is leaving her—or both. If there were no death, could the lover of life ever win self-mastery?
- In FW, no. 59, Nietzsche draws an explicit relation between the love of woman, so far, and the love of nature, so far; and to those who think nature is a past to which to flee, JGB, no. 10, he says, “No, nature is above and ahead.”
- I understand Shakespeare to hold such a view of nature, viz., as the measure of the highest human endeavors. The Winter’s Tale (act 4, scene 4), where a father teaches his daughter how nature and art are reconciled: phusis loves Geist, provides one example. However the mighty opposition between Shakespeare and Nietzsche deserves a far longer investigation.
- It is worth remembering that the only time Nietzsche went to a woman with a whip was to place it in her hands; he and another man, Paul Ree, then posed before her (Lou Salome) as a team of horses, pulling her cart. Did he remember this in Turin in January, 1889, when he saw a horse being beaten in the street, embraced it and collapsed?
References
Derrida, J. The question of style. Vence: Corbo e Fiore, 1976.
Heidegger, M. On the being and conception of phusis in Aristotle’s physics, B, 1. Translated from Wegmarken by T. Sheehan (1967). Man and World. 1976, Vol. 9, No. 3.
Heidegger, M. Die Frage Nach der Tecknik. Vortrage und Aufsatze. 1954, Vol. 1.
Heidegger, M. Basic writings. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.
Klein, J. On the nature of Nature. Independent Journal of Philosophy (Vienna). 1979, Vol. 3, 101-109.
Lewis, C.S. Studies in words. Cambridge: University Press, 1967.
Lewis, C.S. The abolition of man. New York: MacMillan, 1947.
Nietzsche, F. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In The portable Nietzsche. Selected and translated with an introduction, prefaces and notes by W. Kaufmann. New York: The Viking Press, 1963.
Nietzsche, F. Also sprach Zarathustra. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, new edition in progress.
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