interpretation, vol_3-2-3

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lnternretationa journal of political philosophy

114

157169191

205221

volume 3/2,3

leo strauss

alexandre kojeve

muhsin mahdi

larry petermanlarry 1. adams

nathan rotenstreich

waiter b. mead

winter 1973

note on the plan of nietzsche'sbeyond good and evilth e idea of death in the philosophyof hegelremarks on the 1001 nightsan introduction to dante's de monarchiaedmund burke: the psychology ofcitizenshiphuman emancipation and revolutionchristian ambiguity and social disorder

martinus nijhoff , the hague

edited at

queens college of the city universityof new york


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interpretationa journal of political philosophyvolume 3 issue 2,3

editors

seth g. benardete - howard b. whitehilail gildin executive editor

consulting editorsjohn hallowell - wilhelm hennis erich hula - michael oakeshott leostrauss kenneth w. thompson

interpretation is a journal devoted to the study of political philosophy.it appears three t imes a year.its editors welcome contributions from all those who takea serious interest in political philosophy regardless of their orientation.

ah manuscripts and editorial correspondenceshould be addressed to the executive editor

interpretationJefferson hall 312 -queens college -flushing, n.y. 11367-u.s.a.

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martinus nijhoff9-11 lange voorhout - p.o.b. 269 - the hague - netherlands.


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97NOTE ON THE PLAN OF NIETZSCHE'S

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

Leo Strauss

Beyond Good and Evil always seemed to me to be the most beautifulof Nietzsche's books. This impression could be thought to be contradicted by his judgement, for he was inclined to believe that hisZarathustra is the most profound book that exists in German as wellas the most perfect in regard to language. But "most beautiful" is notthe same as "most profound" and even as "most perfect in regard tolanguage." To illustrate this partly by an example which is perhaps nottoo far-fetched, there seems to be general agreement to the effect thatPlato's Republic, his Phaedrus and his Banquet are his most beautifulwritings without their being necessarily his most profound writings.Yet Plato makes no distinction among his writings in regard to profundity or beauty or perfection in regard to language; he is not concernedwith Plato with his "ipsissimosity" and hence with Plato's writings,but points away from himself whereas Nietzsche points most emphaticallyto himself, to "Mr. Nietzsche." Now Nietzsche "personally" preferred,not Beyond Good and Evil but his Dawn of Morning and his GayScience to all his other books precisely because these tw o books are his"most personal" books (letter to Karl Knortz of June 21, 1888). Asthe very term " personal," ultimately derivative f rom the Greek wordfor "face," indicates, being "personal" has nothing to do with being"profound" or with being "perfect in regard to language."What is dimly perceived and inadequately expressed through our

judgement on Beyond Good and Evil, is stated clearly by Nietzsche inhis account of that book which he has given in Ecce Homo: BeyondGood and Evil is the very opposite of the "inspired" and "dithyrambic"Zarathustra in as much as Zarathustra is most far-sighted, whereas inBeyond Good and Evil the eye is compelled to grasp clearly the nearest ,the timely (the present) , the around-us. This change of concern requiredin every respect, "above all also in the form," the same arbitraryturning away from the instincts out of which a Zarathustra had becomepossible: the graceful subtlety as regards form, as regards intention, asregards the art of silence are in the foreground in Beyond Good andEvil which amounts to saying that these qualities are not in the foregroundin the Zarathustra, to say nothing of Nietzsche's other books.In other words, in Beyond Good and Evil, in the only book published

by Nietzsche, in the contemporary preface to which he presents himselfas the antagonist of Plato, he "platonizes" as regards the "form" morethan anywhere else.


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According to the preface to Beyond Good and Evil Plato's fundamental error was his invention of the pure mind and of the good initself. From this premise one can easily be led to Diotima's conclusionthat no human being is wise, but only the god is; h uman beings canonly strive fo r wisdom or philosophize; gods do not philosophize (Banquet203e-204a). In the penultimate aphorism of Beyond Good and Evilin which Nietzsche delineates "the genius of the heart" a super-Socrateswho is in fact the god Dionysos Nietzsche divulges after the properpreparation the novelty, suspect perhaps especially among philosophers,that gods too philosophize. Yet D iotima is not Socrates nor Plato, andPlato could well have thought that gods philosophize (cf. Sophist 216b5-6, Theaetetus 151d 1-2). And when in the ultimate aphorism ofBeyond Good and Evil Nietzsche underlines the fundamental differencebetween "written and painted thoughts" and thoughts in their originalform, we cannot help being reminded of what Plato says or intimatesregarding th e "weakness of the logos" and regarding th e unsayable anda fortiori unwritable character of the truth (Ep. VII 341c-d, 342e-343a):the purity of the mind as Plato conceives of it, does not necessarilyestablish the strength of the logos.Beyond Good and Evil has the subtitle "Prelude to a philosophy ofthe future." The book is meant to prepare, not indeed the philosophy

of th e future, the true philosophy, but a new kind of philosophy byliberating the mind from "the prejudice of the philosophers," i.e. ofthe philosophers of the past (and the present). At the same t ime orby this very fact the book is meant to be a specimen of the philosophyof the future. The first chapter ("Of the prejudices of the philosophers")is followed by a chapter entitled "The free mind." The free minds inNietzsche's sense are free from the prejudice of the philosophy of thepast but they are not yet philosophers of the future; they are the heraldsand precursors of the philosophy of the future (aph. 44). It is hard tosay how the distinction between the free minds and the philosophers ofthe future is to be understood: are the free minds by any chance freerthan the philosophers of the future? do they possess an openness whichis possible only during the transitional period between the philosophyof the past and the philosophy of the future? Be this as it may, philosophyis surely the primary theme of Beyond Good and Evil, the obvioustheme of the first tw o chapters.The book consists of nine chapters. The third chapter is devoted to

religion. The heading of the fourth chapter ("Sayings and Interludes")does not indicate a subject matter ; that chapter is distinguished fromall other chapters by th e fact that it consists exclusively of short aphorisms.The last five chapters are devoted to morals and politics. The book asa whole consists then of tw o main parts which are separated from oneanother by about 123 "Sayings and Interludes"; the first of the tw o partsis devoted chiefly to philosophy and religion and the second chiefly tomorals and politics. Philosophy and religion, it seems, belong together


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100 Interpretationsuggestion following him in this manner: the philosophers tried to gethold of the "text" as distinguished from "interpretations"; they tried to"discover"

and not to"invent." What Nietzsche claims to have realizedis that the tex t in its pure , unfalsified form is inaccessible (hke the

Kantian Thing-in-itself); everything thought by anyone philosopher orman of the people is in the last analysis interpretation. But for thisvery reason the text, the world in itself, the true world cannot be of anyconcern to us; the world of any concern to us is necessarily a fiction,for it is necessarily anthropocentric; man is necessarily in a mannerthe measure of ah things (aph. 3 end, 12 end, 17, 22, 24, 34, 38; cf.Plato, Laws 716c 4-6). As is indicated sufficiently by the title of thebook, the anthropocentrism for which Nietzsche opts is tra nsmo ra l (cf.aph. 34 and 35 with 32). At first glance there does not seem to be aconnection between the grave aphorism 34 and the lighthearted aphorism35 and this seems to agree with the general impression according towhich a book of aphorisms does not have or need not have a lucid andnecessary order or may consist of disconnected pieces. The connectionbetween aphorism 34 and 35 is a particularly striking example of thelucid, if somewhat hidden, order governing the sequence of the aphorisms: the desultory character of Nietzsche's argument is more pretendedthan real. If th e aforesaid is correct, the doctrine of the will to powercannot claim to reveal what is, the fact, the most fundamental fact butis "only" one interpretation, presumably the best interpretation, amongmany. Nietzsche regards this apparent objection as a confirmation of hisproposition (aph. 22 end).

We can now turn to the two aphorisms in Beyond Good and EvilI-II that can be said to be devoted to religion (36-37). Aphorism 36presents the reasoning in support of the doctrine of the will to power.Nietzsche had spoken of the will to power before, but only in the wayof bald assertion, not to say dogmatically. Now he sets forth with whatis at the same t ime the most intransigent intellectual probity and th emost bewitching playfulness his reasons, i.e. the problematic, tentative,tempting, hypothetical character of his proposition. It could seem thathe does not know more of the will to power as the fundamental realitythan what he says here. Almost immediately before, in the centralaphorism of the second chapter (34), he had drawn our attention to thefundamental distinction between the world which is of any concernto us and the world in itself, or between the world of appearance orfiction (the interpretations) and the t rue world (the text). What he seemsto aim at is th e abolition of that fundamental distinction: th e world as willto power is both the world of any concern to us and the world in itself.Precisely if all views of the world are interpretations, i.e. acts of th ewill to power, the doctrine of the will to power is at the same t ime aninterpretation and the most fundamental fact, for, in contradistinctionto all other interpretations, it is the necessary and sufficient conditionof the possibility of any

"categories."


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Note on the Plan of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil 101After having tempted some of his readers (cf. aph. 30) with the

doctrine of the will to power Nietzsche makes them raise the questionas to whether that doctrine does not assert, to speak popular ly , thatGod is refuted but the devil is not. He replies "On the contrary! Onthe contary, my friends! And, to the devil, what forces you to speakpopularly?" The doctrine of the will to power the whole doctrine ofBeyond G ood and Evil is in a manner a vindication of God. (Cf.aph. 150 and 295, as well as Genealogy of Morals, Preface Nr. 7.)

