Cringe Intro...discussion of Peter Sloterdijk's "Nietzsche Apostle" (excerpts)
Nietzsche's Apostle, the transcript of that speech at the centennial of Nietzsche's death that tries to reckon with the significance of Nietzsche as an event, not in any one particular idea of Nietzsche's, not the significance of "The Will to Power" idea or "The God is Dead" aphorism. Not any one book by Nietzsche not the significance of "Zatathustra" or "Beyond Good and Evil", but Nietzsche himself as a historical event in the long history of philosophy and thought. What is the significance of the Frederick Nietzsche that's not a man but Dynamite? This explosion, this disruption that has the function of delineating the start and the end of an era? There is now all the philosophy that took place before Nietzsche, and all the philosophy that takes place after Nietzsche.
Key to understanding the Nietzsche event are these apparently megalomaniacal statements. And rather than ignoring the implications of such statements as the standard Nietzsche lover does, or rather than using them as part of a psychological case against Nietzsche as some of his critics have, Sloterdijk offers a new linguistic thesis concerning these types of remarks. Quote "I would like to contend that Nietzsche's narcissism is less pertinent a phenomenon from the point of individual psychology than the marker of a cut in the linguistic history of Old Europe", end quote. In order to understand what such a statement might mean, we would first have to understand for one, "what the linguistic history of Old Europe is", and in order to understand that you have to come equipped with a theory as to what language itself is. And Sloterdijk outlines both of these in his introductory remarks. What he calls the Nietzsche event is "a catastrophe in the history of language, an incision in the conditions of linguistic understanding." Sloterdijk asserts his own understanding of the nature of language following Mcluhan, quote, "With Marshall Mcluhan, I presuppose that understanding between people in Societies above all, what they are, and they achieve in general, has an autoplastic meaning. These conditions of communication provide groups with a redundancy in which they can vibrate. They imprint on such groups the rhythms and models by which they are able to recognize themselves, and by which they repeat themselves as almost the same. They produce a consensus in which they perform the eternal return of the same in the form of spoken song. Languages are instruments of group narcissism, played so as to tune and retune the player. They make their speakers ring in singular tones of self excitation. They are systems of melodies for recognition which nearly always delineate the whole program as well. Languages are not primarily used for what is today called "the passing on of information", but serve to form communicating group bodies," end quote.
So this is probably an unusual claim to wrap your head around at first, but I think there's actually an intuitive sense to it if we consider language from the perspective of say, evolutionary utility. Or even from the framework that Nietzsche adopts in that passage of "The Gay Science" entitled "The Genius of the Species" and also in that essay, "On Truth and Lies in the Non-moral Sense." Languages have the effect of binding a group together. As Nietzsche says in that essay, the entire virtue of truthfulness and language, and by the way, I mean that's where truthfulness exists, it exists in language. It exists in statements.
The notion of the virtue of truthfulness in language arises out of a commitment to use the usual signifiers, the agreed upon word concepts to designate the agreed upon phenomenon. That's how we know you're a good person, an honest person, you use the same word Concepts, the same signifiers as the rest of us do, which means you're in the group with us. And so language performs that social function that has been recognized since the time of, going all the way back to the Old Testament, the story in which the soldiers of Gilead would use the word "shiboleth" as a test to see whether the person they encounter is one of their own countrymen, or an Ephraimite who would say "siboleth" instead of shiboleth, according to a difference in their dialect.
And I can tell you as somebody who has traveled internationally, whenever you've been traveling for a long time in other countries where people generally don't speak your language, and when you meet somebody who's from your own country and does speak your language, it's very exciting. Usually you become instant friends with that person, it doesn't matter if everyone around you looks like you, even. What really matters is if they talk like you. That's how you know you're in the in-group.
Now, this isn't to say that language doesn't communicate information, but as Sloterdijk puts it, that is not the primary function. In other words, the more fundamental advantage of language use is to establish that framework of mutual recognition. And perhaps, the argument for this, from the evolutionary standpoint would be that you know, animals that vocalize typically do it to recognize one another. That's primarily what the birds are doing. It's usually at a later point of complexity when vocalizing organisms begin to communicate information. And we even see this in the animal kingdom, like troops of bonobos who have a bunch of different cries to identify different types of predators approaching the troop. So we see how in language, the information conveying aspect can become more useful, and more complex over time, but the original use is recognition. We could say that's the fundamental reality of language, which Sloterdijk sees as affirmative and active. It's the way for a group to, metaphorically speaking, "vibrate in that redundancy of everyone speaking in the same way. That's the way in which language is an instrument of group narcissism. It's the group's affirmation, who is in the group, and the celebration of this fact."
Because if by recognizing you as a fellow speaker of our mutual language, I recognize you as good, and you do the same for me. Then, in the very nature of our linguistic communication, we are in some fundamental way, mutually celebrating how good it is to be part of the group that we're in. And so, for however arbitrary or subjective or irrational the analytical mind might regard such a conception of language, one can clearly see that in this description, language has a positive and affirmative content. It posits something, in other words. Something like "the mutual goodness of us, we who speak in this way." That's the active and fundamental operation of language. And thus, as should be expected, language is not only used for exalting the value of the group, but of expressing value period. Such, that one might say, the fundamental linguistic form is the eulogy.
I don't know that Sloterdijk would quite put the argument like this, but we might say it's the most natural use of language. So, even though our use of language is far more complex than say, the language of birds or bonobos, the fundamental meaning of language, for us too, is still to exalt ourselves. To recognize ourselves, celebrate ourselves and the group that we are in. Quote, "For the most part, people are not concerned to draw each other's attention to states of affairs, but instead to incorporate states of affairs into a glory. The different speaker groups of History, all the various tribes and peoples, are self-praising entities that avail themselves of their own inimitable idiom as part of a psychological content played to gain advantage for themselves. In this sense, before it becomes technical, all speaking serves to enhance and venerate the speaker. And even technical discourses are committed, albeit indirectly, to glorifying techniques," end quote.
For Better or For Worse, Sloterdijk notes that all of the theories concerning language have approached it from a negative standpoint. Whether through psychoanalysis, critical theory, postmodernism, deconstructionism, or whatever, we've approached language from the standpoint of what it can't do. We have called into question what it is that is actually communicated. We've considered the flaws, the faults, the limiting factors in delivering information that comes with language. We've treated languages as collections of symptoms, as an indication for say, one's biases, or their privileges, or the limitations of their perspective. That had largely been the conversation around language on the 20th century.
As Sloterdijk sees it, we have treated language as, quote "a medium of lack and distortion," end quote, and turned a blind eye to its' fundamental self- affirmative character. The fact that what language really seeks is celebration, glorification, all of these theories have ignored this. Sloterdijk's striking claim is that Nietzsche recognizes this. When he writes, for example, that quote, "It is a beautiful folly speaking. With it, humans dance over all things," end quote. And further, Nietzsche declares his attempt to move Beyond these critical and negative views of language that treated it as a medium of "lack and Distortion" when he writes such statement says, quote, "all our philosophy is the correction of linguistic usage," end quote. Sloterdijk argues that with Nietzsche, language ceases to be that medium of lack, and it becomes quote, "a vector for affirmation and prophecies", end quote.
