Nietzsche and Spengler

Friedrich Nietzsche and Oswald Spengler loom large over the 20th Century horizon of European thought. Nietzsche was influential in the thinking of Spengler, whilst either one or both had a major impact on the thinking of most of the writers discussed in this section.

Both were primarily concerned with questions of decay and the possibilities of regeneration. Both held that Western Civilisation had entered a cycle of decadence that was particularly evident in the cultural, moral and spiritual spheres. They were therefore of great relevance to many of the new generation of artists, writers and poets who emerged from the First World War, a war which made transparent the crisis of Western Civilisation which had really entered its cycle of decay several centuries previously. The English and French Revolutions, in the name of 'The People', marked the overthrow of the old order by the new bourgeoisie, the victory of money over blood-family lineage.

Democracy for many of the cultural elite was not a political creed to be welcomed but rather a symptom, like bolshevism, of the rise of the masses and behind them of the rule of money: of quantity over quality, with the arts being the first to be degraded.

Nietzsche and Spengler stand as the great thinkers that sought to ennoble man, in a tide of intellectualism that degraded him and his culture. Against them, stood Marx; and the liberal economic theorists, who make of everything a matter of economics; Freud who reduces man and culture to a mass of sexual complexes; and Darwin, who reduces man to being just another animal?

To Nietzsche the meaning of man was that of 'overturning' his present state, to Will higher forms of existence, which are ultimately expressed in the arts. This was seen as being embodied in the great men of history. These great men, creators via their own individual will, are separated from the mass of humanity by a great gulf. Man is the tightrope between animal and 'Overman': " rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal". Among the first sentences uttered by Nietzsche's prophet Zarathustra are these words that define the purpose of man:

"I teach you the Overman. Man is something that should overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All creatures have hitherto created something beyond themselves and do you want to be the ebb of this great tide and return to the animals rather than overcome man? The Overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Overman shall be the meaning of the earth".

Despite the Darwinian interpretations of Nietzsche, it was a rejection of Darwinism that prompted Nietzsche to herald the Overman as an act of Will rather than as evolution through random genetic mutation. Human existence beyond any other organism is only justified by culture, which is the perfection of nature through human Will.

"This basic idea of culture in so far as it assigns only one task to every single one of us: to promote inside and outside of ourselves the generation of the philosopher, the artist, and the saint, and thus to work at the perfection of nature." (Untimely Meditations)

In the same essay, Nietzsche states that the goal of humanity lies in its "highest specimens". Nature wants to make the life of man "significant and meaningful by generating the philosopher and artist...". Thereby not only is man redeemed but also nature herself is redeemed.

With the central focus of history, of mankind, of nature herself being epitomised by the artist it is no wonder that Nietzsche's philosophy caught the imagination of so many of the creative elite. Prefiguring Spengler with a rejection of history as lineal and progressive, Nietzsche states that what comes later in a civilisation is not necessarily, what is best. What is best is reflected in the highest specimens, the artists and philosophers, where the gulf that separates these higher men from the average citizen is greater than that which separates the average man from the chimpanzee.

Hence, Ezra Pound's Nietzschean attitudes towards the artist and the mass were reflected in many other contemporaries. Some such as Wyndham Lewis and Evola were even suspicious of Fascism as being 'too democratic', too much of a mass movement. Pound states:

"The artist has no longer any belief or suspicion that the mass, the half-educated simpering general... can in any way share his delights...The aristocracy of the arts is ready again for its service. Modern civilisation has bred a race with brains like those of rabbits, and... we artists who have been so long despised are about to take over controls".

D H Lawrence went so far as to see himself as a coming dictator who would relieve the masses of the 'burden of democracy', whilst D'Annunzio did actually become a ruler of his own State (Fiume) for a time, where the arts were the focus.

Nietzsche demanded new law tablets upon which would be inscribed the word 'noble' (Zarathustra). The creative elite make their own laws through their acts of creation, and are not constrained by the democratic mob with their laws, morals and values that are designed for the control of the average. Hence, Nietzsche's prophet Zarathustra counsels higher man to stay aloof from the masses, and from the market place, as the masses will drag the higher man down to the dead level of 'equality' with such doctrines as democracy.

Overman would be willed into creation by Higher Men striving to 'self-over come', to reach beyond themselves through hardship upon oneself. The Nietzschean brute is one of many distortions of Nietzsche, who contrarily states that the strong are compassionate towards the lesser.

Whilst Nietzsche places culture as the criterion for defining the value of both societies and individuals, Oswald Spengler develops morphology of culture as the basis of historical analysis. Both philosophers elevate the cultural beyond the contemporary fads of economic, sexual and biological determinism, as the basis of their world-views. Spengler in the preface to The Decline of The West states that the two figures to whom he owes most are Goethe for 'method' and Nietzsche for the questioning faculty.

Hence, Spengler was also of great interest to the new genera¬tion of artists, poets and authors. Spengler explains that by drawing on analogous cycles of history in each of the civilisations he could explain how and why Western Civilisation was undergoing a cycle of decay. Like Nietzsche, Spengler sees democracy, parliamentarianism, egalitarianism and the rise of money and the merchant on the ruins of the old aristocracy of birth (or blood) as symptoms of the decadence that are reducing the arts to the lowest denominator.

Many of the cultural elite, such as Yeats and Evola, were of a mystical nature; and their knowledge of the cyclic myths of many ancient cultures of East and West and the Americas accorded with the cyclical conclusions draw by Spengler. In his influential magnum opus The Decline of the West, Spengler rejects the Darwinian, lineal, progressive approach to history, explaining:

"I see in place of that empty figment of one linear history... the drama of a number of mighty cultures, each having its own life; its own death... Each culture has its own new possibilities of self-expression, which arise, ripen, decay and never return... I see world history as a picture of endless formations and transformations, of the marvellous waxing and waning of organic forms. The professional historian, on the other hand, sees it as a sort of tapeworm industriously adding to itself one epoch after another".

This cyclic approach to history is organic. It sees cultures as living entities with a birth, a flourishing, a decay and death. Each civilisation, although self-contained, has the same cyclic phases, which Spengler identifies with the four seasons. The winter phase is the advanced civilisation where the city replaces the country, profit replaces heroism, and the merchant replaces the aristocrat. As for the social castes, these cease to have a cultural value and are mere economic reflections. The rootless city-dwelling proletariat replaces the rural yeoman and craftsman, the merchant re¬places the warrior, and the banker replaces the noble. Hence, what is often regarded as 'new', 'progressive', 'modern' and 'western'- the rise of abortion, family planning, of banking practices, of parliaments and voting majorities, of feminism, socialism, revolutions - have already been played out in the 'winter' phase of prior civilisations. Spengler describes it thus:

"You, the West, are dying. I see in you all the characteris¬tic stigma of decay. I can prove that your great wealth and your great poverty, your capitalism and your socialism your wars and your revolutions, your atheism and your pessimism and your cynicism, your immorality, your birth control that is bleeding you from below and killing you off at the top in your brains. I can prove to you that these were characteristic marks of the dying ages of ancient states... Alexandria and Greece and neurotic Rome...".

Many of the new generation of writers were thus drawn to Spengler's analysis of the way the rule of money, of money values and of the money baron's control of politics, had become determinators of the tastes of a civilisation in its final cycle. They were concerned with overthrowing the rule of money and returning civilisation to its 'springtime' where the arts flourished under the patronage of born nobles. W.B.Yeats and Evola look to certain epochs of the medieval period of the West. Ezra Pound sought the overthrow of the banks through the economic theory of Social Credit. Hamsun and Williamson wished for a return to rural values in place of those of the City. Many were attracted to Fascism. Spengler states that in the final phase of the winter cycle there arises a reaction against the rule of money. Money marches on reaching its peak then exhausts its possibilities:

"It thrust into the life of the yeoman's countryside and set the earth moving; its thought transformed every son of handicraft: today it presses victoriously upon industry, to make the productive work of entrepreneur and engineer and labourer alike, its spoil. The machine with its human retinue, the real queen of this century is in danger of succumbing to a stronger power. Money, also, is beginning to lose its authority, and the last conflict is at hand in which civilisation receives its conclusive form - the conflict be¬tween money and blood".

New 'Caesars', strong leaders not harnessed to the plutocrats and their parliaments and media, will overcome the rule of money. In Spengler's last book, The Hour of Decision, he sees the Fascist legions in Italy as heralds of the 'new Caesarism'. Mussolini was much impressed with both Nietzsche and Spengler. Spengler resumes:

"The sword is victorious over money, the master-will subdue again the plunderer-will... Money is overthrown and abolished by blood. Life is alpha and omega, the cosmic stream in microcosmic form... And so, the drama of a high culture - that wondrous world of deities, arts, thoughts, battles, cities - closes with the return of the pristine facts of blood eternal that is one and the same as the ever-circling cosmic flow".

Kerry Bolton

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http://www.oswaldmosley.com/people.htm

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Goethe Institut Introduce Nietzsche as a Poet

German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), including the most influential thinkers in modern times. As a philosopher, of course he's known in various countries, including Indonesia. But, did you know that the author Also Sprach Zarathustra is also a poet?

To introduce the figure of Nietzsche as a poet, Goethe Institute published a collection of poems the philosopher in the Indonesian language, Lust Eternity, which was launched in GoetheHaus, the Road Sam Ratulangi No.9-15, Menteng, Central Jakarta, on Monday (20 / 9) at 19:30 pm .