The third chapter is entitled "Das religiose Wesen"; it is not entitled"Das Wesen der Rehgion," one of th e reasons for this being that theessence of rehgion, that which is common to ah religions, is not orshould not be of any concern to us. The chapter considers religion witha view to the human soul and its boundaries, to the whole history ofthe soul hitherto and its yet inexhausted possibilities: Nietzsche doesnot deal with unknown possibilities, although or because he deals withreligion hitherto and the rehgion of the future. Aphorisms 46-52 aredevoted to rehgion hitherto and 53-57 to the religion of the future.The rest of the chapter (aph. 58-62) transmits Nietzsche's appraisal ofrehgion as a whole. In th e section on rehgion h itherto he speaks firstof Christianity (46-48), then of the Greeks (49), then again of Christianity (50-51) and finally of the Old Testamen t (52). "The religiosityof the old Greeks" and above all certain parts of "the Jewish 'OldTestament' " supply him with the standards by which he judges ofChristianity; nowhere in the chapter does he speak of Christianity withthe respect, the admiration, the veneration with which he speaks ofthe tw o pre-Christian phenomena. The aphorisms on the Old Greeksand on the Old Testament are obviously meant to interrupt the aphorismsdevoted to Christianity; the tw o interrupting aphorisms are put at somedistance from one another in order to imitate the distance or ratheropposition between what one may call Athens and Jerusalem. Theaphorism on the Old Testament is immediately preceded by an aphorismdevoted to the saint: there are no saints, no holy men in th e Old Testament ; the peculiarity of O ld T estament theology in contradistinctionespecially to Greek theology is the conception, the creation of the holyGod (cf. Dawn of Morning aph. 68). For Nietzsche "the great style"of (certain parts of) the Old Testament shows forth the greatness, notof God, but of what man once was: the holy God no less than the holyman are creatures of the human will to power.

Nietzsche's vindication of God is then atheistic, at least for the tim ebeing: the aphorism following that on the Old Testament begins withthe question 'Why atheism today?' There was a t ime when theism waspossible or necessary. But in the meantime "God died" (Thus SpokeZarathustra, Zarathustra's Prologue Nr. 3). This does not merely meanthat men have ceased to believe in God, for men's unbelief does notdestroy God's life or being. It does mean, however, that even whileGod hved he never was what the believers in him thought him to be,


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namely, death less . Theism as it understood itself was therefore alwayswrong. Y et for a t ime it was true, i.e. powerful , life-giving. In speakingof how or why it lost its power , Nietzsche speaks here less of the reasonsthat swayed him than of the reasons advanced by some of his contemporaries, presumably his most competent contemporaries. Not afew of his better readers will justifiably think that those reasons vergeon the frivolous. In particular it is no t qu ite clear w he th er those reasonsare directed against natural (rational) or revealed theology. Neverthelessthe m ost po werful a nti-th eistic argument which Nietzsche sketches isdirected against the possibility of a clear and unambiguous revelation,i.e. of God's "speaking" to m an (cf. Dawn of Morning aph. 91 an d 95).Despite the decay of European theism Nietzsche has the impressionthat the religious instinct "religiosity" as distinguished from "religion"is growing powerfully at present or that atheism is only a transitionalphase. Could atheism belong to the free mind as Nietzsche conceivesof it while a certain kind of non-atheism belongs to the philosopher ofthe future wh o will again worship the god Dionysos or will again be,as an Epicurean might say, a dionysokolax (cf. aph. 7)? This ambiguityis essential to Nietzsche's thought; without it his doctrine would loseits character of an ex perim en t o r a temptat ion .

Nietzsche provisionally illustrates his suggestion of an atheistic or,if you wish, non-theistic religiosity by the alleged fact that the wholemodern philosophy was anti-Christian but no t anti-religious that it couldseem to point to something reminding of the Vedanta philosophy. Buthe does no t anticipate, he surely does no t wish, that the religion of thefuture will be something like the Vedanta philosophy. He anticipates amore Western, a sterner, more terrible and more invigorating possibility:the sacrificing from cruelty, i.e. from the will to power turning againstitself, of God which prepares the worshipping of the stone, stupidity,heaviness (gravity), fate, th e Nothing. He anticipates in other wordsthat the better among the contemporary atheists will come to knowwhat they are doing "the stone" may remind us of Anaxagoras' debunking of the sun , that they will come to realize that there is something infinitely more terrible, depressing and degrading in the offingthan the foeda religio or I'infdme: the possibility, nay, th e fact thathuman life is utterly meaningless an d lacking support, that it lastsonly fo r a minute which is preceded and followed by an infinite timeduring which the human race was not an d will no t be. (Cf. the beginningof "On truth and lie in an extra-moral sense.") These religious atheists,this new breed of atheists cannot be deceptively and deceivingly appeasedas people like Engels by the prospect of a most glorious future, of therealm of freedom, which will indeed be terminated by the annihilationof the human race an d therewith of all meaning but which will lastfor a very long t ime fo r a millennium or more , for fortunatelywe find ourselves still on "the ascending branch of human history" (F.Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach un d der Ausgang der deutschen klassischen


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Note on the Plan of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil 103Philosophie): the realm of freedom, destined to perish, necessarily contains within itself th e seeds of its annihilation and will therefore, whileit lasts, abound in "contradictions" as much as any earlier age.

Nietzsche does not mean to sacrifice God for the sake of th e Nothing,for while recognizing the deadly truth that God died he aims at t ransforming it into a life-inspiring one or rather to discover in the depthof the deadly truth its opposite. Sacrificing God fo r the sake of theNothing would be an extreme form of world-denial or of pessimism.But Nietzsche, prompted by "some enigmatic desire," has tried fora long time to penetrate pessimism to its depth and in particular tofree it from the delusion of morality which in a way contradicts itsworld-denying tendency. He thus has grasped a more world-denyingway of thinking than tha t of any previous pessimist. Yet a man who hastaken this road has perhaps without intending to do this opened hiseyes to the opposite ideal to the ideal belonging to the religion ofthe future. It goes without saying that what in some other men was"perhaps" the case was a fact in Nietzsche's thought and life. Theadoration of the Nothing proves to be the indispensable transition fromevery kind of world-denial to the most unbounded Yes: the eternalYes-saying to everything that was and is. By saying Yes to everythingthat was and is Nietzsche may seem to reveal himself as radically anti-revolutionary or conservative beyond the wildest wishes of all otherconservatives, who ah say No to some of the things that were or are.Remembering Nietzsche's strictures against "ideals" and "idealists" weare reminded of Goethe's words to Eckermann (November 24, 1824)according to which "everything idea-like (jedes Ideelle) is serviceablefo r revolutionary purposes." Be this as it may, "And this," Nietzscheconcludes his suggestion regarding eternal repetition of what was andis, "would not be circulus vitiosus deus?" As this concluding ambiguousquestion again shows, his atheism is not unambiguous , fo r he haddoubts whether there can be a world , any world whose center is notGod (aph. 150). The conclusion of the present aphorism reminds us,through its form, of th e theological aphorism occurring in the first tw ochapters (37) where Nietzsche brings out the fact that in a manner thedoctrine of the will to power is a vindication of God, if a decidedlynon-theistic vindication of God.

But now we are confronted with th e fact that the vindication of Godis only the inversion of the sacrificing of God to stupidity, to the Nothing,or at any rate presupposes that sacrificing. What is it that suddenly, ifafter a long preparation, divinizes the Nothing? Is it the willing ofeternity which gives to the world , or restores to it, its worth whichthe world-denying ways of thinking had denied it? Is it the willing ofeternity that makes atheism rehgious? Is beloved eternity divine merelybecause it is beloved? If we were to say that it must be in itself lovable,in order to deserve to be loved, would we not become guilty of a relapseinto Platonism, into the teaching of "the good in itself"? But can we


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avoid such a relapse altogether? For the eternal to which Nietzschesays Yes, is not the stone, the stupidi ty, the Nothing which even ifeternal or sempiternal cannot arouse an enthusiastic, hfe-inspiring Yes.The transformation of the world-denying way of thinking into the oppositeideal is connected with th e realization or divination that the stone, thestupidity or the Nothing to which God is being sacrif iced, is in its"intelligible character"the will to power (cf. aph. 36).There is an important ingredient, not to say the nerve, of Nietzsche's

"theology" of which I have not spoken and shall not speak since I haveno access to it. It has been worthily treated by Karl Reinhardt in hisessay "Nietzsche's Klage der Ariadne" (Vermachtnis der Antike, Gott ingen 1960, 310-333; see also a remark of Reinhardt at the end ofhis eulogy of Walter F. Otto, ib . 379).It is possible but not likely that the "Sayings and Interludes" of

which the fourth chapter consists, possesses no order , that there is norhyme or reason to their selection and sequence. I must leave mattersat a few observations which are perhaps helpful to some of us.The opening aphorism draws our attention to the paramountcy of

being-oneself, of being for oneself, of "preserving" oneself (cf. aph. 41).Accordingly knowledge cannot be, or cannot be good, for its own sake;it is justifiable only as self-knowledge: being oneself means being honestwith oneself, going the way to one's own ideal. This seems to haveatheistic implications. There occur in the chapter nine references toGod; only one of them points to Nietzsche's own theology (150). Thereoccurs only a single reference to nature (126). Instead we are confrontedby nine aphorisms devoted to woman and man. Surely th e knowerwhom Nietzsche has in mind has not, like Kant, the starred heaven abovehimself. As a consequence he has a high morality, a morality beyondgood and evil and in particular beyond puritanism and asceticism.Precisely because he is concerned with the freedom of his mind , he mustimprison his heart (87, 107). Freedom of one's mind is not possiblewithout a dash of stupidity (9). Self-knowledge is not only v ery difficultbut impossible to achieve; man could not live with perfect self-knowledge (80-81, 231, 249).The fifth chapter the central chapter is the only one whose heading

("Toward the natural history of morality") refers to nature. Couldnature be the t heme of this chapter or even of the whole second partof the book?Nature to say nothing of "naturalists," "physics" and "physiology"had been mentioned more than once in the first four chapters. Let us

cast a glance at the most important or striking of those mentions. Indiscussing and rejecting the Stoic imperative "to live according tonature"Nietzsche makes a distinction between nature and life (9; cf. 49),just as on another occasion he makes a distinction between nature and"us" (human beings) (22). The opposite of life is death which is or maybe no less natural than life. The opposite of the natural is the unnatural:


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Note on the Plan of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil 105the artificial, the domesticated, the misbegotten (62), the anti-natural(21, 51, 55); i.e., the unnatural may very well be alive.