We can see this natural self-affirmative form of linguistic expression in ancient Greece. Remember Nietzsche's remark, that the Greeks great love was to hear people speak beautifully. This is what accounts for his remarks that they're a nation of actors. They are a culture that values performance, that values a beautiful glorification rather than say, a cynical statement of the naked unvarnished truth. And, where my mind goes to as an example of this, might be the poems of Pindar, written In praise of the Olympic Victors. That's language used for that function to "exalt", and to exalt human beings. And remember, the Olympics is not just a competition between individuals, but a competition between City States for whom the athlete is a representative of that City State. So in that way, it's much like the Olympics today.
And further, in coming together to compete as equals, in some sense, these cities recognize one another as all being Greeks, even though they exist in mutual hostility towards one another, in many cases. Pindar poems do not just praise an individual athlete, but rather the city, and in the final analysis, the greatness of the entire Helenic world. And so, that is I think, a fine example of language used to "exalt", to "praise", to "celebrate" the group that we are all a part of. And I think if we go back further and read, for example, the proclamations that one might find in the Tomb of a Bronze Age King from Mesopotamia or Egypt, you'll find these very prideful self-aggrandizing Declarations of the Divinity of the ruler and his accomplishments. Statements such as, "You know, it was I who subdued the Hittites and conquered the Acadians, and gathered all the lands under my power, caused my enemies to flee in fear, and so on, and so forth." And this is why Nietzsche writes in that passage in "The Gay Science" entitled "Ancient Pride" that the pride of antiquity is so extreme, so heightened compared to our own, that we cannot even really comprehend what it was like to be them. That, we can't comprehend the way that they experienced the world, because Pride was such a central aspect of their society and culture, or of those ancient societies and cultures. And so, perhaps one could ask whether Nietzsche's engagement with the world view of ancient man gave him the inspiration to ask the question, "What changed between their use of language, in which self-glorification, the eulogy, the praise of Victorious human beings, the boasts of prideful Kings, shameless statements of national superiority, and so on; but when these were the norm, what changed from then to now?"
Because one of the things we may notice about the way that we engage with all those types of language used today, is that we find them, again, "embarrassing". Within our modern social etiquette it is far better to be self-deprecating, which most people would find disarming, or even charming, than it is to be self-aggrandizing, which most people find off-putting. It is impolite, it violates the rules to eulogize oneself in that way.
Now, from a very early date, the direct eulogy already began to shift. Direct here meaning "direct Praise of oneself or one's group." Sloterdijk sources it to the ascendance of monarchies, and the feudal system. That within itself this shift, as far back as the days of the older epodes and Elders, sort of forces the ordinary person to make their eulogies is more indirect. Certain people at the top of society can directly eulogize themselves, but the monarchal social form eventually transforms language use from the way it would have been used in say, a tribal setting. Mankind under these new conditions has to cultivate the ability to indirectly eulogize, to speak of one's own greatness in so far as one is "merely a servant of a higher power than themselves".
Sloterdijk does give some attention to the sociological development, the material factors driving this change in the use of language, but he admits he does not really have a strong belief in any theory of sociological development. And as he goes on to say later in this document, this turn in language actually really only fully emerges into being with the ascendance of Christiandom, with the reversal affected by St Paul. Quote, "that along with Socrates and Plato, Nietzsche above all identified St Paul as the genius of reversal needs no further elucidating, neither does the fact that from the numerous consequences of the Pauline intervention, Nietzsche derives the criterion by which to define his "Amendment to the Good News" as the axis for a history of the future", end quote. So Nietzsche's "Amendment to the Good News", his Amendment to the Gospel, and that is "Thus Spake Zarathustra", which Nietzsche referred to as his Fifth Gospel. And we'll discuss that aspect of Sloterdijk's argument in a bit, I just sort of wanted to make it clear what he was talking about there.
But the key point is that Paul is a genius of reversal. Christianity, in Nietzsche's view, is a development that proceeds from the theoretical worldview helped into being by Socrates and Plato. And what does Nietzsche just say about all three of these figures? They're among the rare individuals in history who had the power to legislate new values. So the really fascinating implication to me, that I find in Sloterdijk's text here, is the suggestion that the legislation of new values is an act that occurs primarily in language. Which means that language would not be considered as a mere symptom, from that point of view. It can't be considered as a mere superficial gloss. That's the way Nietzsche often speaks about language. But Sloterdijk sort of is implying that there's something a bit, maybe, beneath the surface, or a greater nuance to his engagement with language. The change that is made, the linguistic change, is not merely a swapping out of terminology. It's not one word concept superseding another. It's a transformation in the very operation and the very structure of language. That is the form that legislating values takes in Practical terms. It's a revision, or in this case a full reversal, of the way that language operates. The very goals of language are altered. Language in the previous era was this act of mutual recognition and jubilation in oneself, and one's own goodness, and in the goodness of everyone in the group. The Pauline intervention reverses every one of those aspects.
Let's compare this claim to say, the "moral dynamics" as Nietzsche describes them in the Genealogy. The resentment of the conquered, the downtrodden, the vanquished, that is harnessed by the priestly class in order to provide fuel for a cult of vengeance, which is in Nietzsche's view, Christianity. Actual vengeance cannot be attained by an inferior party, so the inferior party creates a religion of forgiveness. You know, behind this lurks a moralistic hatred. The man who lives within such a cult of resentment will therefore experience a constant distress for which he needs the priest, who offers him relief by turning the resentment inward, creating guilt. The priest says, "Yes, someone is to blame for your suffering, my poor suffering sheep. You yourself are to blame for it." In this way resentment, and its psychological Offspring, guilt, or as Nietzsche calls it "the bad conscience" become infused into every aspect of human life. These feelings are not acted, they are felt. That is sort of a layout of how the the dynamics that play out in "The Genealogy of Morals".
But then, one might ask, how does Christianity achieve this reversal? What is the effective vector by which this Cult of Resentment manages to triumph? Slotredijk's assertion is that this revolution occurs in the language itself, and a reversal of the operation of language. Quote, "Resentment is a mode of production of world. Indeed, one that is to date, the most powerful and most harmful. The more keenly this discerning author contemplated the matter of this fact, the more comprehensively and monstrously it came into profile. In everything that had borne the name of high culture, religion, and morality, the resentment mode of World building had prevailed. Everything that for an Epoch had been able to present itself as the moral World Order bore its handwriting. All that had in this era claimed to be making a contribution to World Improvement had drunk of its poison. Whence, the catastrophic conclusion which hit its thinker as a millinery insight, that all languages formed by metaphysics gravitate around a mythological core," end quote.
Let's pause, just to discuss that last term and the implications of the passage so far. So myth, what does it mean in practice to be mythological? It means to be loathed to argue one's position, to be loathed to have to entertain arguments to the contrary. So, we'll remember Nietzsche's statements in "The Antichrist", for example, his horrifying realization that all the values that have been esteemed the highest by Humanity up to this point have been decadence values. Sloterdijk's argument is that, in light of this Nietzsche comes to the catastrophic conclusion of the mythology inherent to a metaphysically created language. That there is a hatred of argument inherent in a metaphysically created language. So this reversal involves the ascendance of metaphysics, a worldview that anchors its' reality, and that which is, beyond the physical. This is part and parcel with the rejection of all that triumphs within the physical world, that's the very nature of the cult of resentment. It's a cult of Vengeance made up of inferior parties. So this naturally follows, everything the world calls good is, in fact, of no lasting value. This moral turn finds its' very strength in the metaphysical revolution, that is, the genius of the priest that takes the resentment of the underclass and harnesses it. And so, on a basic level, Sloterdijk is pointing to the Nietzschean perspectival Insight that leads Nietzsche to reject metaphysics, or at least to become a Critic of metaphysics, even if arguably he falls into it himself at times.