The poems were translated by the poet Indonesia, Agus R. Sarjono, and observers of literature from the University of Bonn, Germany, Berthold Damshäuser, for German Poetry Series VI. Both authors have edited the German Poetry Series since 2003 and gave birth to the books of poetry translations from the works of German writers, ie, Rainer Maria Rilke, Bertolt Brecht, Paul Celan, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Hans Magnus Enzensberger.

Nietzsche's book, published this Books Komodo is a collection of Nietzsche's poetry in the Indonesian language as well as introducing the first language of Nietzsche as an artist, who, in addition to Martin Luther and Goethe, considered the most important German reformer. This book load Nietzsche's poems from all phases kepenyairannya and presented in chronological order.

Event launch and poetry reading Nietzsche was also held in various cities during the 20 to 29 September. Here is the schedule.

22 September 2010, 19:30 AM
Cine Club, Faculty of Language & Arts, State University of Yogyakarta, Karang Malang, Yogyakarta

24 September 2010, 19:30 AM
Bookstore Petra Toga Mas, Jl. Pucang East Anom No. 5, Surabaya

27 September 2010, 19:30 AM
Goethe-Institut Bandung, Jl. L.L.R.E. Inhale 48, Bandung

29 September 2010, 19:30 AM
Bantam Tirtayasa FKIP University, Auditorium, Department of Language and Arts Education, Jl. Raya Jakarta Km. 4, Pakupatan, Serang, Banten

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Reading Nietzsche Philosophy

Many of Nietzsche's philosophy outlined in the form of aphorisms. It is not difficult to read the aphorisms in the form of short sentences. But It would be not easy to understand the symbols contained therein. Precisely herein lies the difficulty to understand the Nietzsche's philosophy. In this case, Nietzsche is the philosopher's most elusive throughout the history of modern philosophy. So no surprise that many of his philosophical teachings misunderstanding.

Nietzsche's philosophical style of the aphorism is not considered common and not systematically. Such presumption is ahistorical because it means thinking with the system-as was done by the philosopher before Nietzsche-that is what Nietzsche demolished. Style of philosophizing with a conscious aphorisms used by Nietzsche is not simply because of dissatisfaction with the traditional form, more firmly again to annihilate the system.

Nietzsche's rejection of the philosophers of the system because the system did not question the assumption that they used. A system of thought must be based on these premises, but within the framework of the system, these premises can not be questioned again. Philosophical assumptions of the philosopher simply assumed, as by right to him. The will to system is none other than the way the philosophers to want the truth (Will to Truth) as taken for granted.

For Nietzsche the truth impossible packaged in a system. His antisistem does not mean that Nietzsche does not use the presmis. He used it, but not to lead readers to a conclusion or settlement of the problem, but to explore the hidden assumptions of an idea, including his own. Here, Nietzsche is not just philosophizing with a hammer who want to destroy what is supposed taken for granted, but also a "teacher's suspicions".

Nietzsche rejected the universal truth. For him truth is perspectival. Assessing the truth depend on the standpoint of the meaning. Nietzsche's perspective is known as perspektivisme. With this perspective, there is no any physical reality that are beyond interpretation. There is only a variety of viewpoints.

Perspectivism in line with Nietzsche's attitude antisistem. How to think with the system ignores the question of the underlying assumptions. Though there is no one system that can reveal the whole truth, at best a system represents only one viewpoint. For that reason, we need to consider various viewpoints and do not limit themselves to one system only.

Nietzschean-perspectivism outlook beyond the two extremes of subjectivism and obyektivisme, which eliminates the relation of thought and subject is thinking about it. In his perspectivism, Nietzsche uses fisio-genealogical analysis that the problem is not the object or subject, but lies in how the human relationship with everything. Then the inevitable contradictions in Nietzsche's worldview. Contradictions that just accidentally shown with their respective consequences. Remember, his attitude toward God, as well the reality, is yes-and-not all at once. Therefore, the best way to understand Nietzsche, according to Karl Jasper, is to find his contradiction.

Besides the already mentioned, the use of Nietzsche's aphorism used to describe the complexity of the concepts and ideas. With aphorisms Nietzsche want to solve the congestion language to convey the pluralistic and chatic realities. Language is not as though by the people that they able to represent all of reality, in fact, language is a stumbling attempt to say something unspeakable. At the word "God", "the Will", "Morality" and other words mentioned in the teachings of his philosophy, Nietzsche wanted to exceed what he would say.

In the end, through aphorism Nietzsche would invite his readers to dive into the depths behind the appearance of the word. Therefore, the best way to understand the terms that were introduced in Nietzsche philosophy such as "Will to Power", "the Eternal Recurrence", "the Overman", by treating them as a literary strategy that used by Nietzsche to invite the reader understand something to be conveyed.

In a number of his works we would find many sarcastic words. Nietzsche often speaks of "war", "conflict", "power". Even when he talks about himself in the perfection of Overman inevitable he also mentioned the higher and lower races. Was Nietzsche vent his hatred for certain human groups, Christians, for example? How ridiculous Nietzsche was, he sharply critical ressentiment attitude on human-slave while he himself still trapped in the low morale. Read every Nietzsche phrase literally inevitably will bear the nosy and the response is likely to mislead. Let alone on others, he is sarcastic even to he himself.

Really Nietzsche sarcastic with himself? Would not in the "Ecce Homo" Nietzsche praise for himself? Like "Why I Am So Wise", "Why I Am So Clever", "Why I Wrote So Good Books". Does not this phrase, is the attitude of excessive self-praise, an attitude heavyweight megalomania? We also need to ask again, that in an excessive nature is a variant of the parody. Compliments are very outrageous shown by Nietzsche is treated to reinforce the effects of laughter accompanied seriousness.

"Who Among You Can laugh and be elevated at the Same Time?" asked Zarathustra. Death of God which should not be treated with joy by philosophers because they do not know how to laugh at himself. As a result of philosophy of science fails to be a fun "The Gay Science". What Nietzsche want is seriousness without ignoring a cheerful play.

We need to play because in play one can find something new. This is perhaps ignored from the attention that he wanted to celebrate the creativity to find new value. And as a consequence, if we are to follow Nietzsche way of thinking, eventually Nietzsche to be rejected: "Now let me and you find yourself, if you all have denied me I will come to you".

by Udin Attar

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Franz Kafka as Post-Nietzschean Writer

Franz Kafka (1883-1924) writes his stories based on the portrait of a personal life. Kafka's personal experiences outlined in his absurd works. His heroes are often seen as allegorical projection of intellectuals. The characters in his works often appear helpless, faced with uncertain situations, which requires them to overcome. From the fact that, as expressed by Susan Sontag, a lot of critics who are recklessly interpret Kafka as the author of a mental illness and frustration against the modern bureaucracy.

For Milan Kundera Kafka is the best example of the radical autonomy of the novel (a poem in the form of the novel). Kafka declared autonomy encourages things about the human condition which can never be expressed by the social or political thought. "The Transformation" is one of them. Readers will be instantly struck by the opening sentence: As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

Nihilism is marked by the collapse of old values and as a consequence humans live in a vacuum a key issue raised in "The Transformation" by Franz Kafka. Movement against the old values that have been established in European societies, especially in the world of arts and culture, known as modernism. Literary works was emerged in the modern age characterized by exploring the personal awareness (self-consciousness). At that time there is any contradiction between the modernists and the conservatives (who represented the clergy of the church). Conflict becomes turbid when coming into the area of the church, medicine, law and art. Those who rebelled the church will be called contra-patriotic, and decadent youth.

Topics nihilism and decadence have been put forward by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) in his philosophical thinking. Previously judged morality of good and evil, right and wrong, reversed and destroyed. As a result of new morality found in Nietzsche, as presented in his book Beyond Good and Evil (Nietzsche, 1966), beyond-binary oppositions. Nietzsche's reversal of its peak value of projects submitted by "the death of God". Having God as the uppermost value of human destruction will be thrown in a puddle nihilism. Just in front of those who have found a new morality, nihilism can be overcome.

In addition to Kafka, Robert Musil (1880-1942) was also adapting Nietzsche's thought in his works. But Musil and the other writers do not have significance influence than Kafka. If the other authors they simply adopt the philosophy of Nietzsche to smooth the destination, the Nietzschean nihilism in Kafka's very united in his pessimistic works. Depression is treated by Kafka to overcome depression.

Kafka, as recognized friend Max Brod, was a great reader of Nietzsche. But he did not explicitly show the influence of his reading in literary works. Almost the whole Kafka none of which indicate the names of Nietzsche as in "Doctor Faustus" by Thomas Mann. Unlike other young Jewish writers - such as Herzl and Werfel including Kraus, Kafka does not like showing his reading of Nietzsche's unifying.


-by Udin Attar

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What one should learn from artists

How can we make things beautiful, attractive, and desirable for us when they are not? And I rather think that in themselves they never are. Here we could learn something from physicians, when for example they dilute what is bitter or add wine and sugar to a mixture—but even more from artists who are really continually trying to bring off such inventions and feats.

Moving away from things until there is a good deal that one no longer sees and there is much that our eye has to add if we are still to see them at all; or seeing things around a corner and as cut out and framed; or to place them so that they partially conceal each other and grant us only glimpses of architectural perspectives; or looking at them through tinted glasses or in the light of the sunset; or giving them a surface and skin that is not really transparent—all this we should learn from artists while being wiser than they are in other matters.

