x

 YO VOY A FORMAR UN NUEVO PARTIDO PARA LOS POBRES, EL PARTIDO VA A SER JEFFERSONIAN COMMUNISTA QUE TENGA COMO PRINCIPAL PREMISA ESTE PENSAMIENTO “El Partido Jeffersonian Communist Americano es la unión voluntaria de hombres y mujeres que, constituidos en partido político, se proponen participar democráticamente en la transformación revolucionaria de la sociedad y de sus estructuras políticas, mediante la articulación de un bloque social alternativo organizado en torno a la clase trabajadora y los sectores populares del pais, que, siendo socialmente y culturalmente hegemónico, permita la toma del poder político, el control de la actividad económica y, por tanto la superación del sistema capitalista y la construcción del socialismo en el Estado Americano, como contribución al tránsito hacia el socialismo en el plano mundial, con la perspectiva de la plena realización del ideal emancipador del comunismo.”

Sin vanguardia se pierde un siglo

 Sin vanguardia se pierde un siglo

Podemos afirmar que sin líder, sin vanguardia, no hay revolución. El líder, la vanguardia, provistos de una teoría revolucionaria, establecen una conexión con las masas y eso, masa más vanguardia, es lo que podemos llamar pueblo, capaz de fundar mundos, de cambiar la historia. La burguesía, la alta burguesia, la mediana burguesia y y la pequeña burguesía han prestigiado teorías que pretenden fracturar este binomio masa-vanguardia; de esta manera, masa sin líderes, líderes sin masa, son inofensivos para el sistema. Muchos intentos revolucionarios yacen sobre las cenizas de este binomio.

En Estados Unidos se vive un proceso de mantenimiento del capitalismo, que en su fase política contempla la instalación de una democracia burguesa con Biden o de una democracia fascista con Trump, , y el desmantelamiento de la vanguardia revolucionaria, dejar a la masa sin líderes revolucionarios, sólo en manos de ídolos de la publicidad, desmontar cualquier posibilidad de política grande en la que se disputan la dirección de la sociedad dos sistemas, el capitalismo y el Socialismo, convertir a la política en un torneo de farándula.

Este proceso avanza rápido, hoy presenciamos el bipartidismo, representado por el Partido Democrata y el Partido Republicano. Y orbitando este binomio, la izquierda atrapada en la lógica de las elecciones burguesas, sin estrategia. Este circo, este carnaval, funciona como un eficaz seguro del sistema capitalista. Las masas sin vanguardia comunista-revolucionaria se adormecen con el opio electoral.

Aún hay tiempo, el sistema tiene problemas para instalar la espiritualidad de su dominación, el sistema capitalista electoral se niega a la alternabilidad, tranca el juego electoral que ya casi tiene la mesa servida, los contrincante están allí esperando que comience la función. No obstante, en el futuro cercano estos obstáculos los superará, sea por acuerdos o por un golpe. Y entraremos en cien años de oscuridad.

Todo será más difícil, ya conocemos esta situación con las tinieblas de la democracia representativa, derrotada la referencia que fueron las protestas de los 1960s y 1970, el movimiento Occupy Wal-Street, derrotados, y los lideres progresistas revolucionarios asesinados todos por la derecha zionista , la masa huérfana deambuló como zombis en las arenas de la quincalla política. Todo se limitaba a cambios de hombres y la misma miseria material y espiritual.

En esta pretensión del mantenimiento del capitalismo,  ha conseguido reducir a la resistencia socialista americana a manifestaciones individuales, heroicas, sacrificadas, pero ineficaces. Ha perseguido a los líderes, los ha fusilado en el paredón de los medios de comunicación, en las redes, ha usado su poderoso sistema de comunicación del Estado.  Es perentorio que la vanguardia socialista aparezca, que la masa comience a identificar a su liderazgo, que comience el rescate del pensamiento y el ejemplo de John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, Abraham Lincoln, Malcolm X, Huey Newton, Fred Hampton, Eugene Debs. Es hora de reivindicar sus imagenes vapuleada por el Partido Republicano y el Partido Democrata. Que la masa sepa que John F. Kennedy y Martin Luther King viven, el Socialismo vive.

Hay esperanzas, la ventana revolucionaria que se abrió con John F. Kennedy y con Martin Luther King, aún no se ha cerrado, por allí anda la gente protestando, indica que hay resistencia. Es necesario dar un paso más, que aparezcan los líderes, el líder que agrupe a la vanguardia. Allí está la masa socialista, existe la teoría, , se conoce la meta estratégica, el Socialismo. Son condiciones muy buenas… la masa, la historia, los espera…

JOHN F. KENNEDY AND MARTIN LUTHER KING WILL COME BACK !!..

Recurrence-Awareness: Eternal Return or Epigenetic Evolutionary Biology?

 Review Essay

Recurrence-Awareness: Eternal Return or Epigenetic Evolutionary Biology?

Thomas Steinbuch

Review of Nietzsche and Eternal Recurrence, by Bevis E. McNeil, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. Print ISBN 978-3-030-55295-4; ebook ISBN 978-3-030-55296-1; number of pages XVI, 278.  Reviewed for New Nietzsche Studies, general editor Babette E. Babich.

Overview: Professor McNeil has written about the eternal recurrence from the perspective that it is objective cosmology for N (1.5). That position is vulnerable to the criticism that we do not find a proof of the ER in the published works but mostly in the notebooks. The exceptions are two passages from GS (109 and 341) but they are couched in metaphor. McNeil thus turns to Thus Spoke Zarathustra and states that there, in "Vision and Riddle" the metaphor of eternal recurrence is “strengthened and developed into a deductive proof” (99f)." He accepts Paul Loeb’s reading that together, “Vision and Riddle” and “The Convalescent” contain a prospective memory. Z has a dying prospective memory of the shepherd  and the snake that amounts and it shows up in fact in "The Convalescent" and this shows recurrence-awareness and so is a fictional presentation of evidence that the eternal recurrence is objective cosmology. But McNeil’s attempt to establish that N intended a deductive proof of the eternal recurrence as objective cosmology in “Vision and Riddle” fails because the context strongly suggests otherwise, and he does not address it. He does not address Laurence Lampert’s commentary on this section in Nietzsche’s Teaching that sharply calls the thesis he advances into question, stating: “this chapter seems to go out of its way to mock syllogistic or formal argument as a way of dealing with fundamental questions” (166). It is a scholarly lapse that McNeil does not engage this context, nor Lampert’s development of the foregoing critique to which the context of the deduction gives rise. Also in “Vision and Riddle” and “The Convalescent” in following Paul Loeb, McNeil would seem to assuming that, having left metaphor behind, there is only one literal reading possible and that is the reading of recurrence-awareness. I will challenge that inference with a different literal reading of recurrence awareness in “Vision and Riddle” and “the Convalescent” from an evolutionary biology perspective as epigenetic evolution of novel mental life, and raise the question of what “is true” might then mean in the statement “the eternal recurrence is true." 

