Nietzsche: A Critical Life
Hayman, Ronald
NIETZSCHE: A CRITICAL LIFE Ronald Hayman/Oxford/$19-95 John Wettergreen Well before he went mad in 1889, Nietzsche predicted that the twentieth century would be characterized by global wars,...
...This optimistic disjunction of culture from politics is not only un-Nietz-schean, it is unrealistic...
...Every detail which one could reasonably wish to know, and more, is here: not only Nietzsche's birth (October 15, 1844, in a parsonage in Prussian Saxony), but also his breakfast menus, and the state of his bowels and of the sofas in his quarters...
...Before he finished his dissertation, he was appointed at Basel...
...In politics, Nietzsche's influence is or ought to be small, because he had contempt for the day-to-day maneuvers of politicians, and was "anti-democratic" and "intolerant" (sic) of "the lower orders...
...One could hear the same story from any tenured faculty-member at any American university...
...As Nietzsche remarked, "The only thing of interest in a refuted philosophy is the personal element...
...Nietzsche's archives are a goldmine for psychobiographers, and Hayman has dug deep...
...Hayman's thesis is beautiful, but it is also difficult to demonstrate.* On the one hand, the demonstrator would have to think through Nietzsche's inhuman thoughts, thus rendering himself mad, and so unable to publish the results of his inquiry...
...There he worked hard teaching classics and philosophy (thirteen semester hours, three to five preparations), and publishing...
...At Leipzig University, he impressed professors and tried to overcome his reputation as a drudge by joining a fraternity...
...The super-man is the type to be created by a culture dedicated to values loftier than those of any previous civilization...
...On the other hand, he predicted that during this century a global society of consumers and producers would develop, and that the deepest longing of its members would be for comfort and convenience...
...In this genre, trivial gossip can appear to be important...
...If Nietzsche's own radical relativism could be shown to have driven him mad, i.e., rendered him incapable of leading a fully human life, then, the author supposes, it would be proven that "the belief that every belief is false...
...After all, that is what Wittgenstein, Freud, Foucault, and any number of other contemporary intellectual heroes, and not a few culture-vultures, have done...
...For example, he attributes some of his writings to the mountain air, others to his father's influence, others to diet or indigestion...
...No serious interpretation of them is possible without facing the present crisis of the West...
...Indeed, Hayman asserts that no adequate understanding of Nietzsche's writings is possible without the information supplied by this book...
...We have no option but to follow him," he asserts...
...For example, Nietzsche's critiques of Kant or Rousseau cannot be cited authoritatively without lending some weight to his contempt for everything egalitarian, and indeed for justice itself...
...Nietzsche did not suppose that the super-man would be the Nazi's "Blond Beast," but rather a "Caesar with the soul of Christ"-a different specimen...
...Unlike his books, Nietzsche's private life was ordinary...
...Ronald Hayman to the contrary notwithstanding, the converse does not hold: Not even Nietzsche's philosophy can be refuted by its personal element...
...Yet Hayman urges that Nietzsche's lead not be taken too seriously...
...thereafter, he was either well enough to write, or too sick to write...
...Or, as Nietzsche himself concluded in his psycho-autobiography, Ecce Homo, "I am one thing, my writings are another matter...
...If psychobiography were a worthwhile scholarly enterprise in any case, that would be the case of Nietzsche...
...Thus, when Nietzsche defined philosophy as the legislation of the future, he meant it: Values define civilizations, and philosophers make possible or, like Nietzsche, impossible belief in (certain) values...
...NIETZSCHE: A CRITICAL LIFE Ronald Hayman/Oxford/$19-95 John Wettergreen Well before he went mad in 1889, Nietzsche predicted that the twentieth century would be characterized by global wars, experiments conducted upon the whole human race, including the "merciless extinction" of whole peoples, and merely ideological politics...
...Indeed, Hayman's book itself is sufficient evidence that Nietzsche is now respectable in the English-speaking world...
...For example, his sister, who cared for him during the last years of his life, could run guided tours through the abode of the mad philosopher...
...Nietzsche did not let matters rest at "believing" that no belief (including this one) is true...
...Hayman supposes that this difficulty can be avoided by remembering, whenever one reads Nietzsche, that these are essentially the works of a madman, fragments of a shattered soul from which any sane person can select whatever happens to please...
