GRAFICAS Y ANALISIS

it is the precondition of the achievement of the Übermensch that the majority of

Mankind should suffer. In ‘The Greek State’, the third essay of the Five Prefaces

Nietzsche justifies slavery in the ancient world as a necessity to ensure great men: ‘The suffering of wretchedly living people must be increased in order to facilitate the production of an artistic world by a limited number of Olympian humans’ (KSA 1 p. 767).

On the individual level too, the self cannot produce a wider horizon of self­ interpreting and self-creation except by overcoming resistance, by suffering. In the

Twilight of the Idols he remarks that ‘Today the individual can only be made pos- {

sible by pruning,’ adding that the root of modem decadence lies in the refusal to ac­ cept this need for discipline and restraint (KSA 6 p. 143). Modernity is decadent because it seeks to deny, in a manner similar to the ascetic ideal of metaphysics, the

vital flux which constitutes the authentic self. The Cartesian subject is posited as a i

substance untainted by the dynamics of the external world. Plato's soul is immor­ tal, and not only does one lead a just life to be sure of a healthy soul, but also with an eye to the possible judgement in the afterlife which Rhadamanthus might pass on

one's actions. In the Phaedo Plato's Socrates sees the symmetrical harmony of the

soul as an indication of its immortality, of its resistance to change and decay. Likewise Modernity seeks rest from the ceaseless struggle and conflict which de­

termines the self and which is the source of the energies for self-overcoming. In I

contrast, Nietzsche's anti-metaphysical rejection of the possibility of absolute knowledge, combined with his adoption of the dialectic of hermeneutics with its implicit goal of attaining the Absolute means that there never can be a moment of satiety, of rest. Will to power will always be confronted by the possibility of more, indeed life itself can never be fully exhausted, for it is always possible to produce

more interpretations, as Nehemas has a r g u e d . 2 3 In contrast, Nietzsche writes of

the modern human that ‘his most fundamental longing is for the war which he is to finally come to a stop; happiness is to him . .. pre-eminently the happiness of resting, of being undisturbed, of being sated, of unity achieved at last’ (KSA 5 p.

120-1) and compares him to the higher type of individual, whose instinct to live is born of precisely the opposite drive, the drive to wage war, the refusal to be satis­ fied, the individual who has achieved self-mastery, but only the mastery of his drives in order to direct them towards dissolving his own being and resurrecting another. ‘Thus arise those magical ungraspable and unfathomable ones, those enigmatic humans predestined to victory and seduction, whose most beautiful ex­ pression is Alcibiades and Caesar. . . amongst artists perhaps Leonardo da Vinci’ (ibid. p. 121). The greatness of mankind is not to be sought in the noble simplicity

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in the ascetic ideal of self-knowledge and self-denial. It is rather more to be found in ‘his range and multiplicity, in his wholeness in the manifold’ (KSA 5 pp. 146- 7).

The ideal self in Nietzsche, the Übermensch as representative of the ideal individual in a post-metaphysical culture, is one whose status is always provisional

and contingent. It is an openness to its constant potentiality for new inteipretations 1

of self and the world, a form of individual being which always awaits its own

dissolution. As Nietzsche says, ^Losing oneself. Once one has found oneself one 4

must understand how from time to time to lose oneself . . . For to the thinker it is |

disadvantageous to be tied to one person all the time’ (KSA 2 p. 689). Yet this is

far from approximating to Haar's conception of a being who willingly adopts the 4

multiplicity of roles given him by the social body, who rejoices in the play of roles

and the dissimulating adoption of masks. For the Übermensch is a solitary being. f

The implicit parallel I have drawn between the Übermensch and Heidegger's au- |

thentic Dasein is also no accident. In his openness to ever further potential ways of acting and being, the Übermensch offers a striking anticipation of authentic Da-

sein's openness to its ownmost potentiality for being. So too, like authentic Dasein, #

the Übermensch pays no attention to the babble of ‘das Man’ in order to follow his own peculiar path.

Greatness does not lie in the herd; democracy and utilitarianism, with their concern for the common weal can only bring about a decline of human existence and a weakening of the instincts. Nietzsche writes ‘He shall be greatest who can be most solitary, most hidden, most deviant, the human being beyond good and evil, the master of his virtues, the one who is overrich in will’ (KSA 6 p. 147). One hesitates to actually name a figure who could embody those values which Nietzsche

views as paradigmatic, yet his comments on Goethe in Twilight of the Idols make

clear the kind of person he envisages. Goethe, notes Nietzsche, has the naturalness of the Renaissance man, whereby he refers to that kind of person for whom exis­ tence is a constant challenge to grow. ‘He enlisted the aid of history, natural sci­ ence, Antiquity, especially Spinoza, and above all practical activity’ notes Niet­ zsche. ‘He didn’t cut himself off from life, he plunged himself into it; he was not disheartened and took as much as possible on himself, over himself, into himself. What he wanted was wholeness; he fought against the separation of reason, sensi­ bility, feeling, w ill. . . he disciplined himself for totality, he created himself. . . ’ (KSA 6 p. 151). Goethe is the ideal future kind of individual, who keeps himself open to as many styles of understanding and being as possible, yet without lapsing into the modern hankering for absolute freedom, which as noted earlier, leads to a

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