      Along these same lines of establishing that N believed that the eternal recurrence was objective cosmology, McNeil presents the idea in Chapter 2 that Nietzsche found a precedent of his idea of the eternal recurrence as objective cosmology in the Stoics and Heraclitus, and in that chapter he relies on N.’s notebooks to make his case that the eternal recurrence for N was a cosmological project as it was for the Stoics. Although there is interesting material in Greg Whitlock’s translation of N.'s Pre-Platonic Philosophers lectures, they are very early in Nietzsche career, before the crisis of 1879 that is the starting point for his tragic wisdom in EH, that date specifically cited there for its importance in his self-discovery of the meaning of his inheritance from his father as the same year of life as his father’s death. He says the decline in 1879 set off his will to health out of which he made his philosophy, which would seem be an identification of origins. McNeil develops this connection from Heraclitus to the eternal recurrence, stating that in the fragments of Heraclitus “we find the originating core of N.’s philosophy of the eternal recurrence” based on the lectures (234f). It becomes his main criticism of Heidegger’s interpretation in section 4.5 that he overlooks the Heraclitean element of play in N.’s cosmology, so the connection of the ER to Heraclitus it a key connection for different arguments. But in his section 2.4.1 in his introduction to Greek Philosophy and the Eternal Recurrence, almost all the relevant citations of N.’s idea of the eternal recurrence that could link it to the Stoa are from the notebooks: WTP and one from an early notebook, and as I take it, Professor McNeil felt that by this point in his book he had established that N thought the eternal recurrence was objective cosmology in the published writings in 2.3.4, as the metaphorical trappings of GS were not to be found in the literal presentation in “Vision and Riddle” where, putatively, a deduction of eternal recurrence is given, so that the notebooks can now come into use. The one exception of note in this chapter, and it is cited here and in 1.6 on Eternal Recurrence and Ancient Greek Philosophy, and also cited as the text on which Heidegger relies for his connection of the ER to Greek cosmology (159, n. 7), is a citation at EH/Books/BT/3 where N writes that the eternal recurrence could have been taught by Heraclitus – the word “could” is important. In this passage, N.’s tracing to the Greeks goes back to the myth of Dionysus and the idea of rejoicing in the inexhaustibility of life even though the highest types are sacrificed, which he, N, says was a tragic wisdom and that he was, likely, the first philosopher to have tragic wisdom, and so, likely, first tragic philosopher. The tragic pathos of joy in destruction, which is the "Yes" saying pathos, became the Philosophy of Eternal Recurrence, (EH/Books/Z/1/). Maybe he is the first, he says, but traces of eternal recurrence are in Stoic cosmology and they received all their main ideas from Heraclitus. N mentions Heraclitus twice in EH/Books/BT/3, and in both cases the mention is that perhaps the tragic pathos of joy in destruction is what he, Heraclitus, was getting at, that Heraclitus may have been  a tragic philosopher too. That is what would be hard to ascertain, whether the philosophy of Heraclitus is a transposition of tragic wisdom. But reading EH from the beginning, by the time we reach this text in EH/Books, we have been already introduced to N.’s Dionysian tragic wisdom from chapter one, "Why I am So Wise," and a glance at that chapter shows that N.'s tragic wisdom is what he learned by his experience of his inheritance of the condition from his father of death in life, that it was a “stimulus to Mehrleben.” He was thrown a bad curve ball by his inheritance, he devised techniques of affirmative psychology to address renunciation, and he developed life in himself to Mehrleben, evolution beyond necessary survival adaptations. The subject matter of EH/Wise is N.'s evolution. EH/Wise is also heuristic in revealing that the starting point of his development was the “highest opposition” life can face (at the variant to the epigraph at KSA 13, 23[14]) and yet the ending turned out so well in Mehrleben, and so he has very great confidence in life's inexhaustibility and indestructibility no matter how deeply it is cut into. This is his ethos appeal. So, reading EH from the beginning, by the time we reach Books/BT/3, we recognize that in his statement there that his doctrine of the eternal recurrence is a philosophical transposition of tragic wisdom, the wisdom referred to is in EH/Wise, that the will to power in life needs resistance to bring itself up to the next level and brings resistance upon itself that it may do so, and did so in him to the point setting before him the highest opposition it had, but instead of being destroyed by it, he reached the highest rung on the ladder of life -- and this is testimony to how the will to power works in us. The takeaway from the reference to tragic wisdom in EH/Books/BT/3 is that the tragic wisdom he acquired by his experience of the inheritance of death in life from his father but that led to Mehrleben in EH/Wise is his autobiographical introduction to the idea of the eternal recurrence, of why he is in a position to speak so confidently in this matter. Heuristically, the message of the ER is that we should discipline ourselves against renunciation and a philosophy of pessimism, opposing it instead with a philosophical form of thinking that disciplines us to accept that there will be no remission of destruction, that destruction will be unconditional always, that it is not going to ease up for us, thus to embrace destruction as the law of evolution. To fully defeat philosophical pessimism we should think of the developmental character of life as being in a closed circle from which we cannot escape, that the circle keeps going on forever --  not that that thought makes literal sense as life cannot keep evolving to Mehrleben if it is going in a circle. But none of his wisdom, which makes an ethos appeal, is  relevant to cosmology as an a priori project The only mention of the eternal recurrence in EH/Wise is in Wise/3 final daft about how he cannot will the eternal recurrence out of an objection to the recurrence of his mother and sister; besides the gloss at Books/BT/3, there are two other mentions in EH, at Book/Z 1 and Z 6. McNeil quotes the text from EH/Books/BT/3 in two sections 1.6 and 2.4.1 connecting the eternal recurrence to the Stoics and Heraclitus, but the connection is not direct and cannot support McNeil’s reading that N.’s idea of the eternal recurrence had its origin in Heraclitus’s cosmology. The text at EH/Books/BT/3 says that the eternal recurrence has is origin in N.’s tragic wisdom, and so connects it to EH/Wise, yet, in section 4.6 on Dionysus and the Eternal Recurrence, McNeil associates Dionysian Übermütigkeit, prankishness, with Heraclitean play (240) without consulting EH/Wise. But N.'s fractured mind split into a second Döppelgänger self (Wise/3, superseded draft) is just in the context of this Dionysian "prankishness," and that is a context of evolution and the context we should be using to test whether Heraclitean cosmic play is in this thought, which, after all, is before the idea of evolution. One might also consult KSA 11: 26[243] on Dionysian Wisdom. In that notebook text, will to power in life chooses for destructive paths as worthy of eternal recurrence because they are recognized as part of the process of evolution, why else?  Finally, in EH/Books/BT/3, N refers us to TI, the chapter “What I Owe to The Ancients,” in TI/Ancients/5, and again N identifies himself as the philosopher of Dionysus and as the teacher of the eternal recurrence. There is no mention of Heraclitus in this chapter on the topic of what he owes to the ancients. When the text of EH/Books/BT/3 is studied in relation to texts relevant to it, it cannot bear the argumentative weight Professor McNeil puts on it. Both of McNeil’s attempts to read the eternal recurrence as objective cosmology in the two published works cited, here and in “Vision and Riddle” that do not couch it in the metaphorical language of GS that has caused others to reject it as cosmology, fail. The idea that the originating thought of the eternal recurrence appeared for N in his reading of Heraclitus fails as its actual origin is N.’s own original tragic wisdom of gratitude for death in life, as he states in EH, and the ER bears similarity to Heraclitus only if he too somehow possessed tragic wisdom and turned it into Philosophy as he, N, did. That makes the chapter on the Stoics incidental and makes the criticism of Heidegger for missing the Heraclitean element of play in the eternal recurrence cosmology a discussion entre eux. EH/Wise tells us about N.'s tragic wisdom. We learn that it is wisdom about the role of destructiveness to life in the workings of evolution in ourselves. Life seeks to develop itself to become more in and by power over a resistance which cuts into it. He survived the worst of it and that is his ethos appeal why he can set the heuristic of the ER before us. The tragic wisdom that he  transposed into the Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence is a set of empirical statements. 

EH/Wise/4 and Wise/5 contain affirmation psychology in the setting of N.’s development from the highest opposition to life to Mehrleben. There is use of recurring time in both sections. The central activity in each is how affirmative psychology elides the vengeful constructions of the art of the ill will. Mehrleben is the result because vengefulness is avoidance of will to power and affirmativeness lines us up with it: we become rich in life as we are not vengeful (Wise/6). It is clear that N evolved acquired characteristics per these psychologically affirmative exercises; he designated these as being privileges owed to his father in inheritance from him, and that is the evolutionary pathway. So, must we not ask whether the affirmative psychology of willing the eternal recurrence presented in Z performs an evolutionary role, just as do the affirmative psychological exercises in Wise/4 and Wise/5 presented in the work that was to autobiographically introduce affirmative thinking of the ER in UAW IV?      

EH is a work of introduction in which N revealed his psychology and it was to be the autobiographical introduction to his four volume Hauptwerk, UAW. Although it was not completed, all six plans for it culminate in the announcement of the Philosophy of Dionysus, the Philosophy of Eternal Recurrence of the Same, in book IV. A onetime subtitle for Ecce Homo was: „Ecce Homo, oder ein Psychologen-Problem: Warum ich Einiges mehr weiss,“ (KSA 14: 465), and the final subtitle of Nietzsche contra Wagner is „Aktenstücke eines Psychologen“ although it is cited with the same subtitle as the early subtitle for Ecce Homo in his letter to Naumann of December, 17 1888 (KSB 8: 1193) to bring it more into line with The Case of Wagner’s final subtitle – so persistent was N on getting us to understand his psychology, hoping to piggyback on the popularity of CW and communicate his psychology by way of being the antithesis of Wagner in NCW. “Why I am So Wise,” where the psychological problem is stated, stands out in EH as the only chapter that would have been expressly picked up on in UAW in one of the plans for a book from N.’s critical philosophy that was to be titled der Misosoph, (KSA 13, 11 [416]). EH/Wise is very important for the study of the ER.  In his letter to Naumann of November 6, 1888, (KSB 8: 1139) N says that because AC will have the benefit of the introduction of EH, the situation he faced five years earlier with Z, presumably the broad misunderstanding of Z, will be averted, which suggests that EH can be read as introductory to Z as well.  And, in Wise/3 superseded draft, the last line states that to understand anything at all of Z one must have, like him, a "foot beyond life," which phrase ties to his inheritance from his father. The precondition is in evolution: he enters a world of lofty things as a privilege owed [indirectly] to his father, and that is the world of Z: the implication is that that world came to be as evolutionary from the inheritance of death in life. Finally, and most relevantly, in the case of a text crucial for McNeil's and Heidegger's project of connecting the ER to Heraclitus's cosmology, in EH/Books/BT/3, N says that the psychology of joy in destruction, which is the psychology of the tragic poets, lies behind the idea of the ER. That psychology is in evidence in EH: it is the psychological problem of gratitude for death in life, which is his tragic wisdom.  These texts, together with the letter to Naumann, are the basis for my use of EH Wise/4 and Wise/5 on affirmation psychology for my exegesis of the ER in "On Redemption," that shows it does not document the McNeil/Heidegger thesis that the ER was objective cosmology for N. To sum up: the plan for a book, The Will to Power, was superseded by the work N stated to be his Hauptwerk, EH + UAW I-IV,  and we do not know that a deductive proof of the eternal recurrence would have appeared in Book IV. Furthermore, N.'s introductory autobiography of tragic wisdom that he transposed into the Philosophy of Dionysus of the ER, as he states in Books/BT/3, is a narrative of his evolution to Mehrleben. Wise/4 and Wise/5 with their disciplines of affirmative psychology, are autobiography of evolution and do not suggest that the intended follow up was to be the ER as objective cosmology. Also, although by the time of Wise/3 final draft N had dropped the plan for a four volume work, that text contains the one explicit mention of the ER in Wise, and we should note that the context in which it is mentioned there is the context of evolution, (KSA 6, 268, 16-18). But McNeil accepts Heidegger's view of the WTP notebooks as reliable in telling us what he thought about the ER although the project was superseded as a literary project.