In the introductory aphorism (186) Nietzsche speaks of the desideratum of a natural history of morality in a m anner which remindsus of what he had said in the introductory aphorism of the chapter onreligion (45). But in the earlier case he led us to suspect that the truescience of religion, i.e. the empirical psychology of religion, is for allpractical purposes impossible, fo r the psychologist would have to befamiliar with the r el ig io us e xp er ie nc e of th e most profound hominesreligiosi an d at the same time to be able to look down, from above,on these experiences. Yet when stating the case for an empirical study,a description, of the v ari ou s m or al it ie s Nietzsche states at the sametime the case against the possibility of a p hilo so ph ic ethics, a scienceof m orals which teaches the only t rue morality. It would seem that hemakes higher demands on the student of religion than on th e studentof morality. This is perhaps the reason why he did no t entitle the thirdchapter "The natural history of re lig io n" : Hume had written an essayentitled "The Natural History of Religion."

The philosophers' science of morals claimed to have discovered thefoundation of morals either in nature or in reason. Apart from allother defects of that pretended science it rests on the gratuitous assumption that morality must or can be natural (according to nature)or rational. Yet every morality is based on some tyranny against natureas well as against reason. Nietzsche directs his criticism especiallyagainst the anarchists wh o oppose every subjection to arbitrary laws:everything of value , every freedom arises from a com pulsion of longduration that was exerted by arbitrary, unreasonable laws; it wa s thatcompulsion that has educated the mind to freedom. Over against theruinous p erm is siv en es s of anarchism Nietzsche asserts that preciselylong lasting obedience to unnatural an d unreasonable nomoi is "themoral imperative of nature." Physis calls for nomoi while preservingthe distinction, nay, opposition of physis an d nomos. Throughout thisaphorism (188) Nietzsche speaks of nature only in q uo ta tio n m arksexcept in one case, in the final mention of nature; nature, an d no t onlynature as the anarchists understand it, has become a problem forNietzsche and ye t he cannot do withoutt nature.

As for rationalist morali ty , it consists primarily in the identificationof the good with the useful an d p leasan t and hence in the calculationof consequences; it is utilitarian. Its classic is the plebeian Socrates.How the patrician Plato "the most beautiful growth of antiquity"(Preface), whose strength an d power wa s the greatest which hitherto aphilosopher had at his disposal could take over the Socratic teachingis a riddle; the Platonic Socrates is a monstrosity. Nietzsche intends thento overcome Plato no t only by substituting his truth fo r Plato's but alsoby surpassing him in strength o r power. Among other things "Plato isboring" (Twilight of the Gods, 'What I owe to the Ancients' nr. 2),


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while Nietzsche surely is never boring. Both Socrates and Plato areguided by, or follow, not only reason but instinct as well; the instinctis more fundamental than reason. By explicitly taking the side of instinctagainst reason Nietzsche tacitly agrees with Rousseau (cf. Natural Rightand History 262 n.). Instinct is, to say the least, akin to nature to thatwhich one may expel with a hayfork but will nevertheless always comeback (cf. aph. 264; cf. the italicized heading of aph. 81, the first ofthe four ita lic ized headings in chapter four). We are entitled to surmisethat the fundamental instinct is the will to power and not, say, theurge toward self-preservation (cf. aph. 13). What we ventured to callNietzsche's religiosity, is also an instinct (aph. 53): "The religious, thatis to say god-forming instinct" (Will to Power nr. 1038). As a consequence of the irrationality of the moral judgement, of the decisivepresence of the irrational in the moral judgement, there cannot be anyuniversally valid moral rules: different moralities fit, belong to , differenttypes of human beings.

When N ietzsche speaks again of nature , supplying the term againwith quotation marks (aph. 197), he demands that one cease to regardas morbid (as defectively natural) the predatory beings which are dangerous, intemperate, passionate, "tropical": it was precisely the defectivenature of almost all moralists not reason and not nature simply ,namely , their timidity which induced them to conceive of the dangerousbrutes and men as morbid. These moralists did not originate the moralitystemming from timidity; that morality is th e morality of the humanherd, i.e. of the large majority of men. The utmost one could say isthat the moral philosophers (and theologians) tried to protect the individual against the dangers with which he is threatened, not by othermen, but by his own passions.

Nietzsche speaks of the herd-instinct of obedience which is now almostuniversally innate and transmitted by inheritance. It goes without sayingthat originally, in pre-historic times, that instinct was acquired (cf.Genealogy of Morals II). While it was very powerful throughout history, ithas become simply predominant in contemporary Europe where it destroysat least th e good conscience of those who command and are independentand where it successfully claims to be the only true morality. Moreprecisely, in its earlier, healthy form it implied already that the solestandard of goodness is utility fo r the herd, i.e. fo r the common good;independence, superiority, inequality were esteemed to the extent towhich they were thought to be subservient to the common good andindispensable for it, and not fo r their own sake. The common good wasunderstood as the good of a particular society or tribe; it demandedtherefore hostility to the tribe's external and internal enemies and inparticular to the criminals. When the herd morality draw s its ultimateconsequences as it does in contemporary Europe, it takes the side ofthe very criminals and becomes afraid of inflicting punishment; it issatisfied with making th e criminals harmless; by abolishing the only


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Note on the Plan of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and EvU 107remaining ground of fear, the morality of timidity would reach itscompletion and thus make itself superfluous (cf. aph. 73). Timidity andthe abolition of fear are justified by the identification of goodness withindiscriminate compassion.

Prior to the victory of the democratic movement to which, as Nietzscheunderstands it, also the anarchists and socialists belong, moralities otherand higher than the herd morality were at least known. He mentionswith high praise Napoleon and, above all, Alcibiades and Caesar. Hecould not have shown his freedom from the herd morality more tellinglythan by mentioning in one breath Caesar and Alcibiades. Caesar couldbe said to have performed a great, h isto ric function fo r Rome and tohave ded icated himself to that function to have been, as it were , afunctionary of Roman history, but fo r Alcibiades Athens was no morethan the pedestal, exchangeable if need be with Sparta or Persia, fo rhis own glory or greatness. Nietzsche opposes men of such a natureto men of the opposite nature (aph. 199-200). In the rest of the chapterhe speaks no longer of nature. Instead he expresses the view that manmust be counted literally among the brutes (aph. 202). He appealsfrom the victorious herd morality of contemporary Europe to the superiormorahty of leaders (Fiihrer) . The leaders who can counteract the degradation of man which has led to the autonomy of the herd, canhowever not be merely men born to rule like Napoleon, Alcibiadesand Caesar. They must be philosophers, new philosophers, a new kindof phUosophers and commanders , the philosophers of the future. MereCaesars, however great, will not suffice, for the new philosophers mustteach man the future of man as his will, as dependent on a human willin order to put an end to the gruesome rule of nonsense and chancewhich was hitherto regarded as "history": the true history as distinguished from the mere pre-history, to use a Marxian distinctionrequires the subjugation of chance, of nature (Genealogy II. n. 2) bymen of the highest spirituality, of the greatest reason. The subjugationof nature depends then decisively on men who possess a certain nature.Philosophy, we have heard, is the most spiritual will to power (aph. 9):the philosophers of the future must possess that will to a degree whichwas not even dreamed of by the philosophy of the past; they mustpossess that will in its absolute form. The new philosophers are or act,we are tempted to say, to the highest degree according to nature. Theyare or act also to the highest degree according to reason, fo r they putan end to the rule of unreason, and the high the high independentspirituality, the will to stand alone, the great reason (aph. 201) isevidently preferable to the low. The turn from the autonomy of th eherd to the rule of the philosophers of the future is akin to the transformation of the worshipping of the nothing into the unbounded Yesto everything that was and is; that transformation would then also beevidently reasonable.