So that is one aspect that Sloterdijk elucidates here, the recognition of the essentially arbitrary and brutally axiomatic nature of metaphysics which is tied inextricably to a moral demand. But there's a deeper point here. I'm going to continue with the same passage. Quote, "The classic teachings of wisdom, together with their modern connector theories, are systems for maligning beings in their entirety. They serve those who have yet become fed up with defaming the world, power, and human beings, and have as their goal the abasement of the happy, and powerful, and of self-praising attitudes. When all is said and done, all high cultures between Asia and Europe have consistently spoken the language of people who are out to take advantage of life itself. What has hitherto been called morality is the universalism of vengeance. And whatever metaphysical discourse might carry by way of valid wisdom, science, and worldly sophistication, it is the first impulse toward maligning reality in the name of an Overworld, or an anti-world, which has been specifically approved for the sake of humiliating its' contrary. Along with this, it is simultaneously to talk up the need for vengeance, with which the weak and the foolish vaunt their weakness and their foolishness. In metaphysical religious Doctrine, contemptuousness becomes an insidiously Twisted, self-praising Force", end quote.
I think most of that passage is rather powerfully straightforward and it bears very little explanation, except for that last sentence, which I think hints at something that is implicit throughout Sloterdijk's address, that the fundamental self-praising force of language is not negated or uprooted within this Pauline reversal. It is not eliminated, rather, it becomes insidiously Twisted. So once again, there's a parallel to Nietzsche's argument regarding morals, or just in the way that he says, you know, you don't eliminate Will To Power, you just turn the Will to Power against itself. And so here language, the power of language, the operation of language, is turned around against itself so that the indirect eulogy which praises oneself is a servant of a higher power fully reverses into a form of self-lowering, such as when a Christian emphasizes their own wickedness, their own worthlessness, their own powerlessness in Absentia of the Grace of God.
In this new use of language, the very fact that a sinful Wretch like myself could be saved is a testament to the greatness and glory of God, because I am so sinful, and so wretched, that it's just it's beyond belief, right? And so God is praised even more highly. This is the great turn in language that is an expression of the Triumph of Resentment or as Deleuze would have put it, the Triumph of reactive forces. Language which was self-glorifying becomes self-denigrating instead. It is God glorifying, and in this way, language still fulfills its function of Celebration and Jubilation. But the other world, the anti-world, the antithesis of the material becomes the receptacle of this glorification, and not man himself.
And so in a strange way, language still ends up serving that function of affirming the group, of providing the mutual recognition of the group, only now, we all know each other as part of the group and that we all speak this language of self denigration. Paradoxically, I know how good of a person you are precisely to the degree that you do denigrate yourself, and give all your glory to God. And as a result of this use of language, nothing good that happens in the world is attributed to what we do, to what human beings do. Everything good as a result of what God does. We become passive recipients of the good acts of the Divine, and our function is merely to glorify the Divine. This is in effect the Gospel message, that is the so-called good news of the Bible.
And as we all know, there were always four Gospels in the New Testament Bible, and one of my favorite aspects of Sloterdijk speech is the brief history he gives of two previous incisions into the linguistic conventions of Old Europe, which those linguistic conventions were established based on this Gospel. And the two previous attempts were made by Otfried Von Wiesenberg, a Franconian Abbot from the 9th century, and by Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of America and framers of its Constitution. All three, Weisenberg, Jefferson and Nietzsche are united in the fact that they all purported to give us a Fifth Gospel. All of them located the Gospel as the significant language event in the history of Europe that reshaped the linguistic conventions. The Bible is a moral event, it is a metaphysical event, but it is also perhaps even primarily so, a linguistic event. And arguably as a linguistic event that's how it establishes its moral and metaphysical significance. And the importance of these three figures, what makes them peculiar in history of Western thought, is that they were unusual in recognizing this fact, recognizing the Bible as first and foremost a linguistic event. In the words of Otfried Von Wiesenberg that Sloterdijk cites, we have an exemplary expression of that old European linguistic convention. His words seem to reveal a self-awareness of the fundamental nature of language, as Mcluhan has laid it out, and that Sloterdijk makes reference to in this speech. And the following words were written in the year 871. It's from the introductory prayer from Wiesenberg's Gospel epic, a poetic retelling of the Gospel but put into the language of the Franks. Wiesenberg writes in praise of God, quote, "You alone are the Master of all the languages that exist. Your power has conferred language to all, and they have, oh salvation, to form words in their languages to recall your memory, and for always is to praise you for eternity, recognize you and serve you", end quote.
So language exists for the sake of glorification and affirmation, not for glorifying and affirming human beings, but the glory and affirmation for God. And so language itself is said to exist in order to give man the power to glorify God. We see this in another quote from Wiesenberg, quote, "God has given them the instrument of language so that they can cause Him to sound in their praise", end quotes. So again, we have this kind of arbitrary, and at the same time affirmative operation of language. A kind of redundant resonance in a state of praise. And it's remarkable that this man from the 9th century perceives the nature of language in this way, even though he's articulating the nature of language after the Pauline reversal, it's still remarkable.
So the modern reader might wonder then, what was Wiesenberg incision into the old conventions, all of this seems quite in keeping with the Pauline reversal? Well, it becomes clear as we consider the historical significance of Wiesenberg's new presentation of the Gospel, and the context that was incredibly unique to that time. As Sloterdijk notes: Wiesenberg reconstructed the story of the Gospels into Franconian poetic verse, which alters not just the language of the Gospels, but the structure of the text, its' flow, its' Rhythm, its' grammar. Furthermore Wiesenberg divided his Gospel Epic into five books, another means of distinguishing it from the true Gospel. He justified this change by invoking the five senses, our five organs by which we are entangled with the World by means of sensation. He says that, quote, "The holy rectitude of their numbering four, sanctifies the Irrectitude of our five senses", end quote.