In EH, Wise/4 and Wise/5, N presents autobiographical narratives of his affirmative psychology. Both open with a statement of beginnings in his inheritance from his father of death in life and have a terminus ad quem in Mehrleben. In a variant to the epigraph we read about how he created ein Mehr of life in himself „als Schöpfung, eine wirkliche Zuthat“ in having faced the highest opposition to life, which, revaluatively, is the highest prize life can get, KSA 13, 23[14]), and how life in him is now at the highest rung, Wise/1, 2nd sentence, and this is a narrative of evolution.

  In Wise/4 Nietzsche tells how he does not know the art of making others take and hold things against him, that no one has born him ill will. He adds the words "this too" in reference to this as being a privilege he owes to his father, his "incomparable father" -- so named lest we wonder how he could owe him so much, but it is because it is a negative debt and his father is incomparable in being the source of so consuming a negative effect. The referent of "too" is to the superseded draft of Wise/3, (KSA 14, 473) in which he says that he owes all his privileges to his father, but not either life nor the affirmation of life, and this now also includes the privilege that no one bore him ill will in Wise/4 and of not living among his equals, hard to do, in Wise/5. N neglected to make the correction when he sent in the final version of Wise/3 in which that line is not to be found. Wise/5 also opens with a reference to his father and also identifies a privilege, namely, of never living among his equals, but this section also explains his privilege to be the bearer of heavy guilt per the wrongdoing of others to him, as it is the privilege identified in Wise/4, but in Wise/5 the privilege is of not living among his equals, the privilege of not regarding himself as equally entitled not to be wronged, owed to his father as well. But these privileges belong to life and the affirmation of life, which did not come to him as inheritance from his father, he says as much, nor, obviously, as inheritance from him after life and the affirmation of life is excluded. The privileges have their origin in his "foot beyond life," which is the negative inheritance from his father, but then how did they come to him from that?  It is in this line also that N says he owes his privilege of entering a world of lofty and delicate things to his father and that one cannot understand a word of Z apart from entering from a foot beyond life. The world of lofty and delicate things he is privileged to be in is the world of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, owed indirectly to his father from the negative inheritance from him. So the privileges are owed his father by indirection, but then, to ask again, how did the privileges come from the negative inheritance? After the statement of privilege, the narrative of Wise/4 shifts from others as not having ill will against him to his having no ill will against others, even in cases in which he would be upholding a great value by doing having it. Nor does he have ill will against himself, and this (revaluation) marks him as an anti-Christian, he says. It is because he does not have ill will against others that others have never had ill will against him. What he did was affirmative – not having ill will towards others is affirmative, ditto in Wise/5, not blaming the wrongdoer for his wrongdoing as deserving punishment is affirmative. If he did not inherit the privilege of others not having ill will against him from his father but it is still owed him, it must be owed him indirectly, and what he inherited directly that it connects to must be whatever he was designating in the phrase above about having a foot beyond life together with its related expressions in the chapter, and of these most importantly in the riddle of Wise/1 of having already died as his father while still [having to] live and grow old as his mother, (my words in brackets). He owes his privilege of no one having ill will against him to his father, but by reason of his having no ill will against others, which leaves the only way the privilege can be traceable to his father to be if the ill will came from him. That means that his trait of bearing others no ill will was the reversal of that inherited ill will and was autogenetic with N, and that is a phenomenon of evolution on the path of Mehrleben. His privileges were acquired characteristics. He acquired the trait of not disprizing others in ill will and in  Wise/5, the trait of not being aggrieved when he is wrongfully treated and is in the right. There, the privilege is not asserting the equal right not to be wronged, not living among his equals. Relinquishing the equal right not to be wronged opens on to blaming himself for the wrongdoing, even up to the point of bearing the “heavy guilt” identified as a privilege as the opposite of blaming in Wise/4, KSA 6, 270, 26). This too is clearly not something his father did before him, so the direct inheritance from him in virtue of which it is owed must have been the ill will disposed to moral aggrievement at being wronged, and the privilege of the heavy guilt then owed him by indirection could only have come autogenetically by mastering the disposition to aggrievement. These are privileges because they came by mastery of wanting to retaliate, which resists the development of life as retaliation is weakening, and the mastery means evolution of Mehrleben to the highest rung of life. He states his privilege of bearing guilt as being to bear a heavy guilt because a heavy guilt is the counterbalance to being severely morally aggrieved, so to bear the heavy guilt means reaching the privilege of the highest richness in life needed to becoming equal to that degree of severity. This is epigenetics, starting with an inheritance of an epigenetic variation from his father and ending with the privileges as acquired characteristics evolved by reprogramming his epigenome by creating a stressful opposing mental environment of affirmative psychology. The acquired characteristics are epigenetic evolution and each is associated with a revaluation.   

In Wise/4's affirmative psychology Nietzsche tells us that, in his encounters with buffoons, bears and lazy students, he tames every bear, that the buffoons mind their manners around him and the that the lazy students were industrious with him and, to anticipate the theme of Wise /5, that he never gave out a punishment to them. These changes are not realized in reality. The starting point is his inclination to take and hold against, which is an artistic construction by the ill will. Of this inclination, he says, he must remain master: "bear” “buffoon” and "lazy" are the work of the disprizing art of the ill will and contain vengeful, abusive thinking, and he must master the ill will in himself that makes these constructions he says, that is, master a first-order psychology of a disprizing and abusive ill will that runs out of control. The same pattern may be found in Wise/5: the privilege is that he does not assert his equal entitlement not to be wronged, he does not “live among his equals” which then becomes the privilege to bear the “heavy guilt” as he says in Wise/4 and is in Wise/5 in the idea of the god who blames himself. The affirmative psychology that leads to the privilege of a heavy guilt is to blame his own innocence for the wronging -- blaming innocence for its liability to wronging -- instead of finding turpitude in the wrongdoer, to thus master moral aggrievement and elide the wrongdoer and sometimes even the wrongdoing. Note that the text is progressive on this point, "equal to" the wrongdoing is harder than to the wrongdoer. What comes from his father is the ill will to be morally aggrieved and he masters aggrievement by the psychological exercise of bearing the guilt for the wrongdoing himself, with Mehrleben as the result associated to that acquired characteristic. It is by this indirection that the privilege is owed.  His acquired privileges are his evolution of himself and his revaluations are associated with evolving them. 

Affirmative psychological exercises were the key. In Wise/4, N masters his ill will to disprize by the discipline of remaining unprepared. He does not permit himself to negative expectations against which he must brace himself of what is to happen. Instead, by his unpreparedness, what happens is in his experience just as chance would have it and not per his negative forecasting thoughts that would construct it otherwise. He says that he is the equal of any chance event, by which I take him to mean that, in those days at least, nothing like "still a buffoon, but not as bad as I expected he would be" – which would seem to be equal standing against something – is any longer happening, and that, at this point in time at which he is in the position to write Ecce Homo to lead us in the Revaluation, he is capable of full equality to chance. But less-than-full-out equality is implied. Importantly for the study of the meaning of eternality in the idea of the eternal recurrence, he says that he is always equal to chance in Wise/4, that is, he never arouses ill will in others, and in Wise/5 that he never lives among his equals. These tense universals point to how we should be reading eternality in eternal recurrence. Plainly, they are not literal statements but declamations of love of life enough to do this in that it is very painful, and they make his ethos appeal to lead in the Revaluation. My takeaway from these sections of EH/Wise to the ER is that the ER too is affirmative psychology that facilitates  evolutionary development.  

  As acquired characteristics, N.'s privileges could have made changes to his germ-line cells as the variation from his father he was trying to sort was very possibly carried in the germ-line. Weismann's in-famous barrier that would prevent this has been shown to be false. After all, why would N bother with the evolution of acquired characteristics unless he was thinking that acquired characteristics could consolidate into a common inheritance channel going forward as „eins dichte und zusammentrage,“ as he might have been formulating the idea of the Overhuman in “On Redemption”?  Note that the acquired characteristics of unpreparedness and relinquishing equal entitlement not to be wronged are also revaluations, revaluation psychology here is evolutionary. Also, the revaluation takes us from a lie to the truth: in Wise/4, the moral lie is that what is merely chance can be bearish, etc. and in Wise/5 the moral lie is that I am equally entitled not to be wronged and so there is wronging. If anything is being set up by this for UAW IV it would be to look for how the affirmative thinking of the ER is a revaluation that brings into being a kind of general acquired characteristic, so it is about evolution, not cosmology, and truth not mendacity.

