Page 3 of 26
Between the negation of the will and its affirmation Nietzsche granted to Deussen while still living in Basel, that the ennoblement of the will should be man's aim. The affirmation of the will is the pagan ideal[Pg 16] with the exception of Platonism. The negation of the will is the Christian ideal, and according to Nietzsche the ennoblement of the will is realized in his ideal of the overman. Deussen makes the comment that Nietzsche's notion of the overman is in truth the ideal of all mankind, whether this highest type of manhood be called Christ or overman; and we grant that such an ideal is traceable everywhere. It is called "Messiah" among the Jews; "hero" among the Greeks, "Christ" among the Christians, and chin, the superior man, or to use Nietzsche's language, "the overman," among the Chinese; but the characteristics with which Nietzsche endows his overman are unfortunately mere brutal strength and an unscrupulous will to play the tyrant. Here Professor Deussen halts. It appears that he knew the peaceful character of his friend too well to take his ideal of the overman seriously.
We shall discuss Nietzsche's ideal of the overman more fully further down in a discussion of his most original thoughts, the typically Nietzschean ideas.
According to Nietzsche, the history of philosophy from Plato to his own time is a progress of the idea that objective truth (a conception of "the true world") is not only not attainable, but does not exist at all. He expresses this idea in his Twilight of the Idols (English edition, pp. 122-123) under the caption, "How the 'True World' Finally Became a Fable," which describes the successive stages as follows:
"1. The true world attainable by the wise, the pious, and the virtuous man,—he lives in it, he embodies it.
"(Oldest form of the idea, relatively rational, simple, and convincing. Transcription of the proposition, 'I, Plato, am the truth,')
"2. The true world unattainable at present, but promised to the wise, the pious, and the virtuous man (to the sinner who repents).
"(Progress of the idea: it becomes more refined, more insidious, more incomprehensible,—it becomes feminine, it becomes Christian.)
"3. The true world unattainable, undemonstrable, and unable to be promised; but even as conceived, a comfort, an obligation, and an imperative.
"(The old sun still, but shining only through mist and scepticism; the idea becomes sublime, pale, northerly, Koenigsbergian.)
"4. The true world—unattainable? At any rate unattained. And being unattained also unknown. Consequently also neither comforting, saving nor obligatory: what obligation could anything unknown lay upon us?
"(Gray morning. First dawning of reason. Cock-crowing of Positivism.)
"5. The 'true world'—an idea neither good for anything, nor even obligatory any longer,—an idea become useless and superfluous; consequently a refuted idea; let us do away with it!
"(Full day; breakfast; return of bon sens and cheerfulness; Plato blushing for shame; infernal noise of all free intellects,)
"6. We have done away with the true world: what world is left? perhaps the seeming?... But no! in doing away with the true, we have also done away with the seeming world!
"(Noon; the moment of the shortest shadow; end of the longest error; climax of mankind; Incipit Zarathustra!)"
The reader will ask, "What next?" Probably afternoon and evening, and then night. In the night presumably "the old sun," i. e., the idea of Plato's true world, which (according to Nietzsche) grew pale in the morning, will shine again.
Nietzsche's main desire was to live the real life and make his home not in an imaginary Utopia but in this actual world of ours. He reproached the philosophers as well as the religious leaders and ethical teachers for trying to make mankind believe that the teal world is purely phenomenal, for replacing it by the world of[Pg 19] thought which they called "the true world" or the world of truth. To Nietzsche the typical philosopher is Plato. He and all his followers are accused of hypocrisy for making people believe that "the true world" of their own fiction is real and that man's ambition should be to attain to this "true world" (the world of philosophy, of science, of art, of ethical ideals) built above the real world. Nietzsche means to shatter all the idols of the past, and he has come to the conclusion that even the scientists were guilty of the same fault as the philosophers. They erected a world of thought, of subjective conception from the materials of the real world, and so he denounces even their attempts at constructing a "true world" as either a self-mystification or a lie. It is as imaginary as the world of the priest. In order to lead a life worthy of the "overman," we should assert ourselves and feel no longer hampered by rules of conduct or canons of logic or by any consideration for truth.
With all his hatred of religion, Nietzsche was nevertheless an intensely religious character, and knowing that he could not clearly see a connection between his so-called "real world" and his actual surroundings, he developed all the symptoms of religious fanaticism which characterizes religious leaders of all ages. He indulged in a mystic ecstacy, preaching it as the essential feature of his philosophy, and his Dionysiac enthusiasm is not the least of the intoxicants which are contained in his thought and bring so many poetical[Pg 20] and talented but immature minds under his control.
It is obvious that "the real world" of Nietzsche is more unreal than "the true world" of philosophy and of religion which he denounces as fictitious, but he was too naive and philosophically crude to see this. Nietzsche's "real world" is a fabric of his own personal imagination, while the true world of science is at least a thought-construction of the world which pictures facts with objective exactness; it is controlled by experience and can be utilized in practical life; it is subject to criticism and its propositions are being constantly tested either to be refuted or verified. Nietzsche's "real world" is the hope (and perhaps not even a desirable hope) of a feverish brain whose action is influenced by a decadent body.
Nietzsche's so-called "real world" is one ideal among many others. It is as much subjective as the ideals of other mortals,—of men who seek happiness in wealth, or in pleasures, or in fame, or in scholarship, or in a religious life—all of them imagine that the world of their thoughts is real and the goal which they endeavor to reach is the only thing that possesses genuine worth. In Nietzsche's opinion all are dreamers catching at shadows, but the shadow of his own fancy appeared to him as real.
According to Nietzsche the universe is not a cosmos but a chaos. He says (La Gaya Scienza, German edition, p. 148):
"The astral order in which we live is an exception. This order and the relative stability which is thereby caused, made the exception' of exceptions possible,—the formation of organisms. The character-total of the world is into all eternity chaos, not in the sense of a missing necessity, but of missing order, articulation, form, beauty, wisdom, and as all our sthetic humanities may be called."