For with them this subtle power usually comes to an end where art ends and life begins; but we want to be the poets of our life—first of all in the smallest, most everyday matters.

form The Gay Sciece Book IV part 299.

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Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles/Eperons: Les Styles de Nietzsche

ISBN: 9780226143330
Subtitle: Nietzsche's Styles/Eperons: Les Styles de Nietzsche
Translator: Harlow, Barbara
Author: Derrida, Jacques

Derrida argues that an examination of style in Nietzsche, specifically his style(s) concerning the trope or metaphor of woman, reveals an understanding of truth. This conception of truth (on the part of Nietzsche, and/or of Derrida) is not fixed but by design a restless dynamic (or "undecidability" [105]) between various proferred accounts, and Derrida explores several positions the concept of woman assumes in Nietzsche's writings. "The heterogeneity of the text ... mark[s] the essential limit of such a codification [of woman, of truth]." [95]

That said, I do not conclude that Derrida claims there is no truth. Rather, he seems to mount an epistemological rather than an ontological argument: truth is undecidable, not non-existant. Note to claim decisively there is no truth, is equally undecidable. So Derrida makes no ultimate claim as to truth's Being, concluding only that to seek it, is to discover its undecidability. I take this to be the epistemological stance within anti-foundationalism, as opposed to the ontological stance (often leveled as an accusation against anti-foundationalists by critics, and just as often unjustly).

The 'spur' of the title is a promontory or prow, an extension which meets an adversary in advance of the main body. "Thus the style would seem to advance in the manner of a spur of sorts (eperon). Like the prow, for example of a sailing vessel, its rostrum, the projection of the ship which surges ahead to meet the sea's attack and cleave its hostile surface." [39]

(The trope) Woman is used by Nietzsche (argues Derrida) to indicate power over distance, something which works precisely because it is never fully engaged. "On the one hand ... Nietzsche revives that barely allegorical figure (of woman) in his own interest. For him, truth is like a woman." [51] Then, "But, on the other hand, the credulous and dogmatic philosopher who believes in the truth that is woman, who believes in truth just as he believes in woman, this philosopher has understood nothing." [53] And finally: "Woman, inasmuch as truth, is scepticism and veiling dissimulation. This is what must be conceivable." [57]

Later Derrida links the above investigation with the idea of truth as propriation, and suggests that the link to propriation (property) is a limit to the detriment of our understanding of truth. And what would truth look like, were it not to operate like an "appropriating" force? Derrida suggest this would be a productive line of enquiry.

I am left, incidentally, with the impression that Nietzsche is all too easily read as misanthrope or chauvenist, an impression initially developed after reading Nietzsche first-hand.

Derrida notes [37] that deconstruction is an affirmative interpretation, and his lecture here builds upon work from the past two years. Interesting: I've most often heard of deconstruction as an undermining enterprise, and the term itself seems to suggest this. I'm sure Derrida is playing with this very sense when making the statement.

Whether due to an ineffective translation, or the fact it presumes a familiarity with Derrida's lecture that I cannot claim, the introduction by Stefano Agosti was useless to me. I skipped it after a few pages and read the lecture itself with much greater interest and reward.

Loubrieu's line drawings are utterly impenetrable, though I made little effort to link them to the text or engage them on their own. Later

table of content
Table of Contents
Coup sur coup: Pré face à Éperons

Coup upon Coup: An Introduction to Spurs, Stefano Agosti

Éperons: Les Styles de Nietzsche

Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles

La question du style / The question of style

Distances

Voiles / Veils

Vérités / Truths

Parures / Adornments

La simulation / Simulation

Femina vita

Positions

Le regard d'CEdipe / The gaze of Oedipus

Le coup de don

Abî mes de la vérité / Abysses of truth

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Postmodern Considerations of Nietzschean Perspectivism

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Wainscott, Ronald H., Staging O'Neill: The Experimental Years, 1920-1934. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.

Weiss, Samuel A. "O'Neill, Nietzsche and Cows." Modern Drama. April 1991: 494-98.

Winther, Sophus Keith. Eugene O'Neill: A Critical Study. New York: Random House, 1934.
Young, Stark. "The Fountain." O'Neill and his Plays. ed. Oscar Cargill, et. al. New York: New York University Press, 1961.

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Iqbal and Germany: A Correspondence of the Heart

It is well known that the poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal had a deep admiration for Germany, German thought, German poetry and there are innumerable instances in his writings, in his poems, in letters and in recorded conversations with him which indicate clearly that the works of German philosophers and poets have been a source of great inspiration to him.

Foremost among them was Goethe to whom he refers again and again of whom he says, I though not a prophet, he has a book namely ‘Faust, and whom he compares to Ghālib the great poet of Urdu and Persian of the nineteenth century and to that illustrious sage of the East, Maulāna Jalāl al‑Dīn Rūmī. In a poem in the Payām‑i‑Mashriq Iqbal imagines Goethe meeting Rūmī in paradise and reciting Faust to him. Rūmī listens and extols Goethe as one who has really understood the Great Secret. In bringing Goethe and Rūmī together, Iqbal brought together not only two of the greatest spirits of the East and West, but also the two men who have influenced him more than anyone else in his career as a thinker and as a poet.

None other than Iqbal himself has told us sol. In his preface to the Payām‑i‑Mashriq, the book in which Iqbal’s art probably reached the height of its power and perfection, he writes these Lines: ‘The Payām-i-Mashriq owes its inspiration to the Western Divan of Goethe, the German ‘Philosopher of Life’, about which, Heine, the Israelite poet of Germany says: ‘This is a nosegay presented by the West to the East as a token of high regard. This Divan bears testimony to the fact that the West, being dissatisfied with its own spiritual life is turning to the bosom of the East in search of spiritual warmth.’

The Payām-i-Mashriq is Iqbal’s response to Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan on the title page of which —I should like to recall to our memory— Goethe had written in his own hand the following words in Arabic language and script: ‘Ad-Dīwān Sharqī lil Mu’allif al-Gharbī’ —An Eastern Divan by a Western Author.

Iqbal’s introduction to the Payām-i-Mashriq also contains a short but extremely interesting account of the ‘Oriental Movement’ in German literature. It serves to give us a glimpse of the extent of Iqbal’s contacts with German culture, just as his philosophical work, as for instance reflected in his Lectures The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam reveals his profound knowledge of, and his deep admiration for German thought, inspite of his frequent differences with German thinkers as for instance Nietzsche. Though Iqbal was a great admirer of Nietzsche and there is much that they both had in common observes Justice Javid Iqbal ‘the poet’s son in an essay on Iqbal and Nietzsche, there are fundamental differences between the two, namely their sources of inspiration and basic to their whole concept of, and outlook on life, their conception of God.

In an article, entitled ‘Conversations with Iqbal’, by Syed Nazir Niazi, a close friend of Iqbal, who has had extensive conversations with him, which he recorded from time to time, we have another treasure trove of information on Iqbal’s preoccupations with German culture and German thought. Again it is Goethe who figures most prominently in their conversations. Writes Niazi: ‘Perhaps what life needs most are men who can understand its ultimate purpose. Goethe was such a man and so was Iqbal. And it was Iqbal who turned our attention to Goethe. It is a remarkable episode in our history that Iqbal alone should have resisted the force of a whole literature and culture, namely English, which was dominating our life through political control. It is a fact that we accepted Goethe rather than Shakespeare. Shakespeare is no doubt admired, but Goethe is the favourite. Shakespeare is a unique artist whom we all recognize, but Goethe is one of us who has secured a place in our heart. If we bear this point in mind a glimpse of the perfect man or Vicegerent of God or Mu’min or Man of Faith and his character, disposition as conceived by Iqbal, is seen to some extent in Faust a creature of Goethe’s thoughts, and not for instance in the ‘Superman of Nietzsche.

The sources from which we can glean information on Iqbal’s connections and contacts with Germany and the instances in his writings where he expresses himself on her poets and thinkers are numerous and manifold.

It is my privilege today to contribute to that material by presenting to the public for the first time a report on a collection of letters written by Iqbal which have an immediate and direct bearing on his connections with and his feelings for my country. They are letters and postcards addressed by Iqbal to his German language tutor in Heidelberg, Miss Emma Wegenast, letters and postcards of which I possess photo copies and some originals.

The collection is a gift which Miss Wegenast, the recipient, made in the early sixties, shortly before her death, to the Pakistan‑German Forum, a bilateral cultural association of which at the time the late Mr. Mumtaz Hasan was President while I had the honour to be its honorary General Secretary.

The Pakistan‑German Forum, being an organisation whose aim it was and is to promote and strengthen cultural relations between the two countries, was fully aware that Muhammad Iqbal is the greatest cultural link that exists between Germany and Pakistan. It was only natural, therefore, that when Mr. Mumtaz Hasan and I were invited to visit Germany in the summer of 1959, we made it a point not only to visit the cities and universities of Heidelberg and Munich where Iqbal had stayed and studied in 1905 and 1906 but to make every effort and attempt to trace any person still alive who had met Iqbal during his days in Germany.

It was in the pursuit of this aim that with the help of friends we were able to find and to contact Miss Emma Wegenast to whom our attention had been drawn by references to her in Begum Atiya Fayzee’s book on, Iqbal.

Although we could not meet Miss Wegenast personally, a correspondence developed between Mr. Mumtaz Hasan and her. As a result of this correspondence she made over to the Forum the letters she had received from Iqbal with the request to pass them on to any archive in Pakistan where they could be accessible to scholars engaged in research into Iqbal’s life and work. Mr. Mumtaz Hasan was kind enough to prepare for me a complete set of photocopies which he gave to me along with two original letters. Since, I had to leave Pakistan on transfer soon after, I do not know the present whereabouts of the letters that were donated by Miss Wegenast.