  The central doctrines of N.'s ideas about of evolution are that all living things seek to become more, that they seek out resistances to do so, that a resistance must be equal, not above or below (see Wise/7 also, which perhaps was written intending to autobiographically introduce these ideas), and that the will to power in life interprets the overall resistance it faces to make it to be its equal, that is, it scopes the resistance down to an aspect it can face as equal and progresses up the chain of stronger resistance (WTP 656, 688; KSA 12, 2[148], and 2[151]. In Wise/4 equality is to the compulsion to disprize is full-out, and that means being equal to pure chance: the affirming discipline of unpreparedness has elided from imagination all there is to disprize as bearish, and for any value presented it is just chance. We find the same idea in Wise/5, which repeats Z 1“The Adder's Bite” on the point, where he neutralizes the wrongdoing to himself by the revaluation that he does not have an equal right not to be wronged although innocent, so he is always equal to not living among his equals, always relinquishing equal entitlement not to be wronged when wronged. He is equal, as equal in will to power, to the wrongdoer's innocence contra his compulsion to blame. So, equality is full out in these sections, making his ethos appeal. He masters aggrievement at his innocence wronged by the psychological exercise of foregoing that he has an equal right not to be wronged, and thus the ill will's imagining of wrongdoing and the wrongdoer cathected with vengefulness and the idea of deserved punishment are elided. The psychology of the ill will in Wise/5 is in the thought: "But I am his equal, equal-in-rights equal, and it is as his equal-in-rights that I am wronged,” and he says that he never asserts his equal right not to be wronged. We find the same critique of asserting equal rights AC/57. Always equal to chance, so not in ill will of expectations for others, and always equal (in will to power) to not living among his equal-in-rights equals so not falling to aggrievement, are declamations, not literal statements. They declare love of life. While the exercises  lead to Mehrleben and imply the tragic psychology of joy in destruction, they are very painful at the level at which we have to live them and take a lot of courage to do. Both are psychological exercises to control vengefulness and clearly, they had lesser results early on as he applied them, and chance and moral guiltlessness are just neutralities left after the ill will has run itself out. Applying the psychological exercise elides an intentional object of the ill will cathected with vengefulness and replaces it with a neutral an sich. 

  N.’s wisdom, possessing it or not, is at the heart of the statement at EH/Books/BT/3, KSA 6, 313 7-12 that Z.’s idea of eternal recurrence might be traceable to Heraclitus. It an important text for McNeil and Heidegger. N asks the question whether his idea of the eternal recurrence is distinctive in Philosophy, that he has transposed Dionysianism into a tragic philosophy. In Dionysianism we find that in face of the fact that life sacrifices its highest expressions, Dionysianism responds by rejoicing in life's inexhaustibility. This become the bridge to the psychology of the tragic poets of joy in destruction. The point of the section that stands out is the statement that N alone was in the position to transpose Dionysianism into Philosophy, tragic pathos into philosophical pathos, because before him, tragic wisdom was lacking among philosophers, but he is not sure if completely so. He then asks whether there were antecedents of his tragic wisdom and he thinks that maybe it may be found in Heraclitus. If Heraclitus possessed tragic wisdom, his cosmology might be a philosophical transposition of the Dionysian, just as is N.’s. Clearly, if his thought of being the first philosopher to have tragic wisdom is so in play in this history of the ER at Books/BT/3, before drawing any conclusions we should ask what it was that he presented as his wisdom in the first chapter “Why I am So Wise," and the least glance at the chapter shows that its subject is evolution. The tragic wisdom of EH/Wise is that destruction is resistance for the will to power, and that otherwise we will not evolve. But then how can the ER be a priori cosmology if it transposes a biological law of our evolution which is empirical?  It is heuristic that the ER is a declamation of resolve to commit to develop life under this law, the resolution that, so to speak, overcomes itself as resolve to make resolve a binding necessity and to so identify with it. What is left is ER's  truth content, but it is just what coincides with the empirical law of our evolution: that will to power needs resistance to develop life and so resistance will keep happening because evolution keeps happening. Combined, these become N.'s Philosophy of Dionysus: The Philosophy of Eternal Recurrence, but this combination would seem not to be literal cosmology. He may well have first encountered the idea of eternal recurrence in his early studies of Greek Philosophy but that does not mean that he later took it over as cosmology and was writing about it as such in Z, and there is much to suggest that he had not.

In EH/Wise we find that the starting point for N is in his inheritance from his father. Next there is a change by means of self-imposed psychological disciplines that address vengefulness against life as cathected in the disprizing constructions of the ill will, and then the creation of life to Mehrleben. This is evolution. From what we know about epigenetics, N.'s affirming psychological exercises functioned to create an artificial environment of psychological stress against a first-order psychology that induced change in his inherited epigenetic profile from his father by working against its associated mood disorder. The affirming psychology results in Mehrleben because it clears up vengefulness and turns us towards the will to power. But it must be asked why is N telling us all this about himself, how can the revaluation pass through him? Perhaps N.’s epigenetic evolution went beyond the idiosyncratic because by reversing what was sui generis in his inheritance from his father he was reversing something wider that was also in that inheritance from him, namely, the socio-biology behind Christian socialization. From my research, which is limited, it is within theoretical possibility that because of his progressive brain disease, KLN experienced trauma that induced further regulation of the epigenetic code in him already associated with the mood disorder of revenge that is a single identity in the socialization of Christianity. That further regulation of that identity then  affected FN so that in dealing with his father the personal and the universal became indistinguishable for him. N.'s evolution then becomes all our evolution. 

Professor McNeil cites “Vision and Riddle” and “The Convalescent” as containing documentation that the eternal recurrence was objective cosmology for N, stating that there is a deduction of the ER in “Vision and Riddle” that is free from the metaphorical presentation of it in GS, and that Paul Loeb has shown that in this text Z dies and has a prospective memory of his struggle with disgust at humanity that he picks up again reborn in his next life in “The Convalescent” thus to give evidence of recurrence awareness. McNeil writes that in “Vision and Riddle”: “the cosmological metaphor of eternal recurrence in GS 109 and 341 is strengthened and developed into a deductive proof" (99). Laurence Lampert argued, and at length, in Nietzsche’s Teaching that it cannot be judged with confidence what N.’s intention was in presenting the deduction in “Vision and Riddle,” (160-171). Z tells his vision of eternal return to the sailors whom he praises for choosing not to “grope along a thread with a cowardly hand” the thread of argument, hating to deduce a truth they should be courageously guessing at instead. They are identified as the true audience for the riddle in EH/Books/3.  It is not a guess at a possible deductive outcome, not like: 'Gödel guessed at formal undecidability before proving it,’but as an alternative that hates to deduce. They must already know it is true. And, per Professor Loeb’s interpretation, I will offer an alternative literal reading of recurrence awareness in "Vision and Riddle" that does not require us to conclude that N believed in the objectivity of eternal return cosmology.   

  If Z is not deducing the ER, what otherwise is going on? I suggest that during the presentation of the deduction of the ER, his evolution to Mehrleben by its affirmative psychology is also occurring. Willing the ER is evolutionary just as are the psychological exercises of Wise/4 and Wise/5. In that case, the deduction is double-signifying: for the dwarf, it is a deduction -- and a bad one as it is an enthymeme -- and he becomes estranged as it takes on its true identity as evolutionary and he vanishes. He vanishes when the task of evolution is accomplished, his discouraging message, perhaps that the Spirit who bears the fatality (Verhängniss) of a task bears the heaviest fate Schicksal, (EH/Books/Z/6, KSA 6, 345, 4-7) overcome by Z’s courage. Z's unfolding of the thought of the ER is accompanied by his awareness of life developing in himself. He recognizes willing the ER as the principle of Mehrleben and runs with it. He hears the dog howling and remembers that he heard a dog howl in his distant childhood and that is his past life and he has died and been reborn. Perhaps what has happened is that given the causal connection between willing the eternal recurrence and the evolution of Mehrleben, he identifies with willing the eternal recurrence as the principle of Mehrleben up to its literal idea of death and rebirth. Z temporarily identifies with the idea of the objectivity the ER, the logical "must," of the deduction, as the principle of the evolution of Mehrleben to the point of believing he has a memory that the dog barking in his present life happened in his past life, and so believing he has awareness of his present life as a recurrence. Recurrence-awareness would then be the evolution of novel mental life that Z creates in himself on the spot as willing the ER is pushed to its literal outcomes.