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But what becomes then of the irrationality of the moral judgement,i.e. of every moral judgement (aph. 191)? Or does it cease to be rationalmerely because one must be strong, healthy and well-born in order toagree to it or even to understand it? Yet ca n one say that Nietzsche'spraise of cruelty, as distinguished from Plato's praise of gent leness , isrational? Or is that praise of cruelty only the indispensable an d thereforereasonable corrective to the irrational glorification of compassion (cf.Genealogy, preface, nr. 5 end)? Furthermore, is no t Nietzsche's critiqueof Plato an d of Socrates a grave exaggerat ion, no t to say a caricature?It suffices to remember the difference between the Protagoras an d theGorgias in order to see that Socrates was no t a utilitarian in Nietzsche'ssense (cf. aph. 190). As Nietzsche says in the same chapter (207),Socrates did no t think that he knew wh a t good and evil is. In otherwords , "virtue is knowledge" is a riddle rather than a solution. Socrates'enigmatic saying is based o n awareness of the fact that sometimes "ascientific head is placed o n the body of an ape, a subtle exceptionalunderstanding on a vulgar soul" (aph. 26); it implies awareness of thecomplexity of the relation between Wissen and Gewissen, to use a favoritedistinction of Nietzsche which in this form is indeed ahen to Socrates.To considerations such as these one is compelled to retort that fo rNietzsche there cannot be a natural or rational morality because hedenies that there is a nature of man: the denial of any cardinal differencebetween m an and brute is a truth, if a deadly truth; hence there cannotbe natural ends of m an as man: ah values are human creations.

While Nietzsche's turn from the autonomous herd to the new philosophers is in perfect agreement with his doctrine of the will to power ,it seems to be irreconcilable with his doctrine of eternal return: howindeed can the demand for something absolutely new, this intransigentfarewell to the whole past, to ah "history" be r ec on cile d w ith the unbounded Yes to everything that wa s and is? Toward the en d of thepresent chapter Nietzsche gives a hint regarding the connection betweenthe demand for wholly ne w philosophers an d eternal return; the philosophers of the future, he says, must be able to endure the w eight of theresponsibility for the future of man. He had originally published hissuggestion regarding eternal return under the heading "Das grossteSchwergewicht" (Gay Science aph. 341).

From the desideration of the new phUosophers Nietzsche is naturallyled to passing judgement on the contemporary philosophers, a sorrylot, wh o are no t philosophers in a serious an d proper sense but professorsof philosophy, philosophic laborers or, as they came to call themselvesafter Nietzsche's death, men wh o "do phUosophy." They are in thebest case, i.e. only in rare cases, scholars or scientists, i.e. competentan d honest s pe ci al is ts wh o of ri gh t o ug ht to be subservient to philosophyor handmaidens to philosophy. The chapter devoted to this kind of m anis entitled "Wir Gelehrten"; it is the only one in whose title th e first personof the personal pronoun is used: Nietzsche wishes to emphasize the fact


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Note on th e Plan of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil 109that apart from being a precursor of the philosophers of the future, hebelongs to the scholars and not, fo r instance, to the poets or thehomines religiosi. The emancipation of the scholars or scientists fromphilosophy is according to him only a part of the democratic movement ,i.e. of the emancipation of the low from subordination to the high.The things which we have observed in the 20th cen tury regarding thesciences of man confirm Nietzsche's diagnosis.The plebeian character of the contemporary scholar or scientist is

due to the fact that he has no reverence fo r himself and this in its turnis due to his lack of self, to his self-forgetting, the necessary consequenceor cause of his objectivity; hence he is no longer "nature" or "natural";he can only be "genuine" or "authentic." Originally, one can say withsome exaggerat ion, the natural and the genuine were the same (cf. PlatoLaw s 642c 8-d 1, 777d 5-6; Rousseau, Du Contrat Social I. 9 end andII. 7, third paragraph); Nietzsche prepares decisively the replacement ofthe natural by the authentic. That he does this and why he does this willperhaps become clear from th e following consideration. He is concernedmore immediately with the classical scholars and historians than withthe natural scientists (cf. aph. 209). Historical study had come to becloser to philosophy and therefore also a greater danger to it thannatural science. This in its turn was a consequence of what one maycall the historicization of philosophy, the alleged realization that truthis a function of t ime (historical epoch) or that every philosophy belongsto a definite time and place (country). History takes the place of natureas a consequence of the fact that the natural e.g. the natural gifts whichenable a man to become a philosopher is no longer understood asgiven but as th e acquisition of former generations (aph. 213; cf. Dawnof Morning aph. 540). Historicism is the child of the peculiarly moderntendency to understand everything in terms of its genesis, of its humanproduction: nature furnishes only the almost worthless materials as inthemselves (Locke, Two Treatises of Government II sect. 43).The philosopher , as distinguished from the scholar or scientist, is the

complementary man in whom not only man but the rest of existenceis justified (cf. aph. 207); he is the peak which does not permit andstill less demand to be overcome. This characterization applies, howeverstrictly speaking only to the philosophers of th e future compared withwhom men of the rank of Kant and Hegel are only philosophic laborers,fo r the philosopher in the precise sense creates values. Nietzsche raisesthe question whether there ever were such philosophers (aph. 211 end).He seems to have answered that question in the affirmative by whathe had said near th e beginning of the sixth chapter on Heraclitus, Platoand Empedocles . Or does it remain true that we must overcome alsothe Greeks (The Gay Science aph. 125, 340)? The philosopher asphilosopher belongs to th e future and was therefore at all t imes incontradiction to his Today; the philosophers were always the bad conscience of their t ime. They belonged then to their time, not indeed,


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110 Interpretation

as Hegel thought, by being the sons of their t imes (Vorlesungen uberdie Geschichte der Philosophie, Einleitung, ed. Hoffmeister, 149) butby being their step-sons (Schopenhauer als Erzieher nr. 3). As belongingto their t ime and their place or country if only as their step-sons, theprecursors of the philosophers of the future are concerned not onlywith the excellence of man in general but with the preservation ofEurope which is threatened by Russia and which therefore must becomea united Europe (aph. 208): the philosophers of the future must becomethe invisible spiritual rulers of a united Europe without ever becomingits servants.

In the seventh chapter Nietzsche turns to "our virtues."Yet the "we"whose virtues he discusses there, are not "we scholars"but "weEuropeans of the t ime after tomorrow, we firstlings of the 20th century"(aph. 214), "we free minds" (aph. 227), i.e. the precursors of thephilosophers of the fu tu re. The discussion of the virtues and vices ofthe scholars must be supplemented by a discussion of the virtues andvices of the free minds. The virtues of the free minds had been discussedin the second chapter but their vices which are inseparable from theirvirtues, must also be laid bare. "Our" morality is characterized by afundamental ambiguity; it is inspired by Christianity and by

anti-

Christianity. One can say that "our" morality constitutes a progressbeyond the morality of the preceding generations but this change is noground for pride; such pride would be incompatible with "our" increaseddelicacy in moral matters. Nietzsche is willing to grant that a highspirituality (intellectuality) is th e ultimate product of moral qualities,that it is th e synthesis of all those states which one ascribes to men whoare "only moral," tha t it consists in the spiritualization of justice andof that kind severity which knows that it is commissioned to maintainin the world the order of rank, even among the things and not onlyamong men. Being the complementary man in whom the rest of existenceis justif ied (aph. 207), standing on the summit , nay , being the summi t ,the philosopher has a cosmic responsibility. But "our virtues" are notthe virtues of the philosopher of the future. The concession whichNietzsche makes to the men who are "only moral" does not preventhim from treating both the reigning moral teachings (altruism, theidentification of goodness with compassion, utilitarianism ) as well astheir critique by moralists as trivial, not to say with contempt; thesuperior morality which flows from that critique or which is its presupposition does not belong to "our virtues." The reigning moralitiesare unaware of the problematic character of morality as such and thisis due to their insufficient awareness of the variety of moralities (cf.aph. 186), to these moralists' lack of historical sense. The h isto ricalsense is "our" virtue, even "our great virtue." It is a novel phenomenon,not older than the 19th century. It is an ambiguous phenomenon. Itsroot is a lack of self-sufficiency of plebeian Europe, or it expresses theself-criticism of modernity , its longing fo r something different, for


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Note on the Plan of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil 111something past or alien. As a consequence, "measure is foreign to us;we are titillated by th e infinite and unmeasured"; hence we are half-barbarians. It would seem that this defect, the reverse side of our greatvirtue, points to a way of thinking and living that transcends historicism,to a peak higher than all earlier peaks. The discussion of the historicalsense (aph. 223-24) is surrounded by a discussion of compassion (aph.222 and 225): the historical sense mediates in a manner between theplebeian morality which boasts of its compassion with those who havebeen neglected by nature (aph. 219) and which is bent on the abolitionof all suffering, and the opposite morality which goes together withawareness of the great things man owes to suffering (aph. 225). Thenext aphorism (226) is the only one in the chapter with an italicizedheading ("We immoralists"): we immoralists are "men of duty"; "our"immoralism is our virtue. "Our virtue which alone is left to us" isprobity, inteUectual probity; it is, one may say, the positive or reverseside of our immorahsm. Probity includes and completes "our greatvirtue of the historical sense." Yet probity is an end rather than abeginning; it points to the past rather than to the future; it is not thevirtue characteristic of the phUosophers of the future; it must be supported,modified, fortified by "our most delicate, most disguised, most spiritualwiU to

power"which is directed toward the future. Surely our probity

must not be permitted to become the ground or object of our pride,for this would lead us back to moralism (and to theism).For a better understanding of "our virtue" it is helpful to contrast

it with the most powerful antagonist, th e morality preached up by theEnglish utilitarians which accepts indeed egoism as the basis of moralitybut contends that egoism rightly understood leads to th e espousal ofthe general welfare. That utilitarianism is disgusting, boring and naive.WhUe it recognizes the fundamental character of egoism, it does notrealize the fact that egoism is will to power and hence includes crueltywhich, as cruelty directed toward oneself, is effective in in te llectualprobity, in "the intellectual conscience."To recognize the crucial importance of cruelty is indispensable if