But before examining the letters further let me return once again very briefly to our visit to Germany which yielded yet another fruit: we succeeded in persuading Inter Nations, a German organisation founded in Bonn in 1952 to promote intercultural relations and contacts with other nations to locate the original thesis submitted by Iqbal to the University of Munich for his Ph.D. and to have it copied for the Forum. The thesis was found and thanks to the late Dr. Richard Mönnig, the Director of Inter Nations, who himself had taken a keen interest in Iqbal, some 30 photo-mechanical reprints of the thesis were produced.

The thesis is properly proceeded by a ‘Lebenslauf’, a curriculum vitae, presumably compiled by Iqbal himself and signed by him, in which he gives his date of birth as the 3rd of Dhū Qa‘dah 1294 A. H., with the year 1876 in brackets. The method of calculation which led to this year: of the Christian era was probably the one widely used by Orientalists in Germany and elsewhere at that time. It follows the formula year A. H. minus year A.H. divided by 33 plus 622 equals the year of the Christian era.

The thesis was submitted with the approval of Professor Dr. Friedrich Hommel, Iqbal’s supervisor or doctor‑father as he is called in Germany, to the Faculty of Philosophy, Section I (respectively II) of the Ludwig Maximilians University at Munich. It was published in London in 1908 by Luzac & Co. and was printed by E.J, Brill of Leiden in Holland. I would like to add the remark that at the time when Iqbal obtained his degree in Munich, it was quite customary, even obligatory at German universities to submit Ph. D. Theses or ‘Inaugural Dissertationen’ as they are called in German, in print, and in a set fairly large number of copies to be distributed to important libraries and relevant research centres in the country and abroad.

But let me now turn to the letters. They are altogether 27 in numbers including two postcards. They cover two distinct periods, namely the year from 1907 to the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 and the years from 1931 to 1933. The long silence between these periods is only interrupted once by a letter written in 1919.

There is every possibility that I may have lost some of my photocopies in the course of several moves from one continent to another and that the original collection is larger than mine. I have a faint recollection that there were altogether more than 40 letters plus some photographs.

As I already mentioned, the person to whom the letters were addressed is Miss Emma Wegenast. She was Iqbal’s German language tutor in Heidelberg at the ‘Pension Scherer’, one of those highly respectable boarding houses for students—so common in German university towns before the advent of the students hostel tower blocks.

‘Pension Scherer’ or the Heidelberg School, as Iqbal calls it in one of his letters, seems to have been a boarding house mainly for foreign students, which explains the tutorial facilities. Fraulein Wegenast was in her twenties when she and Iqbal met and we have it on the authority of Begum Atiya Fayzee that she was very beautiful and highly accomplished, polished young lady.

Iqbal was very fond of her—there is no doubt about that— but as the letters reveal, it was a pure and innocent fondness. I have the feeling when reading the letters, that to Iqbal Fraulein Emma Wegenast was the embodiment of all that he loved and respected of all that he was so strongly attracted by, in German culture, in German thought, in German literature, perhaps in German life as a whole.

Iqbal addresses her throughout very formally as ‘Mein liebes Fraulein Wegenast’ or ‘My dear Fraulein Wegenast’ with only the ‘Mein’ hinting at his fondness for her.’ But it is fondness coupled with respect, for in all the letters written in German and they all belong to the first period when his memories of her were the freshest and his feelings for her must have been the strongest, he always uses the formal and respectful ‘Sie’ in addressing her, not once lapsing into the intimate ‘Du’.

The letters do not reveal anything sensational. They are rather ordinary letters as any two friends would exchange among themselves: no deep thoughts, no poetry, and yet they answer some of the questions about Iqbal which were still open and they certainly throw further light on Iqbal’s feelings for my country.

The first question answered is the one posed by Syed Nazir Niazi in his essay on conversations with Iqbal. When he writes: ‘I had always been curious to find out how far Iqbal had studied the German language… I personally believe he had made a deep and penetrating study of German literature in original. He must have been well-versed in German Language. But he never used any German word in his conversations, not even at the time when his children were under the care of a German governess who lived in his house.

Well, the letters certainly provide an answer to this question. All his letters written before the outbreak of the Great War except two are written in German, and although Iqbal complains in them time and again about severe shortcomings in his knowledge of that language and of his inability to express himself in the way he would like to, even apologizing for insulting the reader by his ‘schlechte Deutsch’, (bad German). I can only say that when Iqbal does so, he is much too modest. I find it remarkable how well he expresses himself in that language, a language after all, in which he has had tuition for only a relatively short time. No, he knew German alright, as the letters reveal, though in latter years, his active knowledge of that language must have progressively faded away, and quite understandably so.

In his first detailed letter after his return to a native country, dated 11th January 1909, Lahore, he gives a very lucid and fluent account in German of the overwhelming welcome accorded to him by his countrymen.

As a by-product, so to say, the letters yield another, hitherto unknown piece of information: the addresses at which Iqbal stayed in London in 1908 and again in 1931 and 1932 when he attended the Round Table Conferences. They are: 49, Elsham Road in Kensington in 1908, 113 A St. James Court, Buckingham Gate in 1931 and lastly Queen Anne’s Mansion, St. James Park in 1932. Now these addresses are known, the Buildings Advisory Committee of the Greater London Council should be requested to put up a blue plaque at one of these addresses, in commemoration of him who is one of the greatest sons of Pakistan, if not the greatest.

However much I should like to do so, the time at my disposal today does not permit me to quote extensively from the letters I feel however, that I owe it to you to read out one passage at least which is particularly expressive. On receipt of the news that Fraulein Wegenast’s father had died, he sent her the following message of condolence:

Dear Miss Wegenast,

I am extremely sorry to hear the sad news of your father’s death; and though my letter must reach you a good many days after this sad event, yet neither time nor distance can make my sympathy with you in your bereavement any the less warm. The news has pained me very much indeed, and I pray that Almighty God may be pleased to shower his choicest blessings on the venerable old man, and to give you strength to endure your sorrow. ‘Verily we are for God and to God we return. This is the sacred text that we recite when we hear the news of death. And I recited this verse over and over again on reading your painful letter. Such events though do happen in everybody’s life and we must meet our troubles like those who left us their lives to imitate. You remember that Goethe said in the moment of his death —‘More Light! Death opens up the way to more light and carries us to those regions where we stand face to face with eternal Beauty and Truth.’ I remember the time when I read Goethe’s poems with you and I hope, you also remember those happy days when we were so near to each other —so much so that I spiritually share in your sorrows, Please write to me when you feel inclined to do so, I wish I had been in Germany to convey my sympathy to you personally. May God be with you.

Yours ever,

Mohammad Iqbal

Some more representative quotations could be cited as follows:

‘I remember the time when I read Goethe’s poems with you and I hope you also remember those happy days when we were so near to each other spiritually speaking’.

Here it is: Fraulein Wegenast, that is Goethe, Heine, Kant and Schopenhauer, it is Heidelberg, the Neckar, Germany —it is those happy days!’

And that is the Leitmotif of Iqbal’s letters to Emma Wegenast.

‘My body is here, my thoughts are in Germany’.

‘It is impossible for me to forget your beautiful country where I have learned so much. My stay in Heidelberg is nothing now but a beautiful dream. How I’d wish I could repeat it!’

‘I am very fond of Germany. It has had a great influence on my ideals and I shall never forget my stay in that country.’

‘Never shall I forget the days I spent at Heidelberg when you taught me Goethe’s Faust and helped me in many ways. Those were happy days indeed.’

‘I’d wish I could see you once more at Heidelberg or Heilbronn whence we shall together make a pilgrimage to the sacred grave of the great master Goethe.’

‘The other day, I was reading Heine and I thought of the happy days when we read the poet together.’

And a final quotation:

‘Germany was a kind of second home to my spirit. I learned much and I thought much in that country. The home of Goethe has found a permanent place in my soul.’

Yes indeed! Fraulein Wegenast that is Goethe and Heine, Kant and Schopenhauer, Heidelberg’ the Neckar ‘Germany’ those happy days —And those happy days, Germany the Neckar, Heidelberg Schopenhauer and Kant, Heine and Goethe that to Iqbal was Fraulein Wegenast, as this correspondence not of the mind, not of the intellect, but of the heart reveals.

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by M. A. H. Hobohm
source: www.allamaiqbal.com

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Iqbal On Nietzsche

The life and thought of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) intrigued Iqbal, who, in many places in his prose and poetry, cites and discusses the German philosopher`s views. Iqbal`s interest in Nietzsche has been the subject of several studies.

We are grateful to Professor Bernd Manuel Weischer for the permission to reprint the following article, which originally appeared as a contribution in H. R. Roemer and A. North, eds., Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Vorderen Oriens. Festschrift B. Spuler (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981). Iqbal`s well-known observation about Nietzsche, namely, that his heart believes but his mind disbelieves (quoted in the beginning of this article), occurs in ``Nietzche, ``a poem in Payām-i Mashriq (in Kulliyyat-i Iqbal-Fārsī, 329), the original Persian being: qalb-i ū mu`min dimāghash kāfar ast. Here, following, is a translation of Iqbal`s Urdu note to the observation (see the Ghulam `Alī and Sons edition of Kulliyyāt-i Iqbal-Fārs-i, Lahore, 1970, p. 371).