The point about the sailors guessing is that they do not take the coward’s way in following the ER as deduction but by it, they courageously face their own weakness of vengeful retreat from the law of evolution. The truth they guess is that willing ER is evolutionary, and it must be that they can guess it because they already know it, an anagnorisis of tragic knowledge. So what shall we say “is true” means here? In this reading, recurrence-awareness is not veridical, and the deduction of the ER is not logically sound, but it can be said that as long as I am achieving Mehrleben by believing in eternal recurrence I entirely cease to care about its literal falsehood. That is the reason for believing it although false. However, outside the human life-world, it might mean nothing. Would believing in the eternal recurrence have been developmental for Neanderthals for instance? We do not know whether they needed it. As paleo-epigeneticists mapped out the Neanderthal epigenome and identified the zones of differentiated methylation in their bodies in contrast with ours, they found, as expected, that the zone of highest differentiation was the brain. But then they recognized that one-third of the differences in the human brain had already been traced to cognitive disorders and mental illness in us which Neanderthals, then, must not have had. To go beyond N.'s speculations in GM on the origins of morals, perhaps our moralized vengefullness against will to power in life is traceable to gene regulation in this third of the differences, maybe because we had a different history from Neanderthals, or maybe we came out of the same history differently, or maybe because of the traumatic event that brought about their extinction but which we survived – they vanished about 40,000 years ago when the magnetic poles of the earth reversed, and maybe also because of it – all are ways pathologically weakened life that became so vengeful against the will to power that evolution stalled out could have appeared in us but not in them. Just to develop the point a bit, how otherwise could it have happened that we became vengeful against the will to power in ourselves in the weakness of vengefulness to thus make ourselves even weaker in life and slipping backwards? This would seem not to be possible being selected for as an adaptation except in the case in which it appeared in an environment of a cataclysmic and near extinction event that left a traumatic imprint on the epigenome of the remnant population, and not as in the gradualist Darwinian scenario of point mutations selected for. In this case, we can think about recurrence-awareness as novel mental life that we cause to evolve in ourselves as epigenetic evolution as we reverse the effect of our traumatic past, pushing ourselves to assent to the ER reserved for literal belief. But matters may have stood otherwise with our Neanderthal cousins, and that means that there is a theoretical range in which this statement does not have meaning. So our assent to recurrence-awareness can be stronger than als ob assent and can create epigenetic evolution, but it still can be false outside the human life-world. So I agree with the Loeb/McNeil thesis that we can read recurrence-awareness in "Vision and Riddle," but I think only within this evolutionary framework of novel mental life. 

         The thought of the ER is first introduced in Z on “On Redemption,” and Professor McNeil writes a section on it, 1.9, but he does not address the leading idea of the section, and that is that we are vengeful against the will to power in life in ourselves and in others and we exculpate ourselves in the thought of the past's pastness being punishment to be in good conscience about why we are suffering. The line that bears this reading is: “’punishment’ is what revenge calls itself, with a lying word it creates a good conscience for itself.” As we unravel this line, it becomes clear that willing the ER is the fix for an empirical a bottleneck in our evolution and not cosmology.

The psychological affirming exercises in Wise/4 and Wise/5 work by creating a psychological inconsistency: it is psychologically impossible both to be unprepared and also to construct the other in disprizing constructions (in Wise/4) and, just the same in Wise/5, it is psychologically impossible both to construct the wrongdoer as deserving punishment and also blame oneself for the wronging. Similarly, in willing the ER, we cannot continue to treat the past’s pastness as a punishment since willing the ER locks out a different past as unavailable to imagination in the recurrence of the same past, so we cannot will both that the actual past recur as the same and also imagine the different past. The imagined different past is cathected with vengefulness against the actual past in which I suffered on account of will to power's development of life. Life will sacrifice itself for power, as N tells us in Z 2: "On Self-Overcoming." 

Mastering vengefulness against the past means becoming equal in will to power to “same past” for any past that I want difference to, where “equal” in “equal to the same past” is an interpretation by the will to power and not the entire actual past all at once, just what I can handle, and then later "equal to" moves up. The end goal is to replace the thought of the past as punishing by its pastness with the thought of neutral time in which the actual past's pastness is elided by the recurrence of sameness, as with it also the imagined different past as it cannot be imagined.

We learn from EH/Books/BT/3 that the ER is a philosophical transposition of tragic wisdom into Philosophy. N can make this transposition into tragic philosophy because, he is, likely, the first philosopher to have tragic wisdom. In "Why I am So Wise" we learn that his catastrophic inheritance of death in life from his father was a stimulus to evolution, to Mehrleben. He discovered in himself a track of non-Darwinian evolution to life beyond life necessary for survival. His tragic fate was death in life and he experienced it as the highest opposition to life as how life became Mehrleben in him as power over this tendency.  He is grateful to it, to his father "I thank my father," as the highest opposition, and his gratitude is the psychology of the tragic poet.  His wisdom is that, like it or not, it is the nature of the will to power in life to sacrifice itself for power over a resistance, power that becomes realized in and by the life of Mehrleben, that his inheritance had this meaning. We have tragic fates, but deep within them lie the workings of evolution to develop life in our species. N fused his new interpretation of evolution to the tragic psychology of the poets, and this became the Philosophy of Eternal Recurrence.

In all our lives then, and at all times, is the backdrop of will to power sacrificing life to engage a resistance, chunking the resistance into equal bits little by little, to grow in power over it in and by Mehrleben.  But we are not aligned with this tragic law of our evolution and we become vengeful on account of the sacrifice of life will to power has required. We do not acknowledge it as resistence set by will to power we must face to evolve. Instead, in vengeance against it, I shun will to power for doing this to me, and in others, I actively seek to cripple it. I am vengeful against this resistance to life that has set me back, vengeful against the will to power, and, in vengeance, I construct the resistance in ill will as a historical event. In my ill will, I form up the idea of the different past in my imagination and cathect it with vengefulness against the actual past that pastness has locked up in opposing sameness. I have constructed the resistance set by will to power in the ill will and I forego Mehrleben, and so I suffer more. This suffering of which now I myself am the cause has to be hidden, it is telltale, it should not be happening after all, this weakness, and others will wonder. And, of course, I look for the company of those like myself.  I lie to myself and to others and hide the trail connecting my suffering to vengefulness against the will to power from my not engaging with it. Were my suffering truthfully exposed and tracked as of my own doing, we would not be allowed to get away with it, as this becomes culture, and -- this is the worry -- an opposing culture might arise that would force me to stop doing it. So, I reconfigure these events to make my suffering come out as punishment and not my own doing, pastness is punishing me, and I disguise myself in good conscience. N used the phrase, "the Machiavellianism of the good and the just," and it would seem apt to this maneuver. The art of the ill will disprizingly reconstructs in imagination the resistance set by will to power to more power as Mehrleben as an event in the historical past with its law of pastness, and imaginatively constructs the different past opposed to it and locked out by pastness cathected with revenge. The true object of revenge is the will to power, revenge that life develops as it does as power, but the vengeful art of the ill will constructs will to power's setting of the resistance in its imagination as an event in the historical past that cannot be different. That thought against it -- sameness that cannot be different -- is full of suffering and revenge and, as this is all about powerlessness, the ill will assigns its suffering to the past's pastness by the further imaginative vengeful construct that the past's pastness is punishment for its suffering, to create the good conscience. My suffering is actually due to my vengefulness against will to power, but I have lied to claim that my suffering is punishment by the past's pastness and that I am good, that is what good is. All things that happen become punishment, the historical itself becomes punishment. I create the good conscience and face others aggressively in good conscience to counter reproach against myself. I do not want to face having to strengthen myself against the resistance set by will to power as I am, of course, weak at that point, otherwise there is no benefit to life to facing it, and so facing it is painful.  Behind us all then, with few exceptions, is failure to square up with the process of will to power to evolve life in us as it does by its law of setting a resistance against us to master in Mehrleben. We are always backward looking on our failure because we are vengeful on account of it because more weakened, and remain so in a permanent state. In this way, the culture of Christianity is generated ongoingly. The more I fail off, the more will to power tries to build up life by setting resistances for me, and so the more I fail off as it is now harder. It is a downward spiral, and soon human beings will appear in whom there is so much weakness that they will not be able to square off with anything the will to power sets as resistance, and that will be the beginning of the end of Mehrleben as a potential for our species. Beyond heuristic, the idea of the eternal recurrence unravels the Machiavellian lie about our suffering that the past's pastness is the cause of suffering as punishment, and not that it is failing off engaging with the will to power. It effects an anagnorisis and turns us to engagement with how life evolves in us. Willing the ER destroys the disprizing construction of the historical, destroying the past's pastness and the imagined different past in the recurrence of the same actual past, and so opens on to neutral time, turning us towards engaging with how life evolves itself. Willing the ER is "beyond humanity and beyond time," (EH/Books/Z/1). 