So, why would he say something like this? Well it's a way of saying that look, I'm not trying to author my own version of the Gospels, look, I've broken it up into five parts like the five senses. This is clearly not on par with the four holy Gospels. Because, as Sloterdijk points out, in the 9th century, quote, "A lay reading of the Holy writings was not something open to debate", end quote. Latin was the only language in which one could read the Gospels. And that might strike us today as nothing more than a strange Superstition. But to this very day, there are religions in which the original language of the text is considered really the only true version of the text. The Quran is meant to be read and chanted in Arabic, the Torah is meant to be experienced in Hebrew, for an Orthodox Christian the holy language is Greek. And even though all of these holy books have been translated into almost every language, if you ask someone from one of these faiths whether, "does the true essence of the text really come across in Translation?", you're likely to get an answer that the translation is something like a facsimile. I'm sure there are differing views on this within modern faiths. The fact remains, we have many examples of this long-standing tendency of religions to treat the language of their sacred texts as uniquely the true language of that text, the true language of the faith. When a group coalesces around a religion, if we follow the The Mcluhan View, they know one another, they recognize one another, by the fact that they use the same language, yes, but also the same lexicon of terms and Concepts that, you know in theology can become incredibly Technical, and for which there might not be a true actual translation. The means of expressing these Concepts, the songs, the hymns, the prayers, the verses, are handed down over Generations as this means of recognizing the fellow supplicant as one of the in group. Such that by the time of the great schism in Europe, there is a serious split over who the keepers of the tradition are. And you know, there are many doctrinal and political reasons for the Schism, but one of the things that was always alienating, that alienated the East from the West and vice versa, was the competing claims as to which language God wrote the Bible in. To the Latin Christian, God communicated his Gospel in Latin, and it must be preserved in Latin. No communication of the same Gospel in the vernacular is permitted. For the simple reason that again, the primary use of language is not the communication of states of affairs, but the incorporation of states of affairs into a glory, as Sloterdijk laid it out at the beginning. So, it doesn't matter if your translation into the vernacular, quote unquote "says the same thing", the point is that all the holy men speak Latin. That's how we know one another. That's how we recognize one another. By the fact that we speak Latin, we celebrate the Lord together in Latin. Whereas the Eastern Christian argues no, God spoke Greek, that is the true Bible. Greek is the language of the Divine.
So, this is all sort of a digression we might say, but importantly Otfried Von Wiesenberg's Gospel harmonies are not a vernacular translation of the Bible. This was a poetic Epic to be read by those who could read and write, the Frankish nobility. So it's a very select group of people, and this is at a time when the Franks are attempting to establish themselves as the new rulers of Europe. The Franks are now attempting to put themselves on par with the Greeks and the Romans. Otfried has also praised their King, the Frankish King, as a figure who emulated King David, one of the great Kings of the Old Testament. He rules over a kingdom of God's worshippers, he himself is a king chosen by God. And so Otfried's aim is not to democratize the word of God, as Luther attempts to do, it is to give the Franks the right to celebrate the word of God in their own language, which would put their language on par with Latin or Greek. And his poetic Gospel becomes considered itself, in its own right, as its own sacred texts. Now again, it's not the Gospel, right? It's not used in the Mass. It's that THAT could only be in Latin.
So why was it such a big deal for Otfried to do this? Because whether the people consciously understand this or not, those who celebrate the word of God in their own language are indirectly glorifying themselves. So, what Otfried is really doing in giving us his five-part Gospel poem, is that he's attempting to put his language back into the mode of affirming, recognizing, and celebrating. And so, as accords the unique conditions of the time, he adapts the sacred text into the language of his people, so that they might be allowed to glorify God in their own language, and therefore indirectly glorify themselves.
The next example is Thomas Jefferson. It is widely known that he produced what is now commonly known as the "Jefferson Bible". In fact, this Bible is not the whole Old Testament and New Testament, it's simply the four Gospels that tell the story of the life of Jesus, but with redactions. Such that all of the passages which were superstitious, and small-minded, or otherwise offensive to Jefferson's moral convictions, are removed. His justification for doing this, or the thinking behind this, is that the teachings of Jesus are the greatest compendium of moral wisdom in the history of mankind. But there have been long centuries of interpretation and interpolation, dogmatic agendas, sectarianism, and so on and so forth, and in Jefferson's view ,this had undoubtedly led to many distortions and misrepresentations of Jesus's ideas. And so, Jefferson reasons from this that therefore, many of the passages in the Gospels must be forgeries or false attributions. It's not, often the way this is retold in American sort of lore, is like, "Oh, he removed all the supernatural things out of the Bible". It's actually, the nature of his project is much different from that. He sets about in accordance with his own moral understanding to remove offending passages that he designates as illegitimate in reference to that understanding. His assertion, in fact, is that the real moral teachings of Jesus shine out so clearly from the dross of the forgeries, that it's like "finding diamonds in a dung hill". Jefferson wrote, referring to Jesus, he writes of Jesus in a letter to a Dutch Unitarian, quote, "It is the innocence of His character, the Purity and Sublimity of His moral precepts, the eloquence of His inculcation, the beauty of the epilogues in which He conveys them, that I so much admire among the sayings and discourses imputed to Him. In His biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the loveliest benevolence. And others again, of so much ignorance, so much absurdity. So much untruth, charlatanism and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same Being. I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross. Restore Him the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity of some, and the roguery of others of his disciples," end quote.
And another thing we should note when we say that Jefferson removed these passages from the Gospel, I mean that he physically removed them. When Sloterdijk uses the language of incision or cutting, we should think of the image of Jefferson. Because he takes several copies of the New Testament, in various languages, Greek, Latin, English, French, and physically takes a pair of scissors to the pages, cutting away all of the allegedly fraudulent sections, until he has assembled, at the end of this process, his own edited version of The Gospel. A redacted version of The Gospel, it must be said, which he entitles, "The life and morals of Jesus of Nazareth".
So what Jefferson effectively does is to make Jesus a great moral teacher, a humanist figure, in other words. That kind of interpretation of Jesus is what CS Lewis directly repudiated in his "Lord, liar, lunatic" trilemma, as he presented it. And many Christians therefore take issue with that presentation of Jesus. But I must say again, given the sort of standard American lore surrounding the Jefferson Bible, I don't think it really dawned on me just how heretical and how Blasphemous most believing Christians would, would have to consider Jefferson's actions to be. Physically cutting up the Bible, and editing it, and leaning on his own authority, his own moral understanding, in order to redact the Divine Revelation of God. And so it is unusual in light of this, to think of how some American Christians really can't heap enough praise upon the founding fathers. In spite of the fact that if a political figure published anything like this today, you know you're running for office. And you say, "Look, here's my edited Bible where I removed all the bad and offensive parts." That person would be Flayed alive, politically speaking.
Again, Sloterdijk argues that Jefferson did this because he was trying to put "the good news" into a language that suited the conditions of the time. The 18th century is a time of scientific optimism, of social optimism, of a rapidly dawning Industrial Revolution and in the heady days of the Enlightenment. It's a time in which "the educated men of society" begin to have less faith in Faith than they have in Reason. And many of the founders of America come from that mileau. They are Deists, they are interested in esoteric branches of Christianity such as Freemasonry or Rosicrucianism, which, by their very nature are more personal experiences of Faith. It's a faith that's more like an inner work. The framers are influenced also, by philosophical writings of men like Locke and Paine and Rousseau, who had expressed a belief in the rights and sovereignty of the citizenry. And the cultural background of America's founding is English Protestantism, which is a tradition that, it comes out of defying centralized religious Authority in favor of elevating the moral and religious Judgment of the individual, to read and interpret the scripture for himself.
And so, for all of these reasons, the old language of jubilation, which confined itself to say, the King James Bible, begins to appear as Antiquated. The religious language, as it stands, is in tension with the feelings of the Zeitgeist. In other words, the language of the old Gospels does not glorify the mode of living, and the mode of thinking, and the mode of feeling that defines the Age. It seems to hearken back to some older way of living, and thinking that it glorifies instead, with its' Thou's, and Thee's, and Thou Shalt's. Sloterdijk writes, quote, "As a representative of the American Enlightenment thinkers, with their decorative monotheism and Philadelphia exuberance, Jefferson testifies to this current of thought, with this Christian Humanity gentleman, it becomes clear that the need for a self-enhancement using the classic reservoirs of meaning was alive as ever but could only be satisfied by expunging vast passages of the historical Gospels. In the wake of the American and French revolutions, anyone wanting still to play the language game of the Gospels to his advantage, had above all to be able to omit. This is the meaning of neo-humanism, to be able to eliminate in the old Gospel that which has become incompatible with one's own glorification, as a humanist, and citizen. For this operation, no image is more impressive than that of an American Head of State, in his office at night, who with scissors cuts out pages from six copies of the New Testament in four different languages, and pastes the extracts into a private copy of "the good news" that is designed to conform to the demands of contemporary rationality and sentimentality", end quote.