"the terrible basic text homo natura," "that eternal basic text" is againto be seen, if man is to be "re-translated into nature." That re-translationis altogether a task for th e future: "there never was yet a naturalhumanity" (Will to Power nr. 120). Man must be "made natural"

(vernatiirlicht) together "with the pure, newly found, newly redeemednature" (The Gay Science aph. 109). For man is th e not yet fixed, notyet established beast (aph. 62): man becomes natural by acquiring hisfinal, fixed character. For the nature of a being is its end, its completedstate, its peak (Aristotle, Politic s 1252b 32-34). "I too speak of 'returnto nature,'although it is properly not a going back but an ascent upinto the high, free, even terrible nature and naturalness..." (Twilightof the Idols, 'Skirmishes of an untimely man' nr. 48). Man reaches hispeak through and in the phUosopher of the future as the truly com-


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112 Interpretation

plementary m an in whom no t only m an but the rest of existence isjustified (aph. 207). He is the first m an who consciously creates valueson the basis of the understanding of the will to power as

the fundamentalphenomenon. His action constitutes the highest form of the m o s t s pi ri tu alwUl to power and therewith the highest form of the wiU to power. Bythis action he puts an en d to the ru le o f n on -sen se a nd chan ce (aph. 203).As the act of the h ighest form of man's will to p o we r the Vernatiir-lichung of man is at the same tim e the peak of the anthropomorphizationof the non-human (cf. Will to Power nr. 614), fo r the most spiritual willto power consists in prescribing to nature w hat or how it ought to be(aph. 9). It is in this way that Nietzsche abolishes the difference betweenthe world of appearance or fiction (the interpretations) and the trueworld (the text) . (Cf. Marx 'Na tiona lokonomie un d PhUosophie', DieFriihschriften, ed. Landshut, pp . 235, 237, 273.)

It is however th e history of m an hitherto, i.e. the rule of non-sensean d chance, which is the necessary condition for the subjugation of no nsense a nd c ha nc e. That is to say, th e Vernaturlichung of m an presupposesan d brings to its conclusion the whole historical process a completionwhich is by no means necessary but requires a new, free creative act.Still, in this way history ca n be said to be integrated into nature. Bethis as it may, m an cannot say Yes to the philosophers of the futurewithout saying Yes to the past. Yet there is a great difference betweenthis Yes and the unbounded Yes to everything that wa s an d is, i.e. theaffirmation of eternal return.

Instead of explaining why it is necessary to affirm the eternal return,Nietzsche indicates that the highest achievement, as aU earlier highachievements, is in the last analysis no t the work of reason but ofnature; in th e last analysis all thought depends on something unteachable"deep

down."on a fundamental stupidity; the nature of the individual,the individual nature, no t evident and universally valid insights, it seems,

is th e ground of all w or th wh ile understanding or knowledge (aph. 231;cf. aph. 8). There is an order of rank of the natures; at the summit ofthe hierarchy is the complementary man. His supremacy is shown byth e fact that he solves the highest, the most difficult problem. As wehave observed, for Nietzsche nature has become a problem and ye t hecannot do w it ho ut n at ur e. Nature, we may say, has become a problemowing to the fact that m an is conquering nature and there are no assignablelimits to that conquest. As a consequence, people have come to thinkof abolishing suffering and inequality. Yet suffering and inequality arethe prerequisites of human greatness (aph. 239 and 257). Hithertosuffering an d inequality have been taken fo r granted, as "given," asimposed on m an. Henceforth, they must be willed. That is to say, thegruesom e rule of non-sense an d chance, nature, the fact that almostall m en are fragments, cripples and gruesome accidents, the wholepresent and past is itself a fragment, a riddle, a gruesome accident unlessit is willed as a bridge to th e future (cf. Zarathustra, 'O f Redemption').


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Note on the Plan of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil 113While paving the way fo r the complementary man, one must at thesame t ime say unbounded Yes to the fragments and cripples. Nature,the eternity of nature, owes its being to a postulation, to an act of thewill to power on the part of the highest nature.At the end of the seventh chapter Nietzsche discusses "woman andman" (cf. aph. 237). The apparently clumsy transition to that subjecta transition in which he questions the truth of what he is about to

say by claiming that it expresses merely his "fundamental stupidity deepdown" is not merely a flattery, a gesture of courtesy to the friends ofwoman's emancipation. It indicates that he is about to continue thetheme of nature, i.e. the natural hierarchy, in full awarness of theproblem of nature.The philosophers of the future may belong to a united Europe but

Europe is still I'E urope des nations et des patries. Germany morethan any other part of non-Russian Europe has more of a prospect ofa future than, say, France or England (aph. 240, 251, 255; cf. Heineed. Elste r IV 510). One could find that Nietzsche stresses in his chapteron peoples and fatherlands more the defects of contemporary Germanythan her virtues: it is not so difficult to free one's heart from a victoriousfatherland as from a beaten one (aph. 41). The target of his critiquehere is not German phUosophy but German music, i.e. Richard Wagner.More precisely, European nobility reveals itself as the work and invention of France, whereas European commonness, the plebeianism of themodern ideas, is the work and invention of England (aph. 253).Nietzsche thus prepares the last chapter which he entitled "Was is tvomehm?" "Vornehm" differs from "noble" because it is inseparable

from extraction, origin, birth (Dawn of Morning, aph. 199; GoetheWilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre [Sdmtliche Werke, Tempel-Klassiker, II87-88] and Dichtung und Wahrheit, Vol. 2, ed. cit. 44-45). Being thelast chapter of a prelude to a philosophy of the future, it shows the(a) phUosophy of the future as reflected in the medium of conduct , ofhfe; thus reflected the philosophy of the future reveals itself as thephilosophy of the future. The virtues of the philosopher of the futurediffer from the Platonic virtues: Nietzsche replaces temperance andjustice by compassion and solitude (aph. 284). This is one illustrationamong many of what he means by characterizing nature by its "Vornehm-heit" (aph. 188). Die vornehme Natur ersetzt die gottliche Natur.


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114

THE IDEA OF DEATH IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF HEGEL

Alexandre Kojeve(Complete text o f the last two lectures of the academic year

1933-34)*

Translated by Joseph J. Carpino

In a passage of fundamental importance in the Preface to the Phenomenology (pp. 19-24),** Hegel outlines the ma jo r themes of his phUosophyan d indicates its principal purpose; he enumerates there the principles thatlie at the basis of his thought an d the principal consequences that flowfrom them. An understanding of t hi s p as sa ge wU l provide the key to anunderstanding of the Hegelian system in its totality an d to the Phenomenology in particular. In addition, this passage will show clearly th eprimordial role that the idea of death plays in the phUosophy of Hegel.

Hegel beg ins by indicating what the novel an d essential con ten t of hisphUosophy consists in, according to him.He says this (p . 19, lines 24-27):

In my opinion, which can be justified only through th e exposition of th e Systemitself, everything depends (es kommt alles darauf an) on this, that one expressesand understands (aufzufassen) th e True (Wahre) no t [only! as substance, but ratherjust as much as subject.

This phrase is directed first of all against Schelling an d his conceptionof the

"Absolute"as

"Substance."But that Schellingian conception merely

* Originally published as Appendix II, "L'idee de la mort dans la philosophie deHegel," in Kojeve's Introduction d la lecture de Hegel (Paris : Gallimard, 1947; 5thedition), pp . 527-73.

In th e following translation numbered footnotes are Kojeve's; th e translator usesasterisks. Small brackets represent Kojeve's use of brackets; text-size brackets indicatethe translator's insertions. An attempt has b een made to reproduce Kojeve's punctuation and sentence structure as closely as possible, with the result that those insertions,in French and in English, may annoy the eye even where they do aid in comprehension. In this matter Kojeve himself has been th e model , an d those wh o are familiarwith th e gray an d cluttered pages of th e original will understand. (Parentheses in thetext are always Kojeve's.)

** References to th e Phenomenology (which Kojeve's text cites as "PhG") areto th e Hoffmeister edition of the Phdnomenologie des Geistes (Hamburg : F elixMeiner, 1952). Where Kojeve's page or line numbers do no t correspond (he wa susing a 1937 edition of Hoffmeister), th e 1952 edition's equivalents are substituted.So far as content is concerned, Kojeve's French version of Hegel determines th etranslation of quoted passages.


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Death in th e Philosophy of Hegel 115reiterates the Spinozist conception, which, in its turn, represents a radicalform of tradit ional that is, Greek or pagan ontology. Hegel thereforeplaces his phUosophy in opposition to ah those that preceded it (with thesole exception of the phUosophies of Kant and Fichte and, to a certainextent, that of Descartes). FoUowing Thales and Parmenides, pre-HegelianphUosophers attached themselves exclusively to the notion of "Substance,"whUe forgetting that the notion of "Subject" is just as primordial andirreducible.