...Although he never specified the values of the super-culture, he left no doubt that, in his opinion, all lesser cultures and human types could be annihilated for its sake...
...Nevertheless, Hayman does not attempt to refute the preemptive psychoanalysis of Ecce Homo...
...Thus, one is not surprised to read that "it was Freud's opinion that Nietzsche achieved a degree of introspection never achieved by anyone else and never likely to be achieved again...
...Such remarks gave Nietzsche a reputation for prescience even before he died in 1900, and the fact that he went mad after thinking about such matters enhanced this reputation...
...More precisely, his only remarkable action was writing, and of this activity itself, we can have no record, because he was too busy doing it...
...On the other hand, if the demonstrator is not driven mad, the thesis is trivial: At best, he would have demonstrated that relativism was bad for Nietzsche (assuming, of course, that insanity was not good for him...
...From his student days onward, he delighted in interpreting the greatest works of the greatest philosophers in the light of their personal prejudices, idiosyncratic tastes, foibles, gaffes, and stomach troubles...
...In Great Britain and the United States, this demand was dampened by Nietzsche's reputation as a philosophic founder of Nazism...
...To him, it is a first sign of madness, a delusion of grandeur...
...In sum, nothing in Nietzsche's private life could have inspired the least interest in anyone but his personal friends and family, if he had not written important books...
...The last man is the type which contemporary Western culture aims to produce, a being that lives for the sake of comfortable self-preservation...
...Hayman cannot take Nietzsche's definition seriously...
...Hayman's publication is, I think, quite sane...
...Nevertheless, he admits that he was, is, and must be "influential...
...He tried to persuade his readers of this view...
...Because these "values" (as he called them) were symptoms of the progressive degeneration of European life, Nietzsche's criticism of them constituted both a diagnosis and a cure...
...Public demand for news of Nietzsche's person or private life is nothing new in Germany...
...Rather, he hopes that Nietzsche's life-his insanity-will refute Nietzsche's philosophy...
...And an excellent teacher...
...Now Ronald Hayman's book supplies it to an extent hitherto unavailable in the English language...
...is not available to humanity...
...This man was not built for action...
...Sometimes he presented the crisis of the West as a choice between "the last man" and "the super-man...
...For example, two or three hundred students attended his lectures...
...Therefore, philosophic thought is pathological, because philosophers pride themselves on thinking free of every prejudice, feeling, and bodily desire...
...Nevertheless, Nietzsche took seriously philosophy's traditional demand that thought free itself from all outside influences, and accordingly, he felt compelled to interpret his own thought psycho-somatically...
...Still, his "cultural and intellectual influence" are "hard to exaggerate...
...This is not to deny that Nietzsche was a pleasant fellow, a good pianist, and a valuable friend...
...By undermining Western beliefs, Nietzsche hoped to force a crisis...
...Not content with mere documentation, Hayman also attempts to bring order to this mass of detail by engaging in psychobiog-raphy...
...X his conclusion would have been inconvenient for our author...
...Ruthlessly, he criticized everything that existed: socialism, conservatism, atheism, Christianity, "progressive ideas," tradition, egalitarianism, rationality, and every other cherished conviction of modern, Western civilization...
...His military career was cut short in a characteristic manner: Because his eyes were so poor, he collided with the pommel when trying to mount his horse (the best in the stable), injuring his chest severely...
...All thoughts, Nietzsche thought, are psychosomatic responses...
...at which point, Western civilization- and therefore humanity-would either die, or regain health...
...As I have suggested, however, Nietzsche's books are not mere magazines of momentary, mad insights, devoid of internal coherence...
...Of course, he was an intelligent child, who worked hard and did well at school...
...Moreover, he endured his share in human suffering:At thirty-six, illness forced him to retire from Basel...
...Moreover, others were no more reluctant to preserve the results of Nietzsche's self-analyses than he was to write them down: "By the time he was eight, his six year old sister was trying to preserve everything he committed to paper...
...none, I believe, are attributed to flatulence...
...Accordingly, he tried to demonstrate the falsity of all the most sacred beliefs of late modern, European culture...
...All the while, he hoped for better students...
Vol. 14 • May 1981 • No. 5