So quite simply, language is a eulogistic force. It exists to praise. And if we who speak a language find that it is not praising us, then we have to redact that message, rearrange it, edit it, so now that it does esteem us. And Jefferson himself explicitly uses the language of eulogy. He calls his rearrangement of the Gospel, a eulogy of Christ, a new way of eulogizing Him. And this new way of eulogizing Christ exists precisely because it makes Christ a reflection of the humanism of Jefferson's day. And thus, this new way of eulogizing does not only esteem Christ, but Jefferson too, the Enlightened, Humane, Deist of his time, in other words, The Men Who founded the United States. Jefferson alters the nature of "the good news" so that it celebrates his time, his place, his type.
And so now we come to the third example of such an incision, Fredrich Nietzsche, who also gives us a Fifth Gospel. This one is entitled, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" as we mentioned, and lest anyone wonder whether it is appropriate to actually call it a Fifth Gospel, Nietzsche himself said as much, repeatedly. Sloterdijk cites his initial letter to his publisher in which he described the work as quote, "A poem, or a Fifth Gospel, or something or other for which there is not yet a name", end quote. He also wrote to his friend Maida Von Meisenborg, "I have challenged all the religions and made a new holy book, and said in all seriousness, it is as serious as any other, even though it incorporates laughter into religion", end quote.
So, why does Nietzsche do this? Well something I'd like to mention is something that Sloterdijk doesn't bring up, but which I think bolsters the point he's making here. And it's the numerous notes that can be found in Kaufman's translation of "Will To Power" in which Nietzsche suggests that Christianity provided the European psyche with many benefits. For example, Christianity suggests that there's a meaning to our suffering. And it therefore justifies that suffering by the assertion that it is for something. That it was the precondition for a kind of spiritual greatness, and eventual immortality, and cleansing of sin. And so, it suggests a necessary and inevitable future in which all accounts are settled, in which suffering and sin are finally ended, and even in which the Perfection of mankind is achieved. And so, there's a kind of intelligible story of human existence, in which the struggles of our lives are justified and redeemed and human life is thereby elevated to great importance. The salvation of our souls, that is the main concern of God after all, who sacrifices His Son for that great purpose. So in Sloterdijk's interpretation, Nietzsche's philosophical project is another linguistic incision, based on precisely the recognition that all of those beneficial elements of Christianity that we just mentioned are part of a language game that Christianity was playing. And perhaps the following, or the consequential recognition, that as a language game, Christianity fulfilled the function that all language games fulfill.
But what is the situation that Nietzsche then faces? How has his situation changed in his time and place from the situation of Otfried Von Wiesenberg and Thomas Jefferson, the great problem of the age? The coming cataclysm that Nietzsche faces is that "God is dead". But that is also the great opportunity of the age, and that it offers the chance to make that decisive incision into the language game. Quote, "Nietzsche's break with the old European evangelic tradition makes discernible how from a certain degree of Enlightenment, speeches, functions of indirect eulogy can no longer be secured with the compromises of Deism, or cultivated Protestantism. Anyone seeking a language that secures the speaker, the attribution of, quote, "Every Human Excellence, or at least the guarantee of indirect participation in Supreme advantages, has to develop strategies of expression that surpass the eclecticism of a Jefferson. Scissors can no longer save a speaker's self-esteem when spreading the good news. All in all, Gospel residue proves unable to withstand serious scrutiny. Not even the process of demythologization can set one straight on one's feet. Too dim, too suspect, too inferior are the sources from which the beautiful discourses issue. Expressions of discontent with its glowering universalism, and its' menace laden benevolence can no longer be disguised in the long term. So if "the good news" remained possible in the conditions of spreading through a chain of winners could be realized, then it would have to be reconstituted. It would have to be new enough to avoid embarrassing similarities with texts that had become unacceptable, but similar enough that it could be perceived, at least, as a formal extension of the stock standard Gospel. But Nietzsche did not want to be a mere Gospel parodist. He did not want merely to synthesize Luther with the diam and swap Mosaic tablets for Zarathustrian ones. Rather, for him the point was that the conditions pertaining to professions of Faith and the chains of citations be given an entirely New Order. The author of Zarathustra wanted to lay be the eulogistic force of language from the ground up, and to free it from the inhibitions with which resentment itself, coded by metaphysics, had stamped it", end quote.
So this is why the Nietzsche event is a linguistic catastrophe. It is an attempt to detonate the old dead mode of language that Europe doesn't even realize is dead yet. And thus clear the way for an entirely new linguistic order. And we can see how each of these figures who gives us a Fifth Gospel raises the stakes, we might say. Confronts a more extreme situation than the last one. In Nietzsche's time, the conditions are such that the entire language game has to be reconstituted. And that's why he feels justified to place himself in the same level with Socrates, Plato, and St Paul. And in so far as he is also in a position to effect a revaluation of values, the vector of this revaluation must be as it always is a new language, and the new language arrives in the form of, what else, but a Fifth Gospel. And so, Nietzsche's new language, his new array of Concepts and signifiers, the eternal return of the same, the Overman, the will to power, the revaluation of values itself. These are all part of a new language in which a new self-affirmative attitude can recognize itself and begin to resonate in redundancy with others. The point, as always, is to esteem that which we are.
But, as Sloterdijk says, this is fundamentally a new kind of project, much different from Jefferson's because it's not a clipping up, it's a complete reordering. Nietzsche has identified both the eulogistic operation of language, and he's identified the Twisted Distortion of this eulogistic function, and how that has defined European thought for two millennia. And so Nietzsche arrives at a time when he's ready to fully reap the consequences of that movement, that turn, and return language to its original prideful eulogistic character. Quote, "The discursive event which bears the name Nietzsche is characterized by the infringement within him of the high culture separation between "the good news" and "self celebration", which in addition unveils what it is that a modern author does, he posits the text for himself. The economy of eulogistic and mythological discourse and its' foundation in the taboo weighing on self-praise, are simultaneously opened up to debate", end quote.
And so now, an hour into the episode, that is why Nietzsche comes up with chapter titles such as, "Why I am so clever", and "Why I write such excellent books", he is modeling the behavior of self- affirmative direct eulogy in order to sever the taboo on self-praise from the notion of the Gospel, and produce a Gospel of self-praise. And thus, maybe, I have not sufficiently emphasized the point. To Sloterdijk, Nietzsche is an evangelist, not in the sense of preaching the Christian good news, but in preaching a gospel, in preaching the Good News as Nietzsche sees it, the "new good news". Quote, "Nietzsche's evangelism thus means no one self. Take a stand against the milliner's old forces of reversal, against everything that has been called Gospel to date. He saw his Destiny in being a necessarily joyous messenger, such as quote, "...there has never been before. His mission was to storm the communicative competences of the venomous," end quote.