Philosophy is not only a truth or a true description; it is rather, orshould be, a description of the True. Now if Truth (Wahrheit) isthe correct and complete "revelation" (= description) of Being andof the Real th rough coherent Discourse (Logos), the True (dasWahre) is Being-revealed-through-discourse-in-its-reality. It is notenough therefore fo r the phUosopher to describe Being; he must alsodescribe revealed-Being [l'Etre-revele] and [must] give an account ofthe fact of the revelation of Being through Discourse. The phUosophermust describe the totality of what is and exists. Now in fact this totalityimplies Discourse and in particular phUosophical discourse. The phUosopher therefore is concerned not only with static-[and-]given-Being (Sein)or with the Substance, which is the Object of Discourse, but with theSubject of Discourse and of phUosophy: It is not enough for him tospeak of Being that is given to him; he must also speak of himself and[must] explain himself to himself insofar as [he is] speaking of Being andof himself.

In other words, phUosophy must explain how and why Being is realized,not only as Nature and as naturalWorld, but also as Man and as historicalWorld. PhUosophy may not limit itself to being a PhUosophy of nature;it must also be an anthropology; in addition to the ontological bases ofnatural reality it must investigate those of human reality, which alone iscapable of revealing itself through Discourse.

It is by describing the True also as Subject, or in other words, byanalyzing the specific characteristics of the human reality, tha t Hegeldiscovers the dialectical structure of Being and of the Real, and the ontological category of Negativity that is at th e basis of that dialecticity. Andit is in describing the real Dialectic that he discovers the circularity ofthe True and of Truth, and therefore of his phUosophy itself.

Hegel says it himself in a passage that follows shortiy after the text justcited (p . 20, lines 5-19):

Further, living Substance [i.e.. neither static nor givenl is Being which is in truthSubject; or, what is th e same thing, [living Substance is Being] which is in truthobjectively-real only to the extent that substance is th e [dialectical-] movement of theact-of-self-positing [l'acte-de-se-poser-soi-meme] (Sich-selbstsetzens) or mediation(Vermittlung) with itself of th e act-of-becoming-other-to-itself (Sichanderswerdens).As Subject. Substance is pure Negativity, simple-or-undivided (einfache), and by thatvery token the dichotomy [dedoublementl (Entzweiung) of th e simple-or-individual, or


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116 Interpretationth e opposing (entgegensetzende) duplication [doublement] (Verdopplung), which isequal ly (wieder) the negation of that indifferent (gleichgiiltigen) distinction-or-dif-ferentiation (Verschiedenheit) and of its opposite (Gegensatzes). It is only this equality which re-constitutes itself, or th e reflection within itself in other-ness (Anderssein),which is the True, land] no t th e primordial (urspriingliche) unifying-unity as such,that is, [the unity-unifying! immediate (unmittelbar) as such. The True is th e becoming of itself, th e circle w hi ch presupposes its final-term (Ende) as its purpose an dwhich has it as [its] beginning, an d which is objectively-real only through th e real-izative-development (Ausfiihrung) and by its final-term.

This very c on de ns ed p as sa ge implies all th e fundamental notions ofHegel's "dialectic" and sums up all there is in his philosophy that isessential and truly new.

If Substance conceived as natural static[-and]-given-Being (Sein) hasIdentity (with itself) as its ontological ground, the Subject of the Discourserevealing that Being an d itself, that is, Man, has Negativity as its ultimatebasis. Now the Man wh o is dominated in his very being by Negativity isno t static[-and]-given-Being, but Action or the Act-of-positing-itself or ofcreating itself. And it is objectively-real only as a "dialectical movement,"whose result is "mediated" ["mediatise"] by negation of the "given-Being"that serves it as a point of departure. It is Negativity, associated in Beingwith the Identity of Being, that splits that Being in to Object and Subject, increating [a] Man opposed to Nature. But it is also this same Negativity,realize d as human existence in the m idst of Nature, that reunites anewthe Subject an d Object in an d through t rue consciousness, in whichDiscourse "coincides" with the Being that it reveals. The True, orrevea led-Being, is no t therefore, as Parmenides an d his imitators thoughtit, the primary an d primordial, namely, "immediate" or given and n atu ra lidentity of being an d thought, but [rather, the True is] the result of a longactive process that begins by opposing Man to the Nature of which hespeaks a nd w hic h he "negates" by his action.

The r e -e s ta b li sh m e nt o f Unity, or the final coincidence of "Substance"an d "Subject" is effected in the adequate description of the totality ofBeing an d of the Real by "absolute" philosophy (to the elaboration ofwhich is reduced all the human existence of its author the Wise Man[le Sage] wh o ceases therefore to oppose himself actively, as "Subject,"to Nature taken as "Substance"). But the totality of the Real implies humanreality, w hi ch e xists only as a creative movement. Perfect and definitiveadequation of Being (= Substance) and Discourse (= Subject) cannottherefore be effected untU the end of times, when the creative movementof Man wUl have been completed. And that completion is revealed bythe fact that Man advances no further an d is content to travel again (inhis phUosophical thought) the road already covered (by his active existence). Thus "absolute" phUosophy, or the True in the strong sense of theterm, can appear only in the form of a circular description of the realDialectic taken in its totality. That phUosophy on the one hand describesthe road that leads from the birth of Discourse ( = Man) in th e heart of


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Death in the Philosophy of Hegel 117Being ( = Nature) up to the advent of the Man who wU l reveal the totalityof Being th rough his Discourse, and on the other hand it [the "absolute"philosophy] is itself this Discourse that reveals the Totality. But thatTotality implies the Discourse that reveals it, as weU as the process ofbecoming of this Discourse. Thus, in arriving at the en d of the philosophicaldescription, we are th rown back toward its beginning, which is th edescription of its becoming. The "final-term" of this described becomingis the advent of absolute phUosophy. But that advent is also th e goal wepursued from the start, because philosophy is no t absolute, it does no tdescribe the totality, except to the extent that it itself understands itselfas describing its ow n becoming. But this description ca n be done only fromth e point o f v ie w o f a bs ol ut e phUosophy, which is therefore the "beginning"or the origin of ah adequate description. This is to say that just likethe Totality it describes, absolute phUosophy cannot be objectively realizedany more than the other [the Totality] except in an d th ro ug h its "development," that is, as the su m total of its circular discourse forming anindivisible whole, which reproduces the closed dialectic of reahty. It is thiscircularity of phUosophical discourse that guarantees its unsurpassable an dunmodifiable totality, and therefore its absolute truth.

Hegel says it himself (p. 21, lines 3-8), in taking up again (after havingw ritten a n explanatory note) the idea expressed at th e end of th e passagecited:

The T ru e is the Whole [le Tout]. Now th e Whole is nothing but th e essential-reality(Wesen) which completes-or-perfects-itself through its development. It must be saidof th e Absolute that it is essentially [a] result, that it is only at the en d what it isin truth; an d it is precisely in this that its nature consists , to be [an] objectively-real-entity (Wirkliches), subject or act-of-becoming-itself (Sichselbstwerden).

The True, or Being-revealed-through-discourse, is a Totality, that is, thesum-total of a creative or dialectical movement , which produces Discoursein the midst of Being. The Absolute or the totality of the real is no t merelySubstance, but rather Subject revealing the real perfectly; however, it issuch only at the end of its dialectical (= historical) becoming, w h ic hconcludes with its ow n revelation. And this revealing becoming [ce devenirrevelateur] signifies that the Totality implies human reality, which is no t agiven eternally identical to itself, but a temporally progessive ac t of self-creation [auto-creation].

This self-creation of Man is effected through the negation of th e given(natural an d human). The human reality, or th e Ego [le Moi], is thereforeno t a natural or "immediate" reality, but a dialectical or "mediated"reahty. To conceive [of] the Absolute as Subject (and that is what is essential, according to Hegel), is th erefo re to conceive [of] it as implyingNegativity an d as realizing itself no t only as Nature but rather more as[the] Ego or as Man, that is, as creative or historical becoming.

And this is what Hegel says (after a new explanatory note) in the sentence that follows after the passage cited (p . 21, lines 27-31):


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118 InterpretationMediation is nothing other than [an] equality-with-itself (Sichselbstgleichheit) which

movesl-dialectically); or (even further) it is reflection in itself, the constitutive-element (Moment) of th e Ego existing-for-itself, pure Negativity, or [when it is!reduced to its pure abstraction, -simple-or-undivided becoming.

And Hegel goes on (after a new note) to say this (p . 22, lines 10-11):What has just been said can also be expressed by saying that Reason (Vernunft) is a

teleological Action (zweckmdssiges Tun).

To say that th e Absolute is not only Substance, but also Subject, is tosay that the Totality implies Negativity in addition to Identity. It is alsoto say that Being realizes itself, not only as Nature, but also as Man. Andit is to say, finaUy, that Man who does not differ essentially from Natureexcept to the extent that he is Reason (Logos) or coherent Discourse endowed with a meaning that reveals Being is himself not given-Being, butcreate-ive Action (= negate-ive of the given). Man is dialectical orhistorical (= free) movement revealing Being through Discourse onlybecause he hves in function of the future, which presents itself to him inthe form of a project or as a "goal" (Zweck) to be realized th rough actionnegate-ive of the given, and because he is not himself real as Man except tothe extent that he creates himself through such action as a work (Werk).

It is from [this] introduction into ontology of the fundamental categoryof Negativity or of Action (Tat or Tun, which is the "true being of Man")that flow ah the characteristic traits of Hegelian ( = "dialectical") phUosophy.