The will redeems its suffering foolishly by avenging itself on others. The foolish redemption of the suffering will is by avenging itself on “all who can suffer,” that is, all who do not yet suffer and do not just on account of their being in line with the development of life by will to power, and so who can suffer still. This is what N was reporting in saying pity had destructively intruded on him as he was growing in Mehrleben in all of three cases, (Wise/4, KSA 6, 270, 19-28). We, Christians at any rate, destructively intrude on others in vengefulness against will to power in the development of life working in them. We vengefully seek to create the suffering of weakness in others to get them to fail off trying to master the resistance set before them by will to power, doing so as vengefulness against the will to power ensuring its failure and spreading vengefulness against it. Then life does not evolve anywhere or in anyone, and we are avenged -- the mission of Christianity. This point from "On Redemption" relates by contrast to Wise/4 and Wise/5 where N discloses that this is himself, he is the Christian, but then he shows us how he dealt with it.  His ill will is set destructively against the stronger will to power in those he encountered. As he is on the lowest rung on the ladder of life, a case of extreme weakness in life, his first order compulsion is to vengefully attack life in others as vengefulness against stronger will to power. The bears and buffoons and lazy students of Wise/4 and the wrongdoer of Wise/5 are his own disprizing constructions in ill will cathected with vengefulness, as they are always anders. But he masters vengefully striking back by using psychological exercises to create new mental life that replaces the moralizing vengeful ill will of old mental life. In Wise/4, vengeful moralizing has appeared as disprizing others as "bears" and "buffoons" and "lazy." He is inclined by his first-order psychology to want to punish his "lazy" students, but by the psychological exercise of being unprepared, he rethinks them as industrious. He has evolved new mental life as unpreparedness and, in Wise/5 new mental life as not living among his equals to rethink the wrongdoer and wrongdoing as not opprobrious. It is the same with willing the eternal recurrence: it evolves new mental life forcing us out of vengefully interpreting suffering (of weakness) as a punishment by the historical and its pastness to face that we do it to ourselves; "punishment" is the Lügenwort. Willing the ER is on the border line between the foolish redemption of suffering (of weakness) as beings of raging vengefulness on the one side and, on the other, authentic redemption in which I engage positively with the will to power as it works to develop life in myself  On the one side is a culture in which we are turned in upon ourselves, abusive of others in their struggles to develop life in themselves, victimizing them in their vulnerability according as they can still suffer, in revenge against the will to power as revenge against the will to power in them. Destructively intruding pity belongs here, (see above). On the other side, I have turned outward away from society and compulsive intrusion on the other to engage alone with the will to power and become who it has set for me to be. N's task as teacher of the ER is to prepare this Selbstbesinnung in humankind. 

Professor McNeil has two chapters on Heidegger, 3 and 4. He writes in 3 that Heidegger’s interpretation is “essential to any genuine understanding of [Nietzsche’s] philosophical project” (p.157), a claim many would contest. Chapter 4 is "a full critical appraisal of [Heidegger]" (210), but in these days in which Heidegger has emerged as the central philosopher of a globalizing far right, it should at least be acknowledged that the question of the influence of National Socialism on Heidegger’s interpretation of N is on the minds of many.

          My negative review rating is based on Professor McNeil’s scholarly lapses. In Z， in ignoring key leading lines in chapters that decisively impact his position. The leading indicator line in “Vision and Riddle” is that the sailors “hate to deduce, and prefer to guess,” but he ignores the line and does not engage Lampert’s lengthy discussion, based largely on this line, critical of a literal reading of a deduction. Professor McNeil’s decontextualization of the deduction from its complexifying context of deducing being hated versus guessing being preferred is a serious scholarly lapse.  

           In “On Redemption,” the key indicator line is: “punishment is what revenge calls itself, it creates a good conscience for itself with its lying word” but Professor McNeil does not address it. This line, together with the line that willing the ER delivers us from the Spirit of Revenge, implies that willing the eternal recurrence disabuses us of a self-deception that hides not engaging the will to power to life in ourselves. Professor McNeil should have acknowledged and engaged that line because its implication is that the ER is not objective cosmology. He should have engaged Lampert's critique of Heidegger that ignoring the narrative structure of Z in regard to this chapter set up his mishandling of "Vision and Riddle" and "The Convalescent" in Part III.

           Professor McNeil must also be faulted for uncritically following Heidegger in his use of the text of EH/Books/BT/3 as documentation that N believed that precedents of his idea of the eternal recurrence as objective cosmology are to be found in Heraclitus, on the grounds that there are many contextual factors involved  in that section that do not allow for this straightforward tracing: that perhaps Heraclitus’s cosmology is a transposition of the tragic wisdom, N is unsure because he is unsure whether Heraclitus possessed tragic wisdom that he otherwise believes was lacking in philosophers before him but which he has achieved, which is philosophical autobiography, which then implies that the point of the comparison to Heraclitus is lost otherwise; that we learn from EH/Wise that the tragic wisdom required to transpose Dionysianism into the Philosophy of the ER is a thesis about evolution that states a contingent truth about how evolution works, and so its carry over to the ER makes its truth content also contingent and so knowable only a posteriori; that the heuristic involved in the ER would seem set up by the declamatory tense universals in the affirmation psychology of Wise/4 and Wise/5 on the matter of N.'s love of life in overcoming vengefulness against resistance set by will to power and engaging it, as it is painful, to make his ethos appeal, that thus suggests introduction to the idea that eternality in the ER is declamatory of love of life despite its terrible law of evolution; that the opening quotation in that text to TI/What I Owe to The Ancients/5 where N also identifies himself as working on Dionysianism as transposed into the Philosophy of Eternal Recurrence and that he is the teacher of the eternal recurrence, makes no reference to Heraclitus, nor elsewhere in the chapter of ancients owed and ancients not owed, where one might expect it, in paragraph 4. Furthermore, N cites the events of 1879 as the beginning of his philosophy and much of the study of Heraclitus cited by McNeil is earlier. All adds up to the conclusion that the linkage of Z's eternal recurrence to Heraclitus’s cosmology at EH/Books/BT/3, KSA 6, 313 7-12 is weak and cannot support McNeil’s strong claim about the role of Heraclitus and the Stoa in Nietzsche’s thinking about the ER as objective cosmology.  

  For reasons of the objections in the preceding three paragraphs, which are not new, Professor McNeil's book is not recommended.

    

'NIETZSCHE: THE POLITICS OF PHYSIOLOGY'

 

                   'NIETZSCHE: THE POLITICS OF PHYSIOLOGY'

                                                  BY 

                                                MARTIN JENKINS

Unlike the modern ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau or Karl Marx where social structures and dynamics of a society are cited as creating social problems, unrest and protest, Nietzsche appears to locate the cause in the physiology of people or strata of peoples themselves. Thus he dismisses those who blame society for their ills as not knowing the real reasons as to why they suffer.[1] Consequently, Daniel Ahern calls Nietzsche a 'cultural physician' as he analyses cultures, values their values and diagnoses accordingly.[2] As known, Nietzsche analysed Western Culture as forged both by Christianity and in the Nineteenth century, by the then emerging 'Modern Ideas' of equal rights, democracy, socialism. Whilst Nietzsche is violently critical of both I will briefly analyse why, arguing that Nietzsche's conclusions are based on false premises and are therefore wrong.

Slaves, Priests & Socrates

In On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche paints an originary social picture of physiologically healthy noble warrior aristocrats and sick slave masses.[3] The aristocrats health entailed proactive, physical activity (war, adventure, hunting, dancing) and their values, perspectives of life were correspondingly affirmative. The slaves were unhappy -- not because of their situation as slaves but because of their weariness, exhaustion and the sickness that follows from this. The sickness leads them to hate their existence, hate their lives, and devalue the earth. Enabling an escape from weariness and exhaustion, the slaves vent ressentiment against the noble aristocrats blaming them for their sickness and suffering. At the same time, there has been a split away from the noble aristocrats by the Priestly caste. Once brothers in arms with the warrior aristocrats, practices Nietzsche terms the Ascetic Ideal, are adopted by the Priests to demonstrate their singular piety. Practices such as fasting, sexual abstinence, flights into the nothingness of self-hypnosis, over-refinement, diet, are not only means of piety they are also signs of something unhealthy.[4] The Priests view their suffering as evidence that are too good for this existence and long for another one, hating this earthly one and like the slaves, they blame the reigning lords of the earth for their sickness. Due to their weakened condition, they cannot physically defeat the warrior aristocrats. 

Consequently, insofar as they are weak there grows a proportionally inverse hatred against the Aristocrats. Whilst such vehement ressentiment cannot be actualised in physical deeds, it is done with words and beliefs. A whole new anti-worldly metaphysical, religious perspective develops which surreptitiously undermines the aristocrats. The ressentiment of the Priest unites with the ressentiment of the slaves and he becomes their shepherd. As their shepherd, two things occur. Firstly, the revolt is completed when the values of the aristocrats are revalued by the Priest/ Slaves in what Nietzsche terms 'the slave revolt in morality'. The aristocrats values of 'Good' and 'Bad' are inverted by the hegemony of Priests/ Slaves into their values of 'Good' and 'Evil'.[5] The slave revolt in morality triumphs and the direction of culture is changed.

