NIETZSCHE AND THE PRE-SOCRATICS

Previously we looked at the early works of Nietzsche the philologist, where unmistakable traces of him as a philosopher can already be found. This entry deals with his first undisputable philosophical work, where we can find unmistakable traces of him as a philologist, which should not come as a surprise at all.

Nietzsche has many interesting things to say about the pre-Socratics, and these have been properly directed into the PreSocratica section. This entry is not so much about these early Greek philosophers, as it is about their general assessment by Nietzsche, and about how that assessment reflects on the distinguished subject of the present section.

This entry examines Nietzsche’s spiritual and intellectual connection to the great pre-Socratics. Nietzsche is a philosopher-poet, and they were too! But there is also an even finer connection, observed by Nietzsche, which places him unmistakably in their company. Unlike Plato or Aristotle or other philosophers who came after them and all of whom Nietzsche calls “hybrid types,” the pre-Socratics are “pure type” specimens, and so is Nietzsche.

Reading Nietzsche’s explanation of how the early Greek pre-Socratics stand out and differ from those who succeeded them (in his 1872-1874 Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks), I wonder which came first, the chicken or the egg? Was Nietzsche himself already a pre-Socratic in spirit, when he introduced himself to their bunch and found kindred spirits, or was his mind so much impressed by the pre-Socratic patterns of thinking that he would subsequently abandon his more or less traditional scholar’s career, and become, like them, an elemental force of nature? The answer to this is probably as complex as the one about the chicken and the egg, which is the reason why I have offered this rather beaten analogy, which has more pertinence to this case than to most others, where it is commonly used as a convenient cliché.

What sets them all apart, in Nietzsche’s view, is their common defining correlation not of a philosopher to a philosophy, but of a philosopher to his own unique character.

“…Every nation is put to shame, if one points out such a wonderfully idealized company of philosophers as that of the early Greek masters, Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Democritus and Socrates. All these men are integral, entire and self-contained and hewn out of one stone. Severe necessity exists between their thinking and their character. They are not bound by any convention, because at that time no professional class of philosophers and scholars existed.”

In other words, looking at each of these men, we see particular individuals, rather than representatives of particular schools of philosophy, as we would see, for instance, in the persons of Plato and Aristotle. Even though, these two giants had created their distinctive schools of Platonism and Aristotelianism, the fact of the emergence of such philosophical schools has a faint effect of de-personalizing the school founders. We as students of philosophy become more involved with the schools than with the persons who created them, and the difference here is more than a nuance. Our tête-à-tête with a school, being essentially impersonal, pushes us toward academism, to use the extremely apt Platonic word, rather than to the untrodden path of original, elemental thinking. Here is Nietzsche again:

“They all stand before us in magnificent solitude as the only ones who then devoted their life exclusively to knowledge. They all possess the virtuous energy of the Ancients whereby they excel the later philosophers in finding their own form and in perfecting it by metamorphosis in its minutest details and general aspect. For they were met by no helpful and facilitating fashion. Thus, together they form what Schopenhauer, in opposition to the Republic of Scholars, calls a Republic of Geniuses; one giant calling another across the arid intervals of ages, and undisturbed by a wanton noisy race of dwarfs creeping about beneath them the sublime intercourse of spirits continues.”

Next, Nietzsche makes a delightfully insightful observation how a whole nation can be seen not through a generalized abstract notion, but through an intellectual intercourse of particular individuals. The soul of a nation can be seen like a reflection of the moon in the lake of an individual soul (this metaphor is mine).

“Of this sublime intercourse of spirits, I have resolved to relate those items, which our modern hardness of hearing might perhaps hear and understand; meaning, certainly, the least of all. It seems to me that those old sages from Thales to Socrates have discussed in that intercourse, although in its most general aspect, everything that constitutes for our contemplation the peculiarly Hellenic. In their intercourse, as already in their personalities, they express distinctly the great features of the Greek genius, of which the whole of Greek history is a shadowy impression, a hazy copy, which, consequently, speaks less clearly. If we could rightly interpret the total life of the Greek nation, we should ever find reflected only that picture which in her highest geniuses shines with more resplendent colors.”

Now is the right moment for Nietzsche to introduce one of his most significant leitmotifs:

“…Other nations have their Saints, the Greeks have Sages. Rightly it is said that a nation is characterized not only by her great citizens, but rather by the manner in which she recognizes and honors them. In other ages, the philosopher is an accidental solitary wanderer in the most hostile environment,-- either slinking through or pushing through with clenched fists. With the Greeks, though, the philosopher is not accidental; when in the Sixth and Fifth centuries, amidst the most frightful dangers and seductions of secularization, the philosopher appears and steps forth from the cave of Trophonios into the very midst of luxuriance, the discoverers’ happiness, the wealth and the sensuousness of the Greek colonies, then we perceive that they come as noble warners for the same purpose for which in those centuries Tragedy was born and which the Orphic mysteries in grotesque hieroglyphics give us to understand. The opinion of those philosophers on Life and Existence means much more than a modern opinion, because they had before themselves Life in a luxuriant perfection, and because with them, unlike us, the sense of the thinker was not muddled by the disunion engendered by the wish for freedom, beauty, fullness of life, and the love for truth that only asks: What is the good of Life at all? The mission which the philosopher has to discharge within a real Culture can’t be clearly conjectured out of our circumstances and experiences, for the simple reason that we have no such culture. It is only a Culture like the Greek Culture that can answer the question, as to that task of the philosopher, only such a Culture can justify philosophy, because such a Culture alone knows, and can demonstrate, why and how the philosopher is not an accidental chance wanderer, driven now hither, now thither. There is a steely necessity, which fetters the philosopher to a true Culture: but what if this Culture does not exist? Then, philosophers are incalculable and, therefore, terror-inspiring comets, whereas in the favorable case, they shine as the central star in the solar system of Culture. It is for this reason precisely that the Greeks justify the philosopher, because with them they are no comets.”