From this results, among other things, a consequence we already knowof and that Hegel formulates as foUows (p . 23, hnes 21-24):

Among th e diverse consequences that flow from what has been said, we might takenote of that one [which consists in saying! that knowledge is not objectively-real andcannot be exhibited (dargestellt) except as Science or as System.

"Science" or "System" signifies in Hegel the adequate, and thereforecircular, description of the completed or closed totality of the real dialect ical movement. And in fact, as soon as we introduce Negativity or create-ive Action into given-Being, we cannot make any pretense to absolute, ortotal and definitive, truth except by admitting that the creative dialecticalprocess is completed. Now a description of the completed dialectical process, that is, of the process that ends up in a term whose negation is nolonger the creation of a new term [ such a description] can indeed beonly circular.1

1 According to Hegel no truth is possible before th e completion of th e dialectical(= historical) process. But that consequence is necessary only if we admit thedialecticity of the totality of Being. By admit t ing, on th e contrary, that Negativityoccurs only in human reality and that given Being is ruled only by Identity, we canmaintain the traditional notion of truth at least in relation to Nature and to th epast of Man.


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Death in the Philosophy of Hegel 119And finaUy, in concluding the passage (pp. 19-24) in which he exposes

briefly the essential traits of his System as a whole, Hegel says that we cansum up ah that he asserts concerning the dialecticity of Being by sayingthat the Absolute is Spirit (Geist).

Hegel expresses himself as follows (p . 24, hnes 7-16 and 27-30):[The fact! that th e True is objectively-real only as System, or that Substance is

essentially Subject, is expressed in th e representation (Vorstellung) which speaks of(ausspricht) th e Absolute as [being] Spirit, a most sublime concept, and [one]that belongs peculiarly to modern t imes and to its [Christian] religion. Only spiritual-being (das Geistige) is objectively-real-entity (das Wirkliche): it is [on th e one hand]essential-reality or entity-existing-in-itself (Ansichseiende); [it is on th e other hand)th e entity-which-re/a/ei-itself [to itself and to others) (das sich Verhaltende) and thespecifically-determined-entity (das Bestimmte), other-being (Anderssein) and being-for-itself (Fiirsichsein); and lit [das Geistige] is finally] the entity-which-remains initself (in sich selbst Bleibende) in this specific-determination or in its being-outside-itself (Aussersichsein); that is to sa y that it [das Geistige] is in and for itself (a nund fiir sich) .... Spirit which knows-or-is-aware-of itself [as being! thus developed(entwickelt) as Spirit, is Science. It [Science] is th e objective-reality of Spirit and therealm that it constructs [for] itself in its own element.

To say that the Absolute is Spirit is to affirm the dialectical structureof Being and of the Real taken as a whole or as an integral totality. ForSpirit is, at the same time, [aU of the foUowing:] Being-in-itself (Identity,Thesis, given-Being, Nature), Being-for-itself (Negativity, Antithesis,Action, Man), and Being-in-and-for-itself (Totality, Synthesis, Work, History = "movement"). Being dialectical totality, spiritual-entity is objectively-real-entity, and it alone is this. For concrete reality imphes everything thatis, in whatever manner: [and that means] the natural World as much asthe human or historical World and the Universe of discourse. Subject andObject, Thought and Being, Nature and Man are but abstractions, whenwe take them in isolation, just as isolated discourses and particular thingish[chosistes] entities are abstractions. Only the sum total of Reality, revealedthrough the sum total of Discourse, [only such a sum-total] is anobject ive-Reali ty; and this sum-total in a double sense that is, th e naturalWorld implying the Man who speaks of it is precisely what Hegel calls"Spirit."

To study the Real phUosophicahy by conceiving [of] it as Spirit is not,therefore, to limit oneself, as did the Greeks and the phUosophical tradition,to the phenomenologica l , metaphysical , and ontological description ofgiven-Being and of the natural [and] "eternal" Cosmos, but [it is rather]to extend this triple description to the create-ive Action which is Man, andto his historical World. And it is thus alone that th e described Real appearsas dialectical or "trinitary," namely , as "spiritual."

Now the Man that Hegel has in mind is not the one that the Greeksthought they had perceived and that they bequeathed to philosophicalposterity. This pretended Man of the ancient [o r Greek] tradition is in facta purely natural ( = identical) being, who has neither freedom (= Nega-


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120 Interpretation

tivity), nor history, nor individuality properly speaking. Just like the animal,he can only "represent," in and through his real and active existence, aneternal "idea" or "essence," given once and for ah and remaining identicalto itself. Just like the life of an animal, his empirical-existence is absolutelydetermined by the natural place (topos) that he occupies fo r aU t ime in themidst of a given [and] unchanging Cosmos (his occasional "swervings"being but the effect of "chance"). And if he differs essentially from theanimal, it is solely by [virtue of] his thought or his coherent discourse(Logos), whose appearance in the Cosmos, moreover , could never beexplained. But this Discourse negates nothing and creates nothing: It iscontent to reveal the given real (error remaining in fact inexplicable).Discourse that is, Man is the re fo re incorporated into given-Being. Andwhat there is, in the final analysis, is this one and unique Being, whichthinks itself eternally in its given totality. Or better, as Spinoza wU l saylater, what there is in the final analysis is [a] God who is Substance.

The M an that Hegel analyzes is on the contrary [that] Man who appearsin the Judeo-Christian prephUosophical tradition, the only [one that is]truly anthropological. That tradition has maintained itself in the course of"modern times" in the form of "faith" or "theology," [forms] incompatiblewith ancient and traditional science or phUosophy. And it is that [Judeo-Christian] tradition that transmitted to Hegel the notion of the f ree historical Individual (o r of the "Person"), [a notion] that this latter [Hegel] wasthe first to analyze phi losophical ly, by trying to reconcile it with thefundamental notions of the pagan phUosophy of Nature.2 According tothat Judeo-Christian tradition, Man differs essentially from Nature, andhe differs from it, not in his thought alone, but by his very activity. Natureis a "sin" in Man and fo r Man: He can and must oppose himself to it andnegate it in himself. Even while living in Nature, he does not submit to itslaws (miracles!): To the extent that he is opposed to it and negates it, he is

2 As a matter of fact, Hegel was preceded along this w ay by Descartes (firstattempts at a Christian philosophy), Kant, and Fichte (Christian philosophers parexcellence). But these three attempts at philosophical anthropology failed becausetheir authors did not dare abandon th e traditional idea (and in th e last analysis"pagan" or "'naturalist" [idea]: Identity!) of th e immortality of Man or of th e "soul."

W ith his notions of "monad" and of "sufficient reason,"Leibniz is a precursorof the Hegelian notion of Spirit, that is, of a totality [which is] at th e same t ime"subjective" and "objective." But Leibniz did not see th e essential difference thatobtains between Nature and History, and th ere is in Leibniz no anthropology properly so-called (i.e., explicit [anthropology]). As for Hegel himself, he did not succeedin reconciling his ("dialectical") anthropology with th e traditional ("identical")philosophy of Na tu re . He refused, rightly, to apply to Man the "naturistic" categoriesof the Greeks, and he rejected their pseudo-anthropology. But, wrongly, he alsoabandoned their philosophy of nature, in trying to apply to th e sum-total of th e real(as much human as natural) his own dialectical categories, which are in fact specifically and exclusively anthropological.


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Death in the Philosophy of Hegel 121independent in the face of it; he is autonomous or free. And by living"as a stranger" in the natural World, by being opposed to it and to itslaws, he creates there a new World that is his own; a historical World, inwhich man can be "converted" and can become a being radically otherthan what he is as a given natural being (Anderssein). In this historicalWorld, and through this free "conversion," man is not any sort ofrepresentative of an eternal or immutably given "species": He is created,he creates himself, as an individual unique of its kind.

When Hegel says that ah of his philosophy is nothing else but an attemptto conceive Substance as Subject, he means therefore that that philosophyhas for its principal goal to render an account of the existence of Man inthe natural World, Man being conceived in the same fashion as the

Judeo-Christian anthropological tradition conceives [of] him. And that is preciselywhy, in the tex t cited, Hegel makes use of the word "Spirit" in order tosum up the whole of his phUosophy. For he is concerned to underscore theJudeo-Christian origin of the anthropological notion of "Geist" and tooppose that "modern" notion to the whole ancient or pagan tradition,which is a tradition of the [one] sole "Substance" or of natural given-Being (Sein).

But if, according to the cited text, Hegel detaches himself from the paganphUosophical tradition and accepts the Judeo-Christian anthropologicaltradition, he underlines in this same text [the fact] that he also separateshimself from this latter tradition on a point of extreme phUosophicalimportance.