Secondly, at the same time, the ressentiment of the slaves towards their ex-masters is now, at the direction of the Priest, turned against themselves. No longer are the devalued aristocrats to blame for the suffering of the slaves, it is they themselves who are to blame -- for they have sinned. Their suffering is a result of sin. Atoning practices, rituals and perspectives of the priest's Ascetic Ideal are inscribed into the masses. Cultural values are now reactive, life and the earth are devalued, shackled by rancorous practices, perspectives in favour of the reality of another, worldly existence.[6]

Socrates

Similar themes emerge with Nietzsche's treatment of Socrates -- who is invariably taken to be the father of Western Philosophy. Instead of eulogising him, Nietzsche also finds him, like the slaves and Priest, exhausted and weary of life. Socrates' cure for his condition is: 'superfetation of the logical'[7] Indeed this, along with his use of dialectics in bamboozling Greek aristocrats is symptomatic of ressentiment, of seeking revenge against them.[8] Although suffering from the same problem as his fellow Greeks, Socrates offered a cure:

                                                       the old Athens was coming to an end -- and Socrates

                                                       understood that all the World had need of him-- his

                                                       expedient, his cure, his personal art of self preservation

                                                        ...everywhere the instincts were in anarchy; everywhere

                                                       people were but five steps from excess: the monstrum in

                                                       animo was the universal danger. 'The instincts want to play

                                                       the tyrant, we must devise a counter-tyrant who is

                                                       stronger...'[9]

The instincts were in anarchy -- more of this below -- and Socrates had a cure; not the Ascetic Ideal of the Priests but the tyrant of reason. Greeks became fanatic about being absurdly rational thereby suppressing every other instinct. Logic, Reason and Thought were hypostasised over the body, its drives and the earth.

Arguably, Jewish Theology synthesised with post-Socratic Greek Philosophy. It's values and perspectives subsequently dominated Western civilisation for the next two thousand years. In the nineteenth century, its values and perspectives emerge in 'modern ideas'.

Modern Ideas

Nietzsche proclaimed that God died in the later Nineteenth century. Christianity paved the way for the 'modern ideas' of democracy, socialism and its extremes of anarchism. As all were equal before God there being no privileged exceptions, the ressentiment that fuelled equality continues under secular guises.

                                               The 'equality of souls before God', this falseness, this

                                               pretext for the rancour of everything low-minded, this

                                               explosive concept which becomes revolution, a modern idea

                                               and the principle of the decline of the whole social order

                                               -- is Christian dynamite.[10]

Although Christian in origin, equality is one of the key themes proffered by modern ideas. For 'the democratic movement is the heir to Christianity'.[11] Like the slaves before them, Anarchists and by implication, socialists and democrats, are dismissed as a declining strata who, when they demand rights, justice, equal rights are seeking revenge for their suffering.[12] Whereas the Christian denigrates this world, seeking revenge in the judgement of the next world, the socialist worker denigrates society and seeks revenge in triumphant revolution. Both are decadents united in their need to appropriate blame for their suffering. 

Why do they suffer? Why do the slaves, Socrates and the advocates of modern ideas suffer according to Nietzsche? He declares them degenerates, decadents: less than what a human being ought to be. Why are they decadents? Because of their physiological sickness. This sickness is attributable to a internal anarchy of the drives where each drive -- as a manifestation of will to power -- is combating every other drive. Allowing each pathological drive to express itself expends energy. The person becomes unfocussed and the expenditure of power vented now this way and now that, depletes their vitality. They become weary, 

exhausted, depressed and sick.[13] Hence they seek respite from their sickness, this is found with the active distraction of ressentiment -- 'I am suffering, someone else is to blame'. This conclusion employs a causality that concludes their suffering as an effect of someone else's actions. Nietzsche challenges such erroneous thinking when he states that an effect is not attributable to an efficient cause, it a matter of physiological immanence. That for example, some one is healthy is not an effect of diet, it is attributable to their physiology.[14] So in seeking to blame an external cause such as the prevailing social order, the advocates of 'modern ideas' are missing the real physiological source of their suffering -- themselves. The cultural physician alone has discovered the real, physiological basis of specific cultural valuations underneath Christianity and Modern Ideas.

And what of the values borne of this depleted life -- vitality of the suffering and sick? Principally, these are equality and pity. The 'herd' recognises neither god nor master: they suffer, the privileged are to blame for this and will be subject to the ressentiment fuelled, revenging, levelling blade of equality. Nietzsche opposes equality as it is contrary to the essential nature of life -- which is will to power. Healthy expressions of will to power as the very dynamic of life will naturally entail inequality between people. There will be differences between 'man and man, caste and caste' imbuing a pathos of distance, an order of rank, commensurate with the will to power that one is. Flowing from the top will be the new philosopher/ creators. In other words, a pyramid-like hierarchy is synonymous with a healthy society.[15] In negating this, equality negates health and affirmative life.[16]

Modern Ideas of Justice are also based on Pity but a pathological pity expressive of weakness and sickness. It wants to abolish all suffering-- which is contrary to the nature of life. Nietzsche comments:

                                           We think that harshness, slavery, violence, danger in the

                                            streets and in the heart, concealment, stoicism, the art of

                                            experiment and devilry of every sort; that everything evil,

                                            tyrannical, predatory and snakelike in humanity serves just

                                            as well as its opposite to enhance the species 'humanity'.[17]

Struggle, hardship, problems, enhance humanity just as well as it's opposite of happiness, peace and ease. Modern Ideas eschew the former for the latter. Pity further makes the already suffering worse. Pity is the opposite of 'the tonic affects that heighten the energy of vital feelings'.[18] It is a contagious depressive which makes the sickness worse and the hatred of earthly life worse. Further, Nietzsche condemns Christian Pity as keeping alive all that would otherwise have perished.[19]

Challenges by which humanity grows, develops and enhances itself, will be avoided as they involve suffering and this has been abolished by pity.[20] Equality will prevent differences -- principally those of strong, daring, creative individuals from developing. All that will remain, according to Nietzsche, is a timid, uniform herd animal, the ideal of modern ideas which regards itself as the justification and culmination of history. This type of life does not want to grow, it wants a quiet, green pasture happiness. All this has developed from decadence, now universalised and valorised as the norm, as good.

So we find that according to 'the cultural physician' Nietzsche, the growing demands for universal suffrage, the development of a labour movement, the protests of socialist and anarchist politics found in many European countries were a response not to 19th century capitalist, industrial development and the corresponding conditions they created; they are valuations, perspectives borne of a ressentiment from the labouring masses and their weariness, exhaustion, their suffering with life. Their suffering, symptomatic of real, physiological causes of disaggregated drives. 

Wrong Diagnosis?

I will examine Nietzsche's diagnosis for the problem of 'Modern Ideas' another time. Here I would like to ask, Is his contention that modern decadent humanity and not social structures are the cause of social unrest, protest convincing? Firstly, I think Nietzsche's opposition to Socialism predates any physiological explanation for it. From at least Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche evidences his disdain of Socialism.[21] His physiological justifications can be seen as later pretexts for already established opposition.

Secondly, even discounting the point made above, the veracity of the physiological explanation relies on dubious biological premises. According to Gregory Moore, Nietzsche was familiar with Darwinian and pre-Darwinian theories of evolution.[22] In particular, that of Carl Nageli. Nageli held that evolution moves towards perfection, this understood as a greater degree of organisational complexity and division of labour. Hence the more complex and ordered the interior drives of an individual/ species, the higher they are.[23] As with the masses, the physiological inner anarchy of their drives makes them lesser in this evolutionary sense; the motivation of greater complexity being Will to Power. The influence of these views on Nietzsche's accounts of modern ideas and Christianity is clear. I would maintain, it is also wrong. It rests on teleology, and evolution, arguably, does not.

In sum, the premises on which Nietzsche's conclusion rest concerning Modern Ideas etc. are unsound. Rather, to paraphrase Nietzsche, they reveal the prejudices of the philosopher. When, as today, peoples throughout Europe and beyond are protesting at their socio-economic circumstances, it is not because they are malcontents due to an intrinsic physiological sickness caused by chaotic drives; it is due to public, external socio-economic conditions themselves. Nietzsche's prejudices blind him to this.

Notes

1. #34. Skirmishes of an Untimely Man. Friedrich Nietzsche. Twilight of the Idols. Cambridge University Press 2005. #44. Friedrich Nietzsche. Beyond Good & Evil. Cambridge University Press 2002.

2. Chapters 1 & 2. Daniel A. Ahern. Nietzsche as Cultural Physician. Pennsylvania State University Press. 1995.

3. First Treatise: 'Good & Bad', 'Good & Evil'. Friedrich Nietzsche. On the Genealogy of Morality. Hackett. 1998.

4. I perceive ambiguity concerning the issue of the sickness that Nietzsche claims the slave masses and the Priests suffer from. Some places in his text, he writes that adopted practices inculcate the sickness; in others the sickness is innate due to the inner turmoil of the drives. Obviously if adoptive and social practices incur sickness then this is contrary to Nietzsche's thesis and social factors are to blame for the ills of the many. [For example see GM1 #6 cf gm GM3 #11]

5. #7 Genealogy of Morality op. cit.

6. #17, 18. Third Treatise. On the Genealogy of Morality

7. #4. The Problem of Socrates. Twilight of the Idols.

8. #6, 7. ibid.

9. #8. Ibid.

10. #62. Friedrich Nietzsche. The Anti-Christ. Cambridge University Press 2005.

11. #203. Beyond Good & Evil. op. cit.

12. #34. Skirmishes of an Untimely Man. Twilight of the Idols.

13. #6. What the Germans Lack. #1,2,4,6,7,9. The Problem of Socrates #37 Skirmishes of an Untimely Man. Twilight of the Idols. #13,14,15,16,17. Third Treatise. Genealogy of Morality. P. 21. et alibi. Ahern. op cite above.