And so we might say, that because of language's fundamental affirmative character, it is always a preachment of good news that forms the basis of a new religion. It's by giving people a new means of celebrating who and what they are that brings new values into the world. It is by those means that one summons a whole new Weltanschauung, a New Perspective, a new feeling for the world and existence. The way Weltanschauung dominates the cultural consciousness is not through rational persuasion, but by offering us a way to esteem ourselves. In other words, launching a rational argument would be just to play within the existing rules of the current language game. It would be an attempt at best, to dispute terms or come to competing conclusions within fundamentally the same logical system. A revaluation of values, on the other hand, is akin to a completely new game, a new system. And it always begins with "Glad Tidings". That's the power that carries the new language games, the power of affirmation.
And what is the nature of this act of reordering The Language game? It's an act of creativity, and thus an act of art. If it were anything less, it would run a ground against the impenetrable Reef of rationalistic skepticism. Or it would be smashed to dust by the inexorable, just cynical outlook of the Modern mind. And these considerations therefore, relate in this sense to Zarathustra's description of the last man, who is himself no longer a Christian, no longer superstitious in any sense, he more or less believes in nothing. He has no vitality, no energy, no life, because his ability for self-affirmation, for eulogizing himself in his reality, for blessing it, and esteeming it, has been crushed out of him by the Pauline reversal. He's the Final Consequence of that reversal. He no longer has a language of affirmation, and accordingly, has no affirmative values. He simply lives unobtrusively, and above all, passively.
Within the language game as it stood in Nietzcshe's time. If there were to be no intervention and the consequences of this reversal, or just to be continued indefinitely, then Nietzcshe believes you will eventually get to the last man, that in effect is the dangel, "the bad nes" as it is experienced within modern conditions.
Sloterdijk says quote, "the economic Paradox of Nietzsche's good news consists in the indication that the primary immeasurably bad news must be recompensed by an as yet unknown mobilization of Creative Counter energies. The Overman concept is a wager on the distant possibility of such compensation. Quote, "We have art so that we do not go to ground on the truth", end quote. This means, "We have the prospect of the Overman in order that unbearable insights into the unveiled Human Condition may be endured", end quote.
Again, if the entirety of man's values up to this point have been the values brought about by that reversal, which are values rooted fundamentally in the condemnation of mankind, the repudiation of success and Triumph, hatred of the world, then we must conclude that we live in a rather sad State of affairs. The history of humanity is the history of resentment in the bad conscience. And Sloterdijk keys into something very important here when he asks quote, "Does not everything point to the idea that according to Nietzcshe, the bad news possesses an edge over the good new news that cannot be compensated for, whereas all attempts to give Primacy to the latter are based only on momentary Vigor, and temporary self hypnosis. Yes, isn't Nietzcshe thereby exactly the paradigmatic thinker of Modernity, in so far as it is defined by the impossibility of catching up with the real through counterfactual corrections?", end quote. This I think, is the significance of the deep relationship between art and life in Nietzcshe's writings, his numerous statements that life must have recourse to Art in so far as life is deceptive, and the nature of living is to dwell in Illusions, to deceive oneself, to be arbitrary, to be unjust, and so on and so forth. That a strictly rational accounting for the facts of human existence seems necessarily to bring us into a gloomier mindset at the end of all of those roads of inquiry. And perhaps both Christianity and Materialism would come to some rather dim conclusions about the virtue, or the worth, or the creativity, of the average human specimen.
Perhaps where one worldview would see a Humanity whose potential is ruined by sin, a materialist and psychological worldview following Nietzsche would perceive a Humanity whose potential is ruined instead by resentment. But in the Christian worldview, there is a Redeemer, Whereas on the other hand, if one Cleaves indefatigably to the cold hard facts, it's fairly difficult for the Materialist to posit such a thing from his end, and so that's why the the Overman idea. The idea of this compensation for all of the bad news. Sloterdijk puts it into the form of a wager, and Nietzsche recognizes this act for what it is. It's an act therefore, of unreason, of artistic and poetical license.
And where does this come from? Where does the the energy to make such a creative pronouncement come from? As Sloterdijk says, "it's a momentary outburst of vigor which allows one to induce a kind of self hypnosis". In other words, a Zeal for Life, a Lust For Life that is sort of like a burst of energy, or an overflow of energy that allows us to deceive ourselves, and throw ourselves wholeheartedly into life. But, if we consider the kind of energy, or the kind of Vitality, you would have to do this to eulogize ourselves, and celebrate who, and what, we are within this post-Christian Materialistic worldview in which who and what we are can be nothing more than as Nietzcshe writes, "clever animals who invented knowledge on some obscure insignificant Planet somewhere in the unfathomable depths of the Cosmos". I mean in effect, it's almost impossible to sustain that kind of self- celebratory, self-a affirmative language within such a cynical rationalistic view of man, because you'd have to conclude at the end of the day, we're just bags of Blood and Bones and organs mostly. We just exist to carry on the lives of microscopic germs. Everything we cherish, and everyone we love will eventually be ripped away from us, and chewed up in the merciless jaws of time. That is not a very good self- affirmative story. So the Modern mind has to do these things like make wagers that the human project will be worth it. I'm going to wager on that. That mankind is moving towards some sort of end that will justify this whole thing, and cash out all the value that's been poured into it, so to speak. That is the meaning of quote unquote "prophecy". Sloterdijk uses the term throughout the text, "The wager on the greatness of the future as a justification for what is happening now", which necessarily has to be an act of artistic creation because that kind of proposition is totally unwarranted if you evaluate it according to like, a rigorous accounting of empirical facts. It's simply an irrational faith that one has to demand. And the problem that Sloterdijk therefore perceives is that such an overflow of emotional energy of artistic ecstasy, or whatever we want to call it, is always a fleeting thing. And Nietzcshe, for his part, embraces this reality. Yes, affirmation of life is a kind of privilege, it is not a guarantee. It's the preserve of those who have the Good Fortune to turn out well enough that they're able to celebrate who and what they are.
Sloterdijk writes quote, "What Nietzsche has in mind is not indistinctly to rejoice in oneself as a bare existence. He cleaves with all his might to the idea that existence must earn its exaltation. Or better, that it has to grow into its' exaltation if there is any correspondence between its' existence and good reputation. An existence must become enhanced to such an extent that the best may be said about it", end quote. So those who feel that they are in that position, to say the best things about their life, their life has earned the right of exaltation, or grown into it. Those are the ones who will be able to speak in Nietzsche's new language.
And to his great disappointment during his own lifetime no one did. He complained in one of his letters that he had not gathered even a single disciple. Sloterdijk mentions that it is in Nietzsche's later texts that the term "cynicism" comes to the surface. Which Sloterdijk assesses as Nietzsche's growing awareness that he would likely be interpreted as another Diogenes, who was called a Socrates gone mad. This says Nietzsche's awareness that he would be mistaken for someone else, aped by those who did not understand the full depth of his thought, made into some kind of buffoon. But there's another sense to cynicism which Sloterdijk says intersects with Nietzsche's evangelism, and in fact, becomes in a strange way synonymous with it. Nietzsche's good news, his Evangelical message, includes, for instance in "Ecce Homo", a repeated assertion of the importance of diet and climate and daily habits. Sloterdijk also cites one of Nietzsche's statements that quote, "I have never taken a step in public that did not compromise me. That is my Criterion for acting right", end quote.