The fact is that the Judeo-Christian anthropological tradition is anessentially religious tradition, namely, theist (and "theological"). To besure, the Judeo-Christians discovered the "spirituality" (= dialecticity) ofMan, which is to say his freedom, his historicity, and his individuality.But fo r them "spirituality" is realized and manifests itself fully only in thebeyond, and Spirit, properly so-called, truly "objectively-real" Spirit, isGod: [i.e.,] an infinite and eternal being. Man himself, made in the imageof God, is truly "spiritual" only to the extent that he is eternal, and heis eternal or "immortal" by the every fact that he is Spirit. M an reallytranscends the natural World in this sense, that he lives also in a transcendent World (and not only in a "transcendental" historical World thatis immanent to Nature). This [transcendent] World is beyond Nature,which among other things imphes Man taken in his empirical-existence(Dasein); but this World is said to be more

"objective"and still more"real" than the natural World here below. Man penetrates into it after his

death, never more to leave it; and he also participates in it while living,by having been in it already before his birth. [Kojeve is doubtless referringhere to intra-uterine baptism.] To say that Man has an "immortalsoul"which is precisely the Spirit in him) is to admit the realityof that transcendent World; and to admit that reality is to affirmthe immortality or the infinitude of Man. Now this [transcendent] Worlddoes not depend on Man: It is given to him once and fo r ah, being "prior"


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and essentially immutable in itself. It is on the contrary temporal Man wh odepends absolutely on this transcendent World: The historical World thatMan creates in the here-below is in fact but a reflection in spatio-temporalNature of the eternal World of the beyond. This eternal World is thereforeno t properly speaking human: It is beyond the free historical individual,just as he is beyond animals and things. This infinite an d eternal Worldis a divine World, and its one and unique totality, which is Spirit, is no tMan but God. Man gains access to God only after his death, and it is thenalone that he realizes an d fully manifests his "spirituality."

Now according to Hegel "spiritual" or "dialectical" being is necessarilytemporal an d finite. The Christian notion of an infinite and eternal Spiritis contradictory in itself: Infinite being is necessarUy "natural" given-[and-] static-Being; an d created or create-ive, "dynamic," namely, historicor "spiritual" being, is necessarily limited in time, which is to say [that itis] essentially mortal. And the Judeo-Christian tradition did indeed finaUytake account of the matter. By admitting the immortality of the soul, itadmitted the reality of the divine World that is the "natural place"of Manafter his death (that death nullifying him as the integrating e lem en t o f thenatural an d human World here below). And by the force of the logic ofthings, Christian thought had to subordinate immortal Man to his eternalinfinite transcendent God. It had to give up human freedom and thereforethe true historicity an d individuality of Man. At one stroke, the threefundamental anthropological (= dialectical) categories were applied literally only to the t rue Spirit, which is God: For Christian theologicalthought, Jesus Christ is the only free his torical Individual properlyspeaking, the freedom, historicity, and individuality of the ordinary m anbeing no more than s im pl e e ff ec ts of divine "grace," that is, [effects] of atrans-human action of the t rans-mundane God. But even in applying thesecategories to the eternal God-Man on e runs up against insurmountabledifficulties. The Christ is truly autonomous only to the extent that he isGod. But being God he can be nothing other than the one and uniqueBeing wh o thinks himself while remaining eternally identical to himself.Instead of a free his torical Individual we have therefore that Substance-Absolute that Parmenides already had in view, that Spinoza rediscovered,an d that ScheUing revived at the very moment at which Hegel was elaborating his "dialectical" or anthropological phUosophy.

Hegel wanted, from the start, to apply to Man the Judeo-Christian notionof free historical Individuahty, unknown in pagan antiquity. But in [thecourse of] phUosophically analyzing that "dialectical" notion, he sawit implied finitude or temp oral ity . He understood that Man could no t bea free historical individual except on condition of being mortal in theproper an d strong sense of the term, that is, finite in time an d consciousof his finitude. And having understood that, Hegel denied survival: TheMan that he has in mind is real only to the extent that he lives an d acts inthe midst of Nature; outside the natural World he is a pure nothingness.


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Death in the Philosophy of Hegel 123But to deny survival is in fact to deny God himself. For to say that

Man, wh o t ranscends Nature effectively to the extent tha t he negates it(by Action), annihUates himself nonetheless as soon as he situates himselfoutside it by dying in it as an animal to say that is to say that there isnothing beyond the natural World. The would-be "transcendent" or"divine" non-natural World is in reality only the "transcendental" (o rspeaking) World of historical human existence, [a world] which does not gobeyond the temporal and spatial framework of the natural World. And"God" is objectively real only at the interior of this natural World, wherehe exists solely in the form of the theological discourse of Man.

Thus, Hegel does no t accept the Judeo-Christian anthropologicaltradition except in a radically secularized or atheistic form. The Spirit-Absolute or the Subject-Substance, of which Hegel speaks, is no t God.The Hegelian Spirit is the spatio-temporal totality of the natural Worldand implies human Discourse revealing this World an d itself. Or better,an d what is the same thing, Spirit is Man-in-the-World: the mortal Manwh o lives in a World without God and who speaks of ah that exists in itand of all that he creates in it, including himself.

And this is what Hegel says implicitly at the en d of the passage cited.He says there that "Spirit" is "Science," tha t "Science" is the only "objective-reality" of Spirit. Now this "Science" is nothing else but Hegelian ph ilosophy, which appeared in the midst of the natural World at the en d of thehistorical becoming of Man. Spirit is therefore nothing other than thespatio-temporal totality of the natural World, to the extent that it is entirely revealed through the discourse of the perfect (= satisfied) man or ofthe Wise Man [le Sage], this discourse being itself a simple integration ofthe true meaning of ah the discourses spoken by m en in th e course ofHistory. Or better stUl: The Spirit that the Judeo-Christians called "God"

is in reahty Hegelian phUosophy, to the extent that the latter is absolutelytrue, that is, to the extent that it reveals correctly and completely all thathas been, is, and will be.

Now according to Hegel, the discursive revelation of Being is possibleonly if the revealing or speaking being is essentially finite or mortal.Hegel's Spirit is no t therefore truly a "divine" Spirit (because there are nomortal gods): It is human in the sense that it is a discourse that is immanentto the natural World and that has for its "support" a natural being hmitedin its existence by t ime an d space.

When Hegel says that the essential content of his whole philosophy canbe s u m m e d up by saying that it interprets Substance as Subject or [that it]conceives the Absolute as Spirit, that signifies that this philosophy m u s tabove all phUosophically render an account of itself as a Discourse revealing in a complete and a deq ua te m a nn er the totality of Being an d of theReal. It achieves this by explaining how an d why Man comes to speak in acoherent fashion of himself and of the World in which he lives and that hecreates. And that explanation is a phenomenological , metaphysical, and


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Death in th e Philosophy of Hegel 125call that unreality (Unwirklichkeit) is what-there-is-that-is-most=terrible (Furcht-barste), and to sustain [maintenir] death is what requires the greatest force. Powerless beauty hates the understanding, because it [the understanding] demands (zumu-tet) this of it; which it [beauty] is not capable of. Now th e life of the Spirit is not[that] life which shudders (scheut) before death and [merely] protects itself (reinbewahrt) from wasting-away (Verwiistung), but [it is] that [life] which supports deathand conserves (erhalt) itself in it. Spirit achieves its truth only in finding itse lf inabsolute rending (Zerrissenheit). It [Spirit] is not this [prodigious] power by being thePositive which turns away (wegsieht) from th e Negative, as when we say of something: this is nothing or [this is! false, and having [thus] gotten rid of it (damit fertig),we pass on therefrom to something else; no, Spirit is that power only to th e extentthat it contemplates th e Negative full in th e face (ins Angesicht schaut) [and) abides

(verweilt) with it . This abiding-with [sejour-prolonge] (Verweilen) is th emagical-

force (Zauberkraft) which t ransposes (umkehrt) th e Negative into given-Being (sein).This [power of Spirit, or this magical-force,! is th e same thing as what we called

above [p. 19, line 27! th e Subject, which, by giving in its [own! element an empirical-existence to specific-determination, dialectically-suppresses (aufhebt) abstract Imme-diateness (Unmittelbarkeit), that is, [an Immediateness] only existing-as-a-given-beingin general (nur iiberhaupt seiende), and [which! is precisely thereby [par cela meme]true-or-genuine [vraie-ou-veritable] (wahrhafte) Substance, [that is,! given-Being orImmediateness which does not have Mediation (Vermittlung) outside it, but whichis itself that Mediation.

In order to understand the somewhat enigmatic beginning of this passage,[which is] otherwise perfectly clear and univocal, we must have the following before our minds.

PhUosophy is the search for Wisdom, and Wisdom is the fullness of self-consciousness. By aspiring to and in laying claim to Wisdom, Hegel intendstherefore, in the last analysis, to take account of himself and to give anaccounting of his self [se rendre compte et rendre compte de soi]: [a naccount, that is,] of what he is and of what he does. Now his activity, theone to which his truly human existence reduces itself, is that of a phUosopher or of a Wise Man [un Sage], who reveals by his discourse the beingthat he himself is and [also the being] that he is not. In phUosophizing,Hegel must therefore above ah give an account of his own philosophicaldiscourse. Now in [the course of] observing this discourse, Hegel notes thatwe have here not a question of some passive given, but [rather that it is amatter] of the result of an "activity" which can be caUed a "labor" ["travail"] and which requires a great "force," provided by what he caUs herethe "Understanding." He declares therefore that the Understanding is a"power," and he says that it is truly "worthy of awe."

It is apparent that "Understanding" signifies here what is truly andspecificaUy human in Man, because it is the faculty of discourse thatdistinguishes him from animals and from things. It is also what is essentialin every phUosopher, whoever he may be, and therefore in Hegel himself.The whole question is to know what it is . Hegel tehs us that the Understanding (= Man) is an "absolute power," which manifests itself in and


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126 Interpretation

through "the activity of separation."or even better, as [the] "act-of-separating" (Scheiden). But why

interpretation, vol_3-2-3

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