Nietzsche subjects Christian ethical philosophy to severe criticism. His mind is a disbeliever in God since he denies God, though his ideas are, in respect of some of their implications, very close to the religion of Islam. ``His mind is a disbeliever, but his heart is a believer``-the Noble Prophet [Muḥammad]. made a similar remark about Umayyah b. Abī ṣ-Ṣalṭ (an Arab poet).- A mana lisānuhū wa-kafara qalbuhū (``His tongue believes, but his heart disbelieves``).

The word Allama, ``Great Scholar,`` which occurs before Iqbal`s name more than once in the following piece, is often used as an appellation for Iqbal.

In this reprint, the footnotes of the original article have been converted to endnotes, and one or two minor typographical errors have been corrected; otherwise, the format of the original has been retained.]

When I discussed some time ago with a leading German philosopher some aspects of Nietzsche`s philosophy and quoted to him Allama Mohammed Iqbal`s statement on Nietzsche, expressed in one of the poems in the `Payām-i mashriq`: the `Message of the East`: ``His brain is unbelieving, but his heart believing``1, he said to me: ``Never did I hear a more concise and appropriate judgment on the life and work of Nietzsche! ``-That the tragic figure of Nietzsche occupied Iqbal`s mind more than any other Western philosopher is widely known.



And as we know Iqbal planned to write a book in the style of `Thus spoke Zarathustra` under the title of `The Book of a Forgotten Prophet`, but unfortunately this plan was never carried out. A contemporary of Allama Iqbal and a religious poet like him was the Libanese Jibran Khalil Jibran who among other poems and novels wrote a book with the title `The Prophet`. He admired Nietzsche deeply, but the influence of Nietzsche`s work on him originated more from its style than from its content. Jibran Khalil Jibran, not being a philosopher, rejected the main ideas of Nietzsche and was shocked by his atheism.2 Allama Iqbal on the other hand, while also not agreeing with Nietzsche`s atheism and many of his ideas, yet, as a philosopher, poet and mystic had a much deeper insight into the personal experience as well as the philosophical system of Nietzsche, its suppositions and consequences. Thus he discovered common ideas and attitudes of mind.

If we now speak about the `Nietzsche-conception` of Allama Iqbal, it must be made clear that we cannot expect from him a dry philosophical treatise about the development of metaphysics in Europe and the decisive role Nietzsche played in it. But his often aphoristic remarks on Nietzsche in the context of very different writings are so striking, fundamental, and comprehensive-because Iqbal as an Oriental thinker did not separate the tragic life from the intellectual achievements of the German philosopher as many Western philosophers do-that we can rightly call it a `Nietzscheconception`. Iqbal was already strongly influenced by the vitalistic current of Western philosophy, by R. Eucken and especially H. Bergson, although he criticizes them sometimes. The dynamic concept of this philosophy, involving the gradual development of the self in the reality of this world,-a kind of prophetic outlook-was very close to Iqbal`s intentions in his philosophy of personality and the rediscovery of the dynamic concept of Islam. L. Massignon made the remarkable statement on the relationship of M. Iqbal with H. Bergson: ``Une affinite spirituelle semitique!``3

But Allama Iqbal drew much more support for his dynamic philosophy from Nietzsche, who in one sense can be seen as the culmination of the vitalist movement. Some thoughts, allusions, and symbols (e.g. diamond and coal) in the `Asrār-i Knudī` may be traced to Nietzsche`s `Thus spoke Zarathustra`, and the whole set of Iqbal`s book and his main idea of the `Perfect Man, which of course stems from Islamic mysticism, can be compared in a certain way with Nietzsche`s Superman. The idea of the `Superman` perhaps acted as a catalyst in the formulation of Iqbal`s ideas. The great difference between the `Perfect Man` and the `Superman` is the following: In Nietzsche`s system the exaggerated affirmation of this world and the intellectual self-realisation of the human being to the highest and most independent degree-to a quasi-divine existence-is conditioned by the negation of God, of the transcendental world, and immortality. The will to power Per Wille zur Macht) explains being as a continuous becoming or development to a higher state, the eternal recurrence Pie ewige Wiederkehr) being the existential basis of the liberty and independence of the individual in a world which becomes quasi-eternal, a kind of secularisation of eternity. Allama Iqbal, as a religious genius, immediately and intuitively realized the `punctum saliens` for the failure of Nietzsche, namely his Luciferian basis: I will not serve! This is where the great difference lies between Nietzsche and Iqbal, who had a certain sympathy with this brilliant Western thinker in his quest for the absolute. So he contrasts the Superman (Ubermensch) independent from God with the idea of the `Perfect Man` in Islamic Mysticism whom he describes in his Bāl-i Jibrīl as follows: ``The perfect man`s arm is really God`s arm, dominant, creative, resourceful, efficient, human, but angel-like in disposition, a servant with the Master`s attributes``. And in his Jāvīdnāme Iqbal describes how Nietzsche is flying between the heaven of Saturn and Paradise in eternal circles-a symbol of the eternal recurrence, which Iqbal strictly rejected-and he says about him:

``In his inebriation he broke every glass,
separated himself from God and at the same time from the Self``

and some lines further on he says about Nietzsche in an Islamic way of expression:

``He did not come from `1ā ilāh` to `i11ā ilāh` (i.e. from the negation to the affirmation of God)
and he did not know the meaning of the word `abduhu` (his servant)``4

This brilliant statement touches again on the point of difference described above.

Another time Iqbal wrote in a letter: ``Poor Nietzsche thought that his vision of the ultimate Ego could be realized in the world of space and time``.5 In the `Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam` he describes and rejects Nietzsche`s idea of the eternal recurrence in a very enlightened way, first in the lecture `The Human Ego, his freedom and immortality` and then in the lecture `Is Religion Possible?`. Rightly he points to Schopenshauer`s influence on Nietzsche in this respect, through his main work `The World as Will and Imagination`. He says 6 : ``In modern Europe Nietzsche, whose life and activity form, at least to us Easterns, an exceedingly interesting problem in religious psychology, was endowed with some sort of a constitutional equipment for such an undertaking. His mental history is not without a parallel in the history of Eastern Sufism. That a really `Imperative` Vision of the Divine in man did come to him cannot be denied. I call his vision `Imperative` because it appears to have given him a kind of prophetic mentality which, by some kind of technique, aims at turning its visions into permanent life-forces. Yet Nietzsche was a failure; and his failure was mainly due to his intellectual progenitors such as Schopenhauer, Darwin, and Lange, whose influence completely blinded him to the real significance of his vision. Instead of looking for a spiritual rule which would develop the Divine even in a plebeian and thus open up before him an infinite future, Nietzsche was driven to seek the realisation of his vision in such schemes as aristocratic radicalism. As I have said of him elsewhere:.

The `I am` which he seeketh,
lieth beyond philosophy, beyond knowledge,
The plant that groweth only from the invisible soil of the heart of man,
Groweth not from a mere heap of clay!

Thus failed a genius whose vision was solely determined by his internal forces, and remained unproductive for want of external guidance in his spiritual life``: I do not want to discuss the second text of Iqbal on Nietzsche because it would lead us to the complicated question of time problems found also in the work of H. Bergson.7

But let us come back to some aspects of Nietzsche`s philosophy which are near to Iqbal`s concept. I mean the fight of Nietzsche against Platonism and its wrong interpretation, especially in the Christian theology of the last centuries: i.e. the concept of God as a pure `causa prima` supported by philosophical terms and concepts, a concept of God which is quite the opposite of the notion of God in the prophetic religions and in the Semitic way of thinking. In this context Iqbal said in his Jāvīdnāme about Nietzsche8 :

``Had he ever lived in the times of Ahmad,
he would have entered into the eternal joy``.

That is to say: Had Nietzsche known the prophetic notion of God, as found in the Islamic tradition, he would not have failed. Thus Nietzsche in his first period was not just an atheist and nihilist who preached the complete revolution and conversion of all values, and his sentence `God is dead` is not to be understood in this simple way: it rather means that occidental metaphysics with its Greek and Platonic heritage in Nietzsche`s philosophy came to an end. He once said: ``The greatest recent event-that God has died, that the belief in the Christian God has become untrustworthy, begins to throw its first shadows over Europe``.

The leading philosopher of this century, M. Heidegger, in his profound studies on Nietzsche, his phrase `God is dead` and its role in the movement of European nihilism, has something in common with Iqbal`s intuitive remarks on Nietzsche. He says that Nietzsche remained Platonist in spite of his sarcastic fight against Platonism, because he remained on the same basis, the belief in an intellectual truth. Nietzsche himself was of course not conscious of it. The conversion of all values or the negation of known values is for Nietzsche only the starting point for the affirmation, of the `will to power`, according to him the most intrinsic essence of all beings. After giving up the belief in the divine essence as the inmost essence of all beings, Nietzsche had intellectually to fill up this emptiness.

If we now once again look at Iqbal`s statement ``His brain is unbelieving, but his heart believing``, we see how rightly it describes the case of the German philosopher. That Allama`s philosophy of personality differs basically from the system of Nietzsche is evident. In Iqbal`s concept the ultimate Ego is God himself, and the highest development of man consists in his gradual growth in self-possession and self-realisation, in the uniqueness and intensity of his activity as an ego. But the emphasis on will and activity in the higher and real ego of man and mankind in general-this dynamic concept of life and development-is very near to Nietzsche`s Superman and is a prototype of developed and perfect humanity. The difference is that Allama Iqbal develops his philosophy clearly on the ground of the Islamic faith, on the basis of the principle of the submission to the Divine, the ultimate Ego of the whole cosmos.