Eventually, in his broad preamble, Nietzsche elaborates on his preference for the pre-Socratic philosophers over the universally acknowledged giants of Greek philosophy, and I just cannot for the sole sake of brevity leave out this supremely significant and revealing passage:

“After such contemplations, it will be accepted without offense if I speak of the pre-Platonic philosophers as of a homogeneous company, and devote this paper to them exclusively. Something quite new begins with Plato; or it might be said with equal justice that in comparison with that Republic of Geniuses from Thales to Socrates, the philosophers since Plato lack something essential.

“Whoever wants to express himself unfavorably about the older masters may call them one-sided, and their Epigones with Plato as head, many-sided. Yet it would be more just and unbiased to conceive of the latter as philosophic hybrid characters, and of the former as the pure types. Plato himself is the first magnificent hybrid character, and as such finds expression as well in his philosophy as in his persona. In his ideology are united Socratic, Pythagorean, and Heraclitean elements, and, for this reason, it is not a typically pure phenomenon. As a person, too, Plato mingles the features of the royally secluded, all-sufficing Heraclitus, of the melancholy compassionate and legislatory Pythagoras, of the psycho-expert dialectician Socrates. All later philosophers are hybrid characters; wherever something one-sided does come into prominence with them, as in the case of the Cynics, it is not type, but caricature. Much more important, however, is the fact that they are founders of sects, and the sects founded by them are all institutions in direct opposition to the Hellenic culture and to the unity of its style prevailing up to that time. In their own way, they seek a redemption, but only for the individuals, or, at the best, groups of friends and disciples, closely connected with them. The activity of the older philosophers tends, although they were unconscious of it, towards a cure and purification on a large scale; the mighty course of Greek culture is not to be stopped; terrible dangers are to be removed out of the way of its current; the philosopher protects and defends his native country. Now, since Plato, he is in exile, and conspires against his fatherland.”

Nietzsche’s preamble ends with a half-hearted lament against the Fate, that left us with so precious little to delight in, as far as the extant works of the pre-Socratics have been able to reach us. Rather than retell what he says, it is best to quote him again:

“It is a real misfortune that so very little of those older philosophic masters has come down to us, and that all complete works of theirs are withheld from us. Involuntarily, on account of that loss, we measure them according to wrong standards and allow ourselves to be influenced unfavorably towards them by the mere accidental fact that Plato and Aristotle never lacked appreciators and copyists. Some people presuppose a special providence for books, a “fatum libellorum.” Such a providence, however, would, at any rate, be a very malicious one, if it deemed it wise to withhold from us the works of Heraclitus, Empedocles’ wonderful poem, and the writings of Democritus, whom the ancients put on a par with Plato, whom he even excels as far as ingenuity goes, and as a substitute put into our hand Stoics, Epicureans and Cicero. Probably the most sublime part of Greek thought and its expression in words is lost to us; a fate which will not surprise the man who remembers the misfortunes of Scotus Erigena or Pascal, and who considers that even in this enlightened century, the first edition of Schopenhauer’s Die Welt Als Wille Und Vorstellung had become wastepaper. If somebody will presuppose a special fatalistic power with respect to such things he may do so and say with Goethe: “Let no one complain about and grumble at things vile and mean,-- they are the real rulers,-- however much this be gainsaid!” In particular they are far more powerful than the power of truth, Mankind very rarely produces a good book, in which-- with daring freedom-- is intonated the battle song of truth, the song of philosophic heroism; and yet whether it is to live a century longer or to crumble and molder into dust and ashes, depends on the most miserable accidents, on the sudden mental eclipse of people’s heads, on superstitious convulsions and antipathies, finally, on fingers not too fond of writing, or even on eroding bookworms and rainy weather. But we shall not lament, but, rather, take the advice of the reproving and consolatory words, which Hamann addresses to scholars who lament over lost works:

“Wouldn’t the artist who succeeded in throwing a lentil through the eye of a needle have sufficient, with a bushel of lentils, to practice his acquired skill? One would like to put this question to all scholars who do not know how to use the works of the Ancients any better than that man used his lentils.” It may be added in our case that not one more word, anecdote or date needed to be transmitted to us than has indeed been transmitted, indeed, that even much less might have been preserved for us, and yet, we should have been able to establish the general doctrine that the Greeks justify philosophy.”

I will not be so presumptuous as to jump into agreeing with Nietzsche on the impeccable intellectual taste and spiritual nobility of the Ancient Greeks in treating their greatest thinkers as a superior caste. After all, it is very unfortunate and, indeed, rather suspicious that the works of the pre-Socratic philosophers had not survived the “annorum series et fuga temporum” in a much larger volume, if not in their entirety. But I am completely with Nietzsche in turning this Greek experience into a monumental history of the greatness of the Ancient Greek spirit, as a lesson to subsequent generations, as a gold standard of any nation’s value, as a powerful “Plutarchian” example for all of us to look up to.