So Nietzsche compromises himself, he opens himself up, makes himself vulnerable to attack by speaking frankly about his illness. Stating repeatedly that it is his long sickness that gives him such a powerful insight into the nature of health and sickness themselves. Or to attribute his genius to a series of supposedly mundane factors, such as what he eats and how much he walks, right? In other words, the cynical element in Nietzsche is that it's part and parcel with his physiology. His matter of fact with his physiological origin of even his grandest ideas. Many would call that notion cynical, because it brings things back down to Earth. But Nietzsche's revaluation, his new language game, Sloterdijk argues, derives its' very power from the authenticity of Nietzsche's expression, and the fact that it is brought back down to earth.
All evangelism to some extent requires some demonstration of authenticity, laying bare the way in which "the good news" has "transformed your life", so to speak. In order to be a true evangelism, truly preaching the "Good News that one knows in their heart of hearts" and that they can convince others is not just hucksterism, Nietzsche has to preach an authentic Gospel. And so he has to remain true to the worldly grounding of his new anti- metaphysics. Which means quite simply, a return to the physical. And so in this way Nietzsche does resemble Diogenes, the first Socrates gone mad, the man to whom the cynic label was first applied. Because Diogenes took a hard, honest look at man as a biological being, and as a physiology. He looked upon our laws, and our conventions as so much nonsense, and saw only the organic reality around him. He saw those who followed written rules instead of their own natural inclinations, as akin to the man who chooses to eat the painted fig over the one that actually is growing on the tree. That's the way in which Nietzsche's cynicism resembles that of Diogenes, and why he would be in danger of being called a madman. Why his cynicism is often misunderstood.
The penultimate section of Sloterdijk's work goes into great length to analyze Nietzsche's role as a gift-giver, as a sponsor. Generosity, as we all know, is one of the main virtues of Nietzsche's thought. And from the very beginning of "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", in a passage that Sloterdijk cites, near the end of his speech Zarathustra resolves to become like the sun, because the sun gives its light freely to all. It rises into the sky in a great act of selfless charity, and then it sets and goes under. The reason why this is so important is that the eulogistic and self- affirmative language game, and the mode of valuing that drives it, and the anti metaphysic that Nietzsche premises the entire thing upon, is when we consider it in its totality a regime of giving. In contrast with the previous language regime, which was premised on metaphysics, and driven by resentment, and based on negativity and lowering. When we examine that system, the whole system is based on debt. The Christian economy is an economy of debt and the Forgiveness of debt.
It's therefore an economy in which all Humanity exists in a state of deprivation, and then Christ cancels that deprivation. It's in a negation of a negative State. The Nietzcshean economy is an economy of generosity, in which all praise themselves, all freely give praise, and attempt to magnify and multiply the sum total of affirmation and praise in the world. Quote, "the future of humanity is a test of whether it is possible to supersede resentment as the foremost historical force. In the ascending line of giftgiving virtues, Life praises itself as an immeasurable proliferation of chances to be given. It finds the reason for its' thankful praise in its participation, and events of generosity. History splits into the time of the economy of debt, and the time of generosity. Whereas the former thinks of repayment and retaliation, the latter is interested only in forwards donating. Wittingly or otherwise, every life will in future be dated in accordance with this Criterion, one lives before him, one lives after him", end quote.
So, if such an overturning of the entire language game of debt and repayment is affected, Nietzsche's work would in fact mark a definitive turning point in world history. In the same way as the life of Socrates or Christ, two of the few figures that Nietzsche devotes considerable attention to. They delineated new epochs. They divided history into the the time before their lives, and the time after their lives. And with Christ I mean, this is true even of the our calendar today. That's what it means to become a legislator of new values.
Further in the passage, Sloterdijk continues quote, "Only unbilled expenditure has sufficient spontaneity and centrifugal force to escape the gravitational field of avarice and its' calculus. Savers and capitalists always expect to get more back than what they stake, while the sponsor gets his satisfaction without any regard for Revenue. This applies to sentences as much as to donations. What Nietzsche calls the "innocence of becoming" is essentially the "innocence of expenditure" and e ipso, "the innocence of enrichment sought for the sake of the possibility to expend", end quote.
This is a point I've made in the past about "The Will to Power" that Sloterdijk zeros in on. Almost all of the language that Nietzsche uses concerning "Will To Power" is not about Gathering Power, it's not about seeking power, which is how it is all too often described, as if the doctrine is about acquisition. Arguably, the reason why we defer to that kind of language in our bastardization of Nietzsche, is precisely because of the fact that we exist within a current language game based on debt repayment, acquisition, and so on. But Nietzsche almost never describes the will to power as the doctrine that human beings, or all living things, secretly seek power as if, even their apparent generosity or self-improvement or moral behavior comes out of the desire to become more powerful. True, one has to save before they can spend, I suppose. And one can't exclude the aspect of growing more powerful, which is part and parcel with the will to power idea. But growing is different from acquiring, fundamentally different. The language that Nietzsche almost always uses instead, is the language of spending. He uses the language of squandering, wasting. That the "feeling of power" is in its' use, in its' expenditure. The sense of nobility that Nietzsche promotes, is the ability to spend without regard for returns, without regard for repayment or Revenue. It's the petty man that seeks after these things. The noble king would not concern himself with that. If anything, that would lower him. That's why, among other reasons, the voluntary beggar in "Thus Spoke Zarathustra says quote, "Rabble above and rabble below", because all of us in the Modern hierarchy in the Modern language game are obsessed with these petty operations of acquisition and revenue, whereas true nobility is expressed in build expenditure, thoughtless generosity. That's a true demonstration of power. And so with this, Nietzsche also inaugurates a new sense for the term "nobility" which doesn't reference one's position in the current social hierarchy, but a mode of living and of valuing.
Some of Sloterdijk's final reflections are on the practical effect of Nietzsche's writing. At the Centennial of his death, it seemed that Nietzsche's attempt to delineate the Great Divide between an Epoch of Indebtedness and an Epoch of Generosity, had stalled out. It seemed that Nietzsche might inevitably be hijacked by fascists, or distorted by the left-wing hystericism and reaction to him, or ultimately just plebianized in some way. And Sloterdijk's estimation, this Modern Age of Individualism belongs to Nietzsche in the sense that, what he calls Nietzsche's brand has dominated the Zeitgeist of individualism. And so he makes a distinction here between the true project of Nietzsche, the value and the insights of his philosophy when it's deeply read and considered, and then on the other hand, the image of Nietzsche that has actually triumphed in the culture, the way in which the average person understands and engages with the thought of Nietzsche. And Sloterdijk says that in his view, Nietzsche is not himself responsible for the Age of Individualism. He's quite explicit that it would have happened without Nietzsche, even if Nietzsche had never existed. He says the genius of Nietzsche is that he attaches his name to to this event, that he is right there at the right time, seizes the moment, and becomes the definitive voice of what we call Individualism now.