Notes

1 Kulliyyāt p. 371.

2 St. Wild, Friedrich Nietzsche and Gibran Kahlil Gibran, in: Abhath XXII, no. 3 & 4 (Beirut 1969) 47-57.

3 Gabriel`s Wing p. 323.

4 Kulliyyāt p. 741.

5 Gabriel`s Wing p. 324.

6 The Reconstruction p. 174f.

7 Cf. A. Bauani`s article.

8 Kulliyyāt p. 741.

Sources

J. Iqbāl (ed.), Kulliyyāt-i Iqbāl (fārsī) (Lahore-Hyderabed-Karachi 2 1975).

Muhammad Iqbal, Payām-i mashriq (translated by A. Schimmel, Botschaft des Ostens, Wiesbaden 1963).

Muhammad Iqbal, Jāvīdnāme (translated by A. Schimmel, Das Buch der Ewigkeit, Munchen 1957).

Muhammad Iqbal, Asrār-i Khudī (translated by R. A. Nicholson, The Secrets of the Self, Lahore 1969).

Muhammad Iqbal, Rumūz-i Bī-Khudī (translated by A. J. Arberry, The Mystery of Selflessness, London 1953).

Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (edited by J. Iqbal, Lahore 1968).

A. Bausani, ``The concept of time in the religious philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal``, in: Die Welt des Islams, N.S. 3 (1954) 158-86.

A. Schimmel, Gabriel`s Wing, A study into the religious ideas of Sir Muhammad Iqbal (Leiden 1963).

B. M. Weischer, ``Muhammad Iqbal and Western Culture``, in: Fikrun wa Fann Nr. 32, 16 (1979) 4-18-in Arabic.

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Bernd Manuel Weischer
Rabat University, Morocco

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Was Nietzsche an "existentialist"?

Read superficially, as he usually has been read, Nietzsche may appear to be in the same tradition; but he is not. It is for this reason above all that his "attempt at a critique of Christianity" (that is the subtitle of Nietzsche's Antichrist) must neither be ignored, whether to shield the author or Christianity, nor dismissed as a barbarian protest against sympathy and virtue. To be sure, Nietzsche was, no less than Kierkegaard, an apostle of passion and a critic of hypocrisy, but he did not extol passion at the expense of reason, and he repudiated Christianity not because he considered it too rational but because he considered it the archenemy of reason; and his caustic critique of faith, both in the Antichrist and elsewhere, reads like a considered censure of Kierkegaard among others.

It is the differences between Nietzsche and Kierkegaard that strike us first; and in an over all accounting, the differences would surely far outweigh the similarities which Karl Jaspers has catalogued so carefully.(See his lecture on the two men, below.) Jaspers assimilates Nietzsche to Kierkegaard and loses hold of that which mattered most to Nietzsche.

Before Nietzsche published Zarathustra, he wrote in The Gay Science: "What is good-heartedness, refinement, and genius to me, when the
human being who has these virtues tolerates slack feelings in his faith and judgments … Among certain pious ones, I found a hatred of reason and appreciated it: at least they thus betrayed their bad intellectualconscience." In his Zarathustra, Nietzsche says:

"Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds. Believe me, my brothers: it was the body that despaired of the body ... " And in his Antichrist, five years later, in his long critique of faith he writes: "'Faith' means not wanting to know what is true." Everyone of these barbs, which could be multiplied almost at will by anyone who knows his Nietzsche, is as applicable to Kierkegaard as to
those Nietzsche had in mind when he wrote; perhaps even more so, see-ing how persistently the Dane deceived himself. After all,
Kierkegaard himself insisted that it was "the secret writing in my inmost parts which explains everything"; and when we read this books in these terms, his conception of three stages and the "teleological suspension of the ethical" are seen to be, in part, the desperate attempts of a misshapen man who was, as he reveals in other contexts, completely dominated by the figure of his father, to convince
himself as well as a woman that the strange way in which he had broken his engagement with her had nothing at all to do with all-too-human motives. It would be absurd to claim that such a psychological analysisdoes justice to his work. Of course, it does not. The only reason for as much as mentioning these matters is that the desire not to know the truth was an important element in Kierkegaard's faith.

Sigmund Freud could not have said of Kierkegaard what, according to Ernest Jones, he often said of Nietzsche: "that he had a more penetrating knowledge of himself than any other man who ever lived or was ever likely to live." Was Nietzsche an "existentialist"? When he first received attention, different facets of his thought were noted, and it was only in a defeated Germany after the First World War that Kierkegaard, who had made much of the "existential," became popular and Nietzsche was seen in a new light. Judged by our initial criteria, Nietzsche might well be called an existentialist. The refusal to belong to any school of thought, the repudiation of the adequacy of any body of beliefs whatever, opposition to philosophic systems, and a marked dissatisfaction with traditional philosophy as superficial, academic, and remote from life–all this is eminently characteristic of Nietzsche no less than of Kierkegaard, Jaspers,
or Heidegger. Nor could it be argued that this conception of existentialism is generous to the point of being altogether amorphous and meaningless. Clearly, it excludes such relatively more traditional philosophers as, for example, Whitehead or even Russell, let alone the neo-Thomists; and although positivism and the analytic movement are also in revolt against traditional philosophy, the above description does not fit them.

Still, it is possible to be a little more specific about existentialism. There is yet another feature which all but deternmines the popular image of this movement. Consider the titles of three of Kierkegaard's major works: Fear and Trem-bling, The Concept of Dread, and The Sickness unto Death (which is despair). Death and dread are central in Heideg-ger's thought, too; death and failure are crucial in Jaspers'; and all of these phenomena are prominent in Sartre's work as well. It is entirely proper to consider the writings of these four men as the hard core of existentialism: Kierkegaard introduced the "existential"; Jaspers entitled one of his main works Existenzerhellung and another, smaller volume Existenzphilosophie; Heidegger's Sein und Zeit is widely taken for the magnum opus of this movement; and Sartre is the only major writer who admits he is an existentialist.

If we consider this striking preoccupation with failure, dread, and death one of the essential characteristics of existentialism, Nietzsche can no longer be included in this movement. The theme of suffering recursoften in his work, and he, too, concentrates attention on aspects of life which were often ignored in the nineteenth century; but he makes much less of dread and death than of man's cruelty, resentment, and hypocrisy of the immorality that struts around masked as morality. It is not the sombre and depressed moods that he stresses most but quite another state of mind which appears even much less often in the literature of the past: a"Dionysian" joy and exultation that says Yes to life not in a mood of dogged resolution, which is prominent in later German existentialism, but with love and laughter.

If we broaden our definition of existentialism to include preoccupation with extreme states of mind generally, it fits Nietzsche, too, as well as Rilke, the Dionysian poet. Nevertheless, the difference between Nietzsche's amor fati and the German existentialists is quite considerable, though in many ways French existentialism is much closer to him. Nietzsche's wit, his praise of laughter, and his sparkling prose, now limpid, now like granite, could scarcely be more unlike the vast and solemn tomes of Jaspers or the twilight style of Heidegger. Nor does Kierkegaard with his more epic and self-conscious humor, writing–in the words of an admirer–"almost with tongue in cheek," equal the devastating and incisive style of Nietzsche.

In the story of existentialism, Nietzsche occupies a central place: Jaspers, Heidegger, and Sartre are unthinkable without him, and the
conclusion of Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus sounds like a distant echo of Nietzsche. Camus has also written at length about Nietzsche; Nietzsche is the first name mentioned in Sartre's philosophic main work, L'être et Ie néant; Jaspers has written two whole books about him and discussed himin detail in several others; and Heidegger, in his later works, considers Nietzsche even more important than Jaspers
ever did. As we shall see, however, Heidegger's and Jaspers' Nietzsche pictures tell at least as much about the German existentialists as about Nietzsche.

Existentialism suggests only a single facet of Nietzsche's multifarious influence, and to call him an existentialist means in all likelihood an insufficient appreciation of his full significance. To be sure, his name is linked legitimately with the names of Jaspers, Heidegger, and Sartre; but it is linked no less legitimately with the names of Nicolai Hartmann and Max Scheler, and with Spengler, and with Freud and Adler, and with Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse, with Stefan George no less than with Rilke, and with Shaw and Gide as well as with Malraux. Almost every one of these writers saw something different in him.

Existentialism without Nietzsche would be almost like Thomism without Aristotle; but to call Nietzsche an existentialist is a little like calling Aristotle a Thomist.

from: Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, Walter Kaufmann, page 19-22

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Nietzsche, Kafka, and Literary Paternity

What things do we copy, writing and painting, we mandarins with Chinese brushes [mit chinesischem Pinsel], we immortalizers of things that can be written . . . ?
—Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Pardon that for a barren passion’s sake,
Although I have come close on forty-nine,
I have no child, I have nothing but a book,
Nothing but that to prove your blood and mine.
—W. B. Yeats, Responsibilities

Aut liberi aut libri.
—old monk’s saying

A good death consists in an illumination before dying. One such illumination is the prospect of cultural immortality, and yet it can seem odd to describe the death that consists in an illumination before dying as an affair of cultural immortality. But if we leave out of this account the good Gnostic death—which Kafka did not die, as witness his deathbed concern with the textual body of Josephine the Singer—both kinds of death we have described involve a cultural reference. In the instance of the ecstasy of writing, the product of Kafka’s states is literary works meant to be published, to see others’ light of day. In the instance of the final insight into one’s own law as obtained by the victim of a writing machine, the prisoner’s epiphany is witnessed and interpreted by a crowd of citizens.

