More Nietzsche:
We, who hold a different belief--we, who regard the
democratic movement, not only as a degenerating form of political
organization, but as equivalent to a degenerating, a waning type
of man, as involving his mediocrising and depreciation: where
have WE to fix our hopes? In NEW PHILOSOPHERS--there is no other
alternative: in minds strong and original enough to initiate
opposite estimates of value, to transvalue and invert "eternal
valuations"; in forerunners, in men of the future, who in the
present shall fix the constraints and fasten the knots which will
compel millenniums to take NEW paths.
Note the word: "compel."
To teach man the future of
humanity as his WILL, as depending on human will, and to make
preparation for vast hazardous enterprises and collective
attempts in rearing and educating,
One "vast hazardous enterprise and collective attempt in rearing and educating" occurred in Soviet Russia. Another occurred in Germany.
in order thereby to put an end
to the frightful rule of folly and chance which has hitherto gone
by the name of "history" (the folly of the "greatest number" is
only its last form)--for that purpose a new type of philosopher
and commander will some time or other be needed, at the very idea
of which everything that has existed in the way of occult,
terrible, and benevolent beings might look pale and dwarfed.
Note this curious juxtaposition: "philosopher and commander." The ordinary conception of a philosopher today is the professor, the scholar, the writer, the man of contemplation. Nietzsche is looking for a man of action. So we should not, I think, look to the universities to see whether Nietzsche's hope for a "new type of philosopher and commander" was fulfilled, but rather to the authors of What is to be Done? and Mein Kampf, who not only wrote and thought, but also took command of the destinies of nations. And yes, in the heyday of these men, one might say that all that had previously seemed terrible was pale and dwarfed.
The
image of such leaders hovers before OUR eyes:--is it lawful for
me to say it aloud, ye free spirits?
Is the phrase "free spirits" here meant ironically? Nietzsche has already said that his heroes would "compel" mankind along new paths; the opposite of freedom. Perhaps he means freedom for the "new type of philosopher and commander," not to be extended to, and rather to be at the expense of, "the greatest number?"
The conditions which one
would partly have to create and partly utilize for their genesis;
the presumptive methods and tests by virtue of which a soul
should grow up to such an elevation and power as to feel a
CONSTRAINT to these tasks; a transvaluation of values, under the
new pressure and hammer of which a conscience should be steeled
and a heart transformed into brass, so as to bear the weight of
such responsibility; and on the other hand the necessity for such
leaders, the dreadful danger that they might be lacking, or
miscarry and degenerate:--these are OUR real anxieties and glooms, ye know it well, ye free spirits!
They were not lacking. There occurred, indeed, a "transvaluation of values"; the Bolshevik, the Nazi, said with Milton's Satan: "Evil, be thou my good."
these are the heavy
distant thoughts and storms which sweep across the heaven of OUR
life. There are few pains so grievous as to have seen, divined,
or experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and
deteriorated; but he who has the rare eye for the universal
danger of "man" himself DETERIORATING, he who like us has
recognized the extraordinary fortuitousness which has hitherto
played its game in respect to the future of mankind--a game in
which neither the hand, nor even a "finger of God" has
participated!--he who divines the fate that is hidden under the
idiotic unwariness and blind confidence of "modern ideas," and
still more under the whole of Christo-European morality--suffers
from an anguish with which no other is to be compared. He sees at
a glance all that could still BE MADE OUT OF MAN through a
favourable accumulation and augmentation of human powers and
arrangements; he knows with all the knowledge of his conviction
how unexhausted man still is for the greatest possibilities, and
how often in the past the type man has stood in presence of
mysterious decisions and new paths:--he knows still better from
his painfulest recollections on what wretched obstacles promising
developments of the highest rank have hitherto usually gone to
pieces, broken down, sunk, and become contemptible.
But Nietzsche does not know what he means by "the greatest possibilities" or "promising developments," which is why he can only express himself vaguely and suggestively when he talks about it.
The UNIVERSAL
DEGENERACY OF MANKIND to the level of the "man of the future"--as
idealized by the socialistic fools and shallow-pates--this
degeneracy and dwarfing of man to an absolutely gregarious animal
(or as they call it, to a man of "free society"), this
brutalizing of man into a pigmy with equal rights and claims, is
undoubtedly POSSIBLE! He who has thought out this possibility to
its ultimate conclusion knows ANOTHER loathing unknown to the
rest of mankind--and perhaps also a new MISSION!
Nietzsche would no doubt be glad to know that the new type of philosopher and commander, the incarnation of the Will-to-Power, soon appeared, tearing tradition apart, despising "the greatest number," ravaging, conquering continents. The Bolshevik and the Nazi appointed themselves the lawgiver and the master race. They sought to "fix the constraints and fasten the knots which will compel millenniums to take NEW paths," to build a heaven-on-earth and a thousand-year Reich.
But then something strange happened. Nietzsche would perhaps not be disturbed that "the greatest number" condemn the new ubermenschen of Germany and Russia as evil, as monsters. That, he would no doubt say, is the "morality of timidity," the "herd instinct," the voice of the "rabble." But they failed in Nietzsche's own terms, too. The will-to-power, it turns out, does not make men strong. It turned out that the utilitarians, the democrats, the "pigmies with equal rights and claims," the free societies (no need for quotation marks), the men animated by "idiotic unwariness and blind confidence of 'modern ideas'" and "Christo-European morality," the rabble with their "parliamentary nonsense," could squash the Nietzschean ubermenschen like bugs. The Americans, who had so little will-to-power that even when the Europeans begged them, after WWI, to stay and lead, they brought their conquering army home with all possible speed, defeated, rather easily, the heirs of Frederick the Great. At times, e.g., in the fire-bombing of Dresden or the nuking of Hiroshima, they even exhibited the cruelty and abandon that Nietzsche idolized; and they did it so effectively precisely because they did not desire it or enjoy it.
Nor did the ubermenschen get the consolation prize of honor. It turned out that even Napoleon, a century of admiration for whom did so much to plant the seeds for the world wars and Nazism, could be admired only because he had traces of Christo-European morality. He did not exult in "the law of thousand-fold perishings"; or to be more specific, he did not commit many murders. He claimed to be an orthodox Catholic and was crowned emperor by the pope. For Hitler there were no garlands, no eulogies; he inspired no poets. There was nothing noble about Hitler, precisely because he had thrown out the old morality. No heroic death for Hitler; he died in a bunker, by suicide, after marrying a wench-- another indignity, Nietzsche, that despiser of marriage, might think. And yet it is not that Nietzsche's "new type of philosopher and commander" merely happened to degenerate or miscarry, and I think even Nietzsche might have been honest enough to admit that, could he have witnessed the event. It was not accidental but essential to Hitler, to the type Hitler represented, that his death was not noble, bold, grand, heroic, picturesque or inspiring, but wretched, pathetic, ignoble, cowardly, and meaningless. This is simply what happens to men who abandon morality for the sake of the will-to-power. Nietzsche was too stupid, too wilfully blind to grasp the great mysteries: the meek shall inherit the earth. And You have scattered the proud in the imaginations of their hearts.
Nietzsche's hopes were fulfilled, in another, ironic way: the destiny he predicted for the ubermenschen, fell to the rabble instead. It was the great democracies, represented by Churchill and Attlee and Roosevelt and Truman, who would "fix the constraints and fasten the knots which will compel" -- or, persuade-- "millenniums"-- or at least, decades-- "to take NEW paths." In founding the United Nations, in forming NATO, in "making the world safe for democracy," they led humanity into new paths of peace, burying, without honors, the age of noble savagery which of which Nietzsche was the ignominious prophet.
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