And for our purposes here, I think it's fine to not go into too much detail about what Individualism is, and how it emerges, and why it differs from previous modes of social identity, or or modes of being in Society. Because we're talking now about the brand, which is not a deep understanding of Nietzsche's ideas. It's an image, it's the feeling, it's the sense that one gets, and frankly the Nietzsche brand has ultimately become the brand of the ambitious individualist. And worse than that, he's often parroted by people who would like to be ambitious individualists, but are not. His sentiments have become associated with a brand that boils down to what Sloterdijk calls quote, "a literary lifestyle drug", end quote.
And so Sloterdijk makes this shocking claim, that perhaps the greatest effect of Nietzsche's work is on mass culture, which is somewhat paradoxic and self-undermining, isn't it? I mean, Nietzsche's ideas, which depend on this certain outlook on life that he says will be permitted to the very few. There, Nietzsche's ideas then go on to reach their most powerful conclusions in the hands of the masses. And so Nietzsche becomes watered down, he becomes self-help, he becomes pop psychology, he becomes another cynical voice that says, "who cares about morality and religion and so on. Live your best life," and many people do interpret Nietzsche that way. And why does this happen? Well, Sloterdijk puts it this way quote, "Could he not have known that from the Riff Raff he repelled, his most tenacious clientele could emerge", end quote.
According to Sloterdijk, Nietzsche's work quote, "Radiates an irresistible reaction", end quote. And that following the collapse of fascism and the rehabilitation of Nietzsche in intellectual circles in the West quote, "the brand was recuperated by losers and loser redactors, because it promised to be the brand of winners", end quote. And so obviously, what the loser wants is to reimagine himself as a winner, to rewrite the language game, to make himself a winner. He does this for the same reason all of us play The Language Game, in order to "esteem himself" and what he is. Because that is the fundamental meaning of language, the Nietzschean idea, we free Spirits, we who live dangerously, we Noble ones, and so on. That is naturally appealing, as a brand to the new generations who live in a culture that's increasingly individualist. And this is the worst blemish of Nietzsche's Legacy, this mass of individualists who are not themselves individuals, putting their hands on his philosophy and appropriating it for themselves.
But in this, Sloterdijk says, we ultimately find also the most distant future possibilities for Nietzsche's significance. It was after all, this appeal to individualism that in Sloterdijk's view, ultimately rescued the brand from fascism. And further, Nietzsche himself anticipated this outcome, and he accepted this outcome that he would be plebianised and bastardized. As Zarathustra declares quote, "I am not on my guard for deceivers. I have to be without caution. My fate wants it so", end quote.
And thus, the final comparison that Sloterdijk ventures to make at the end of the work, is to Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of Nietzsche's influences, the author of "Self Reliance" among many other essays. We discussed Emerson way back in season 2, if you want to hear my comparison of Nietzsche to Emerson, or really, just an episode on Emerson where we maybe draw a couple parallels to Nietzsche. Go back and look that up. It's called "Children of the fire, Emerson and Nietzsche." There are few voices who offered an articulation of a new language game equal to the challenge of the coming era, and Emerson is perhaps the only comparable thinker to Nietzsche in this regard. And for what it's worth, Sloterdijk thinks that Emerson's brand of individualism is actually what predominates. That what we are today is non-conformists, rather than free Spirits in general. That's what's won out quote, "Our average thoughts and feelings are all made in the USA, not in Sils Maria", end quote.
Sloterdijk's final Reflections on Nietzsche are to draw attention to one last nuance. While quote, "Nietzsche's Evangelical opposition liberates self-praise", end quote, his understanding of the self is entirely transformed in absentia of the metaphysical doctrines of the soul, and the unity of the ego, and the Free Will Doctrine. All of these are abolished as the premises of a language game aimed at condemning the human race and condemning the world. To grasp what Sloterdijk is getting at regarding Nietzsche's new conception of the self, we simply could refer back to the passages in "Ecce Homo" where Nietzsche's story of who he is, traces his Origins back to diet and climate, and his mother and father, and the necessities of his life and his time and place. In other words, circumstances ordained by Fate.
Sloterdijk writes quote, "Nietzsche could be described as the discoverer of hetero-narcissism. What he ultimately affirms in himself are the othernesses which Gather in him and make him up like a composition", end quote. So Nietzsche attempts to end the previous language game in which we praise that which is foreign to the self, that which is external to it, that which is other. But he finds in the concept "myself" the ultimate foreignness. In a sense, the totality of everything we call other, external, as we might say, the World. And in Nietzsche every one of us is a piece of fate. And the totality of Fate is what is absolutely necessary. And so, every part of the world, every aspect of the world, all of its' struggling individual constituents, are also absolutely necessary. He ultimately sees the self as the expression of the world, and that it is shaped by the necessities of the world. That's the true and ultimate Discovery that we call in shorthand, Amorfati.
And because of this Nietzsche does not take his life to be a struggle to imprint a certain idea onto the surface of Consciousness. That for all of his talk of great demands being made upon reality, and upon mankind, he ultimately fully accepts the necessary realities of human life. Nietzsche writes quote, "I do not have the slightest wish for anything to be different from how it is. I do not want to become anything other than what I am. But this is how my life has always been", end quote. In Sloterdijk's interpretation on this front Nietzsche contradicts his own brand in a way. This is precisely why Sloterdijk concludes this final nuance. Quote, "perhaps we can do no better then on the 100th anniversary of his death than to repeat these statements in the hope that no future redaction can excise them", end quote.
Over the years, the types that Sloterdijk calls "the exploiters, recyclers, and accelerators" have used Nietzsche's name for these various struggles or attempts to impose their own great imperative. Usually, they will use the formulations of the will to power, or some other related concept, as part of the basis for some fundamental theory of how other people should act, or how Society should be. But in Nietzsche each's own work, he critiques the concept of the will itself. Will to Power, as Sloterdijk puts it, is only an idiom quote, "There is only a multiplicity of forces, speech gestures, and they being composed under the direction of an Ego, which gets Affirmed, lost, and transformed", end quote. So Nietzsche affirms the self, but then he loses it in otherness. And he ultimately transforms the self into the world, that one either praises in totality, or not at all.
And so Sloterdijk chooses to end on the image of Zarathustra and his experience of the great noon tide, the day when Zarathustra says, "Be Still, for now everything is perfect". And so we'll read that passage from Zarathustra now to conclude. Quote, "Like such a weary ship in the stillest bay thus I too rest. Now, close to the Earth, Faithfully trusting, waiting, bound to it with the lightest threads. Oh, happiness. Oh, happiness. Do you want to sing? Oh my soul, you lie in the grass. But this is the secret solemn hour, when no Shepherd plays his flute. Stand back, hot noon sleeps on the Meadows. Do not sing. Still, the world is perfect", end quote. These writings can only be understood as statements of pure ecstasy. Perhaps pure celebration or Jubilation, a celebration so complete that even the object of that celebration, which in language is always the self, is burnt away in the excitement. This is the aspect of Nietzcshe that interrupts the vulgarization of him as the self-help individualual. It's a disruption of the easy presentation of him given to us by the brand of Nietzcshe. This is the entire human being, the entire Nietzcshe whose work cannot be reduced to a self-help drug. Because at these moments, Zarathustra proclaims essentially that improving anything is impossible. Improving on mankind is impossible. Improving on the world, is in fact impossible. It's not something broken that has to be perfected.
And I would argue that any serious reading of Nietzsche has to take that aspect of him into account. And so, as we have said many times in the past, only the total Nietzsche is the total Nietzsche.
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