Kafka is inclined to represent deaths as events that are witnessed, as “always already” public. The disgraceful death of Joseph K. is witnessed by his killers, as is that of the murdered Wese of “A Fratricide”:

Pallas, choking on the poison in his body, stood at the doubleleafed door of his house as it flew open. “Schmar! Schmar! I saw it
all, I missed nothing.” (CS 404)

When Kafka reflects on the deaths of his heroes as secretly a game—for he intends to die contentedly—he imagines a plurality of readers who share his heroes’ anguish:

someone is dying, . . . it is hard for him to do so, . . . it seems unjust to him, or at least harsh, and the reader is moved by this, or
at least he should be. (D2 102)

In “An Old Manuscript” the nomads “tear morsels out of the [ox’s] living flesh with their teeth” in the public square in front of the emperor’s palace (CS 417). The death of Gregor Samsa is an exception; but then again the story might have turned more than just “a bit horrible” (“fu¨ rchterlich”) if the family or the boarders or the charwoman had been on hand to watch the monster expire (LF 58, F 116). Death is an opportunity for public recognition; the prospect of cultural immortality depends on the medial means to attain it.

In “In the Penal Colony,” Kafka’s reflections on a public, medial death were left unresolved. In this chapter, I mean to put these terms—
the good death and the media (which involve the inscription of signs)— in conjunction once again, widening their context to include the example of a predecessor. My focus is Nietzsche’s and Kafka’s preoccupation with survival through their writings, which they sometimes figure as theoffspring of a literary paternity.

In the matter of Nietzsche and Kafka we have alluded (and will continue to allude) to the diffuse and inexplicit presence of Nietzsche in
Kafka’s work. The task now is to address their relation directly. But the outcome will not be a small monograph on “Kafka as a Reader of
Nietzsche,” because there is nothing in Kafka’s oeuvre resembling a direct, plainly articulated preoccupation with Nietzsche’s writings of the kind one finds in the work of Kafka’s contemporary Thomas Mann.

Unlike other young Jewish intellectuals in Vienna and Prague in the 1890s—such as Herzl and Werfel and Buber and to some extent
Kraus—Kafka was not ostentatiously engaged by Nietzsche. And yet he was well aware of him. According to Max Brod, while he and Kafka
were both law students at Charles University, they attended a lecture on Nietzsche that irritated Brod. Kafka replied by defending Nietzsche; and knowing Kafka’s character, we may assume he did so on the strength of having read him. To judge further from the evidence of a woman named Selma Kohn, we know that Kafka had read Thus Spoke Zarathustra—or at least parts of it: toward the end of her life she reported in a letterto Max Brod that in the summer of 1900, when she was a girl in Roztok, Kafka, a house guest, read her passages from Zarathustra.1 Kafka’s certifiable Nietzsche reception begins (and ends) with this probably unsuccessful attempt to seduce a young woman. We may conclude, then, that Kafka’s earliest, strongest experience of reading Nietzsche was marked by sexual desire, irresolution, misogyny—and writing. (Kafka would not have failed to note that Selma was the daughter of the chief postman.) Thereafter, we have additional recollections by Kafka’s friends that Kafka was interested in Nietzsche; yet in all his journals and correspondence, he never once writes the name “Nietzsche,” so that except for Selma Kohn’s letter to Max Brod, there are no irrefragably hard data connecting him to Nietzsche’s works.2 This state of affairs has led to the consensus that, like Thomas Mann in Doctor Faustus, Kafka did not have to mention Nietzsche by name since he is everywhere in his work, like salt in seawater.

With the customary route of influence blocked, the relations of the two must be an affair of the critic’s induction, of hermeneutic speculation. In selecting texts and topics of Nietzsche that lead to Kafka’s themes and aper¸cus, one will be following one’s own bias.4 The path I shall take addresses Kafka as a reader of Nietzsche on the question of literary paternity—the relation of the producer of literature to his products as male parent to offspring. The issue is not one of a hypothetical paternal relation between Nietzsche and Kafka. That Kafka read Nietzsche as a young man and was captivated by what he read should not suggest that his literary personality came out of Nietzsche as, let us say, Kafka’s story “The Judgment” came out of him, “like a regular birth” (D1 278). We have more than once mentioned Kafka’s concern for a sort of cultural immortality through his writings; this concern has also come to be reflexively cast back upon him in the matter of the survival of his manuscripts. I am asking about this same issue in a different way. The question is Nietzsche’s and Kafka’s own views on literary paternity, a subject on which they did indeed have strong views; this allows us to formulate a relation between them on the basis of their shared illusions and critique.

Now, even to consider “literary paternity” of a “proper” or legitimate kind is to strike a defiantly modernist stance, for this stance is
radically anti-Platonic, and, in Nietzsche’s words, modernity is “the fight against Plato.”5 Literary paternity, the conjunction of male acts of writing with live proper offspring, joins what Plato’s Socrates put asunder, even if this figure remains well within the orbit of his influence. The metaphor of literary paternity is of Socratic origin, but the notion of a proper literary paternity is for Socrates untrue or incomplete.

Plato’s translator and commentator Benjamin Jowett sums up Socrates’s position in the Phaedrus:

Writing is inferior to speech. For writing is like a picture which can give no answer to a question, and has only a deceitful likeness of a living creature. It has no power of adaptation, but uses the same words for all. It is a sort of bastard and not a legitimate son of
knowledge, and when an attack is made upon this illegitimate progeny, neither the parent nor anyone else is there to defend it. . . .

to be continued

* this article quote from chapter 5 of Lambent traces: Franz Kafka / Stanley Corngold, 2006, Princeton University Press.

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Nietzsche, Dionysus and Apollo

Nietzsche does not fit any ordinary conception of the philosopher. He is not only remote from the world of the professorial or donnish philosopher, from tomes and articles, footnotes and jargon -- in brief, from the more modern image of the philosopher. He is equally far from the popular notion of the wise man: serene, past passion, temperate, and Apollonian. But this is clearly -- for those of you willing to explore -- part of Nietzsche's point: that is, to offer a new image, a philosopher who is not an Alexandrian academician, nor an Apollonian, but Dionysian.

Apollonian and Dionysian are terms used by Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy to designate the two central principles in Greek culture. The Apollonian, which corresponds to Schopenhauer's principium individuationis ("principle of individuation"), is the basis of all analytic distinctions. Everything that is part of the unique individuality of man or thing is Apollonian in character; all types of form or structure are Apollonian, since form serves to define or individualize that which is formed; thus, sculpture is the most Apollonian of the arts, since it relies entirely on form for its effect. Rational thought is also Apollonian since it is structured and makes distinctions.

The Dionysian, which corresponds roughly to Schopenhauer's conception of Will, is directly opposed to the Apollonian. Drunkenness and madness are Dionysian because they break down a man's individual character; all forms of enthusiasm and ecstasy are Dionysian, for in such states man gives up his individuality and submerges himself in a greater whole: music is the most Dionysian of the arts, since it appeals directly to man's instinctive, chaotic emotions and not to his formally reasoning mind.

Nietzsche believed that both forces were present in Greek tragedy, and that the true tragedy could only be produced by the tension between them. He used the names Apollonian and Dionysian for the two forces because Apollo, as the sun-god, represents light, clarity, and form, whereas Dionysus, as the wine-god, represents drunkenness and ecstasy.

Finally, a word or two from Walter Kaufmann:



Nietzsche's ideas about ethics are far less well known than some of his striking coinages: immoralist, overman, master morality, slave morality, beyond good and evil, will to power, revaluation of all values, and philosophizing with a hammer. These are indeed among his key conceptions, but they can be understood correctly only in context. This is true of philosophic terms generally: Plato's ideas or forms, Spinoza's God, Berkeley's ideas, Kant's intuition all do not mean what they would mean in a non-philosophic context; but scarcely anybody supposes that they do. In Nietzsche's case, however, this mistake is a commonplace -- surely because few other philosophers, if any, have equaled the brilliance and suggestiveness of his formulations. His phrases, once heard, are never forgotten; they stand up by themselves, without requiring the support of any context; and so they have come to live independently of their sire's intentions.

image caption: The Theater of Dionysus is said to be the place where Greek tragedy began.

[Source: Walter Kaufmann, From Shakespeare to Existentialism: An Original Study (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), pp. 207-8.]

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Nietzsche's idea of "the overman" (Ubermensch)

Nietzsche's idea of "the overman" (Ubermensch) is one of the most significant concept in his thinking. Even though it is mentioned very briefly only in the prologue of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, it might be sensible to conceive that Nietzsche had something in his mind about how a man should be more than just human-all-too-human, regardless if he was one or not. All these ideas had been pondered on and developed though all his works. The concept then seems to reveal much about the way Nietzsche saw life. This essay will attempt on seeing through, as much as possible, the idea of overman by Nietzsche and life from the point of view of an overman.

An overman as described by Zarathustra, the main character in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, is the one who is willing to risk all for the sake of enhancement of humanity. In contrary to the last man whose sole desire is his own comfort and is incapable of creating anything beyond oneself in any form. This should suggest that an overman is someone who can establish his own values as the world in which others live their lives, often unaware that they are not pregiven. This means an overman can affect and influence the lives of others. In other words, an overman has his own values, independent of others, which affects and dominates others? lives that may not have predetermined values but only herd instinct. An overman is then someone who has a life which is not merely to live each day with no meanings when nothing in the past and future is more important than the present, or more precisely, the pleasure and happiness in the present, but with the purpose for humanity.

