BEYOND THE POETRY OF NOSCE TE IPSUM

Our next Nietzschean work is Zur Genealogie der Moral, and I start with a comment on its Preface.

Contemplating Nietzsche’s philosophy, we must never underestimate its poetic power. But falling under the spell of his poetry, we must never forget the depth of philosophy in those poetic waters. Nietzsche is a true philosopher poet.

This fairly self-evident observation has already been made on more than one occasion, but never has it been more apposite than as we are reading Nietzsche’s Preface to his most ‘traditional’ (if this term can possibly be applied to Nietzsche), in the sense of most resembling a standard work of professional philosophy, opus: Zur Genealogie der Moral. The first section of the Preface is a richly poetic variation on the ancient Greek saying of unaccredited origin, best known in its Latin translation as nosce te ipsum, know thyself.

Here is that first section in toto:

We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge, and with good reason. We’ve never sought ourselves, ---how could it happen that that we should ever find ourselves? It has rightly been said: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” [Matthew 6:21]; our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge are. We are constantly making for them, being by nature winged creatures and honey-gatherers of the spirit; there is one thing alone we really care about from the heart--- “bringing something home.” Whatever else there is in life, so-called “experiences”- which of us has sufficient earnestness for them? Or sufficient time? Present experience has, I am afraid, always found us “absent-minded”: we cannot give our hearts to it, not even our ears! Rather, as one divinely preoccupied and immersed in himself into whose ear the bell has just boomed with all its strength the twelve beats of noon suddenly starts up and asks himself “what really was that which struck?” so we sometimes rub our ears afterward and ask, utterly surprised and disconcerted, “what really was that which we have just experienced?” and moreover: “who are we really?” and afterward as aforesaid, count the twelve trembling bell-strokes of our experience, our life, our being--- and alas! miscount them.--- So we are necessarily strangers to ourselves, we do not comprehend ourselves, we have to misunderstand ourselves, for us the law “Each is furthest from himself” applies to all eternity--- we are not men of knowledge with respect to ourselves. (Nietzsche: Preface to Zur Genealogie der Moral, July 1887. Translator: Walter Kaufmann.)

It is eminently commendable, particularly with such breathtakingly poetic expressiveness, to comment on our lack of self-knowledge, but as long as we stay with the mere admonition “nosce te ipsum” without explaining why it is so necessary to “know ourselves,” our admonition falls flat. It is difficult enough to start knowing ourselves, in the first place, but without knowing why it is virtually impossible.

And Nietzsche does not disappoint us on that account. Why should he start his Preface to the Genealogy of Morals with the poetry of nosce te ipsum, unless he wanted to move beyond the poetry to the philosophy of it. His answer is now obvious and exciting: we are not competent at all to talk about the origins of morality, unless we look for these origins within us, and only then project our findings on the outside world and society.

It is only bearing this in mind that Nietzsche’s Preface in its totality starts making complete sense, and now we have our answer.