In Nietzsche?s view, an overman should be able to affect history indefinitely. He will keep reentering the world through other people?s minds and affect their thoughts and values. Napolean who is highly admired by Nietzsche may be seen as an example here since he changed and created orders in Europe. What he did effects greatly in how Europe is today. This idea agrees with another of his most significant idea, the idea of the will-to-power. He asserts that life is the will-to-power. Although it is hard to say exactly what he meant by that term, it can be described as something, which underlies how human thinks, behaves and acts in all circumstances. He views that a human being is always in a constant struggle to quench his own desire. This is shown in the context of power used to exclude desires of others that is in conflict to his, power that is used to achieve what they desire. A living thing always seeks to discharge its strength, not only to survive but to power and this sometimes results in violent behaviour which is, allegedly by Nietzshce, intrinsic to the nature of men. However, the way to will can be different, constructive or destructive. My interpretation would then be that an overman uses the will-to-power to influence and dominate the thoughts of others creatively from generation to generation. In this way, his existence and power live on even after he dies.?

Nietzsche also has the answer to life that seems suffering. His answer, which is expressed in the same book of Zarathustra, is an attitude towards life that helps one overcome the feeling of its meaninglessness. It starts with the idea that life is an eternal recurrence with no beginning and no end but a repetition of the very same life over and over again. With all sufferings, unhappiness and misdeeds in life, one may feel cursed and despaired if he inevitably were to repeat the same life with the same pain and joy. However, the most important point may not be whether life is really an eternal recurrence. Rather, although not explicitly stated, the important point is that an overman should view it differently such that in the very same life, there has been a moment that it redeems everything else. It then makes him content with and happy to repeat that very same life again and again. He has got the feeling of unity of creation and destruction, good and bad taste of life and is able to say that life is good even it may seem terrible and questionable. He views all the past actions, silly or wise, accidental or achieving, as necessity of becoming himself. Therefore he can redeem himself and thus be willing to repeat the same life again. Some may even say that ?it was? and ?thus I willed it? even though he knows well that one cannot will backward and there are many other limitations in life. It implies that living a life of an overman is to live with the knowledge of what has already happened and constant reinterpretation according to it.? Clearly, an overman is then someone who can, with appreciation, face life that may seem so suffering and absurd, knowing that the basic conditions of life will not change even when he is in the ideal state of an overman.

In a sense, overman is about self-overcoming. It involves an attitude towards life when one may feel despaired and feel life is meaningless. It is about the way to deal with ?truth? not in direct manner with straightforward rules as in rationalism, but more like a sensitive mix of trickier indirect approaches. As he compared this with winning a woman?s heart, those who approach clumsily and directly will bound to failure and hence left dispirited. When compared to Kantian view of truth, it can be seen that going straight into finding an absolute naked truth may leave one unsastisfied with questions that remain unanswered. Instead, Nietzsche suggested the way to tackle this by going along with it and take it as it is. One will then feel content and happy with the life that may be so questionable.

Another characteristic used to describe an overman originated in his earlier work, The Birth of Tragedy. In this book, the notion of Apollonion and Dionysian principles is used with respect to his analysis of the Greek tragedy. They are used to describe two principles men use in thinking which consequently determine actions. Apollonion principle is the principle of light, rationality, order and clear boundaries whereas Dionysian is the principle of the dark, irratioanality, the collapse of order and boundaries. The Apollonion views an individual as separate from other reality and hence can be viewed dispassionately with rationality. On the other hand, the Dionysian views things as a living whole where one is a part of a larger reality. The Apollonion therefore involves no passion or emotion but pure reasons with order whereas the Dionysian is passionate, dynamic and unpredictable. Nietzsche believes that a balance of the two principles is essential in order to have some meanings in life. He seems to be very fond of art and viewed that artistic works, paintings, plays, literature or music exhibit a great deal of Dionysian principle in the form of creativity. In his later work, the importance of the Dionysian principle in living a life with values and meanings is expressed clearly. He views that the highest state attainable by a man can be achieved when life is conceived in terms of the realisation of the Dionysian ideal of the overman. That means one must realise and accept his own Dionysian nature and use it appropriately.

From my point of view, Nietzsche must have treated art as something higher than ordinary, mass-conventional logic and rationality such as that in science for he admired creativity and beauty in art above all things. A person who will be viewed by Nietzsche as an overman is then more likely to be an artist who uses his Dionysian principle and way of thinking and feeling to create works that carry particular individual?s picture or interpretation of the world. His values may or may not be the same as any other but a good artist should be able to combine creativity with his perception of the world and life and express it well in his work. On comparison to Aristotle who views that the most desirable state of a person is a philosopher who contemplates, Nietzsche viewed traditional philosophers during his time as people who did not really affect the real world outside and usually their traditional philosophical works were merely self confession. It can then be seen that his value is highly placed upon the concept of Dionysus and therefore he praised the Greek civilisation where a lot of creativity took place even more than in present society. Nietzsche accepted that Socrates did affect the history greatly, which is the characteristic that Nietzsche valued. However, he blamed Socrates for the western society and culture that emphasised the Apollonion principle too much. Socrates was thought to have gone too far in defending rationality. He even viewed that we could use reasoning in everything so that the nature?s flaws can be corrected. It is then what the western dreams of and pursues up until now through science and technology. This is the view that does not accept human limitation, that men are powerless and have no control but always places men on the top of everything. In contrast, Nietzsche views that an overman must be able to accept these limitations and can face it in the eternal recurrence. Nietzsche must have felt that the western culture had put less and less significance on artistic creativity and passion that mental and spiritual power which create beauty in life have fewer and fewer places in the modern society.

Emotion is one of the attributes of Dionysus and is also one of the entities which Nietzsche defended. He views that emotion is natural. Its repression or suppression is psychologically disastrous. This also includes sexuality. He attacked Christianity for its traditional value that places bars on emotion and impulse and this is viewed by Nietzsche as self-denying. He disagrees on inhibiting and thwarting human own nature. Rather, an overman must accept his own nature and divert the energy of primitive impulses into a culturally, higher or socially more acceptable, activity. This is exactly what should happen to a good artist on creating his work of art. To him, the Dionysian is not completely dark and evil as opposite to the Apollonion which is associated with light and reason. The Dionysian is rather viewed as natural, both good and bad just like any ordinary human being. It is in every human nature. With a right balance with the Apollonion and with the right use, a burst of creativity is the result. However, it is usually the case that when the Apollonion principle mixes the Dionysian, it tends to suppress the Dionysian. As a result, the Dionysian principle is expressed in a destructive way. Basically, an overman must be able to control this and divert the Dionysian power into something creative. To Nietzsche, Dionysian is profoundly irrational rather than negatively or stubbornly irrational.

?In the present age where science and rationality are highly valued, I realise that it is hard to accept the negative side of being rational since it seems to be the most reliable tool in treating others, living together and judging. Without it, society can be chaotic and too much disordered for no control is imposed on the irrational ones who do not use the Dionysian principle in a productive way. However, I agree with Nietzsche in the beauty of the product created out of Dionysian principle and feel that the right mix of Apollonion and Dionysian will make the world much nobler, not in the luxurious sense but aesthetic one. The world with no passion and emotion will be an unnatural one and this special property, among others, of human that differs from other animals will be lost.??????

Nietzsche might or might not consider himself an overman but he surely determined to be a means or bridge who brings closer to reality an emergence of an overman. In his view, men are not born equal. He always stresses on the difference of men and hence in contrast to Marx who includes everyone into his ideal society. For Nietzsche, there are only some capable and talented who qualifies to be an overman from his point of view. Therefore, he is usually perceived superficially as an elitist which might have brought down the value of his thinking. To me, it is a fact that is hard to swallow for all of us and quite sceptical on the ability of men. However, it is the case, at least throughout the history of mankind up to the present, for men are educated differently and experience different things. Nevertheless, Nietzsche?s thinking provides some space for this. He says that his ideal is not necessarily everyone?s universal ideal. Each of us values things differently and therefore his overman may not be the same as others? overman. He consequently urges for revaluation of traditional values such as, the supression of emotion, the wholeheartedly devoted rationalism. An overman, in his view, should not be restricted by tradition nor bounded by convention but has independent values of his own.???????

From all that is shown above, we may say that Nietzsche?s overman must be able to affect history indefinitely, conceives life in terms of Dionysian realisation and is able to divert Dionysian principle into something creative. With this kind of attitude and the realisation of his own limitation in life, he would then be able to face life, look back with satisfaction, realising that all pasts make him what he is today, and hence feel happy if he were to repeat that very same life eternally. An overman should then be content with his own life and appreciate every bit of it even though some of them are painful and suffering. He spends each day of his life creating beauty, which affects the minds of others through out the time, knowing that his life has values and meanings since his existence of will-to-power will live on indefinitely.?




References

1) The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, ed. B.Magnus and K.M.Higgins, Cambridge University Press, 1990.

2) Nietzsche, Life As Literature, Alexander Nehamas, Havard University Press,1994.

3) Nietzsche for Beginners, M.Sautet, Writers and readers, 1990.

4) Nietzsche:A Critical Reader.

5) Philosophy II lecture handouts.

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