14. #1,2. Four Great Errors. Twilight of the Idols.

15. See my essay Nietzsche and Will to Power. http://www.Philosophypathways.com/newsletter/issue143.html

16. #37, 48 Skirmishes of an Untimely Man. Twilight of the Idols.#258. Beyond Good & Evil. #125. Friedrich Nietzsche. The Will to Power. It is clear that Nietzsche conflates equality with being identical.

17. #44. Beyond Good & Evil.

18. #7. The Anti-Christian.

19. #62. Beyond Good & Evil. Compare this with BGE #225 where Nietzsche counterposes pity for the Creator with pity for the Creature. The former being a 'tough love' approach as opposed to the latter Christian/Modern Ideas concept of pity. 

20. #44 Beyond Good & Evil.

21. See #98, 446, 451, 452, 473 480.

Friedrich Nietzsche. Human, All Too Human. Cambridge University Press 2000.

22. Gregory Moore. Nietzsche, Biology, Metaphor. Cambridge University Press 2002.

23. P.29 ibid.

(c) Martin Jenkins 2012.

E-mail: martinllowarch.jenkins@virgin.net

-=-

         The Meaning of the Earth: Nietzsche’s Philosopher Creators.

By

Martin Jenkins.

“That the ubermensch shall be the meaning of the Earth’. Zarathustra. 1

In a previous article Nietzsche: The Politics of Physiology, I described Nietzsche’s opposition to ‘Modern Ideas’ of equality, democracy, socialism and anarchism.2 These, like Christianity before them, were for him, symptoms of a diseased physiology. Here, the drives of peoples were in chaos, were disaggregated. This made them feel sick, exhausted, depressed. The solution for this sickness was the venting of  ressentiment against the privileged and later, with the intervention of the Priests, willing in a certain direction ‘for man would rather will than not will at all’. The latter was provided by Christianity as it willed the ascetic ideal: the denial of this world in favour of another one. Its inheritor of European ‘Modern ideas’ wills equality, community, pity. For Nietzsche, this represented not the triumph of Civilisation but on the contrary the triumph of a decadent human type which is identical with the decline of Western culture. In the nineteenth century, themes inherent to Christianity manifested in secular ‘modern’ ideas and the momentum of decadence continued.

So, to Nietzsche’s solution to the problem of ‘Modern Ideas’. In the following paper, I will briefly explore his writings about the New Philosopher Creators and their tasks.

The Decline of the West.

To recap: the modern ‘democratic movement is the heir of Christianity’ and Nietzsche observed its progress during his lifetime. 3 Like others at the time, he seems to have concerns about the onset of democracy and socialism but specifically, he gave it them an ontological justification. Nietzsche believed Modern Ideas were inimical to life - life understood as will to power, will to power informing types of human physiology. Corresponding to the dominating physiology in Europe, the fundamental values of the ‘democratic movement’ were equality and pity. Equality before God is taken from Christianity and applied secularly against those who are taken to blame for the suffering of the masses. Equality is symptomatic of decline, physiological decline which is simultaneously a decline in Will to Power. Equality renders every one as identical and homogeneous. The ‘herd’ - Nietzsche’s pejorative term for the above mentioned socio-political movements-also values Pity. All suffering is unjustified and people blame the socio-political conditions of 19th century industrial capitalism  for their discontent whereas Nietzsche believes discontent is occasioned upon the physiological diremption of inner drives.

Building on earlier Christian balms for the anarchy of physiological drives, modern ideas emphasise the benefits of mechanical activity or work; of achieving small joy by doing good, relieving, comforting, helping others. This mutuality with others formulates a community with others, the formation of a herd. 4 Thus we arrive at equality, pity, workism, mutuality, a community or herd identity. These valuations coax the vapid will to power of the sick European physiology by giving the drives direction thereby marshalling will to power achieving social domination. 

This willing appears to be the key as Nietzsche writes in On the Genealogy of Morality at the end of the final Treatise: for man would even will nothingness than not will at all. 5 So humanity would rather will Modern Ideas than not will at all: humanity need something to will. Unfortunately, the degree and intensity of this modern willing decreases what humanity is capable of. Thus throughout his writings from Zarathustra onwards can be read, a sustained 

critique of Modern Ideas. Nietzsche’s panacea for the sickness of modernity would arise because:

             “The same new conditions that generally lead to a levelling and mediocritisation of man - a useful,

                   industrious, abundantly serviceable and able herd animal man - are to the highest degree suitable

                   for giving rise to exceptional people who possess the most dangerous and attractive qualities….

                   …What I’m trying to say is: the democratisation of Europe is at the same time an involuntary 

                   exercise in the breeding of tyrants - understanding that word in every sense, including the most

                   spiritual.”  7

For exceptional individuals will accidentally emerge, inherently compelled to challenge the restrictive ideas of modernity. Arising from different class or climate based regions, the modern European is physiologically adaptive yet, this, according to Nietzsche, precludes the powerfulness of their type. These Europeans will probably become garrulous, impotent but eminently employable workers who will need masters as they need their daily bread; democratisation makes for a type prepared for slavery -in the most subtle sense. 8 Whereas there may occur lapses into Anarchism and Nationalism, the physiological process of adaption will produce the very opposite of that envisaged by the advocates of Modern Ideas. It will create the ideal conditions for the emergence of outstanding, exceptional individuals, what Nietzsche above terms ‘tyrants’ or Philosopher Creators. 8

For instance, being so used to obeying rather than commanding, herd animal people would feel guilty about commanding. This bad conscience about commanding is evidenced and offset argues Nietzsche, by the success of Napoleon -he gives the masses palpable relief that they have a commander and lawgiver who free’s them from the responsibility. Again, the levelling of equality will be felt as incommensurate to the valuations, affects borne of an intense, complexity of a stronger, comprehensive physiology which in turn, is identical with stronger drives or instantiations of will to power.

Ubermensch.

The example of Napoleon provides hints as to Nietzsche’s Ubermensch. This term first appears in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Here, Zarathustra heralds the coming of the Ubermensch who will overcome existing humanity. 9 In other words, humanity as the culmination of 2000 years of Christianity, epitomised in Modern Ideas, will be overcome by the Ubermensch, variously translated as the ‘man of tomorrow‘, ‘the man beyond and over man‘ and not uniquely, the Superman. After Zarathustra, the term Ubermensch does not appear. A new term for the same theme emerges in Beyond Good and Evil - the Philosopher Creator. 10

These are not Philosopher’s in the sense of mere academic labourers; these are Commanders and Lawgivers compelled to create values by will to power. These ‘true’ philosophers:

                   “ ..reach for the future with a creative hand and everything that is and was becomes

                             a means, a tool, a hammer for them. Their ‘knowing’ is creating, their creating

                            is a legislating, their will to truth is - will to power.”  11.

Who are They? 

A quantum of Will to Power constitutes a drive, ipso facto, the philosopher creators are possessed of stronger drives than others. 12 Such drives do not lapse into a frenzy but are given coherence by being subordinated to and by, stronger commanding drives. This is 

coterminous with a healthy physiology - not to negate and suppress the raging drives, but to value them as a stimulus to life; to control, outwit and incorporate them.13 Then as Nietzsche writes: ‘what emerges are those amazing, incomprehensible and unthinkable ones, those human riddles destined for victory and seduction.’ Alcibiades, Caesar, the Hohenstaufen Frederick II and Leonardo da Vinci are cited perhaps, indicative of his Philosopher Creator types. Contrary to equality yet in accordance with life, there will be order of rank denoting the will to power a person is by ’how much and how many things someone could carry and take upon himself, how far someone could stretch his responsibility’. 14 Following from an abundance of will or comprehensive will to power ’only this will be called greatness: the ability to be just as multiple as whole, as wide as full’.15 As befits their nature, such Philosopher Creators will sit atop an aristocratic society enhancing humanity. 16

The alternative is to find escape in the panacea found in rest, lack of disturbance, a flight from the world of drives into another - a ‘Sabbath of Sabbaths’ as St Augustine termed this, which was his and historic Christianity’s solution: the ascetic ideal and it informs the Modern Ideas Nietzsche attacks. 17 He dismisses the hopes of the European herd man seeking its eternal green pasture society of happiness, or of the socialist’s with their man of the future. Like the impending heaven of Christians before them, Modern people seek to escape the present in their hopes of future redemption in a new society, the ‘new Jerusalem’; one that ends of the ‘exploitation of man by man’ and the like.

What will they do?

Nietzsche doesn’t provide a manifesto as to what his Philosopher Creators will do although pointers can be gleaned from his writings. Mainly, they will re-evaluate the European values that have dominated for 2000 years. 18

Firstly, the Philosopher Creators have the responsibility for the overall development of humanity. So against the ‘law of chance’ and accident that has previously prevailed, the Philosopher Creators task is to ‘select and breed’  and cultivate human beings hegemonically employing religions [and political/economic situations] to this end. 19 Such religion will be distinct from the previous ones that valorise suffering into a principle; it will not preserve the ‘failures and degenerates, the diseased and infirm, those who necessarily suffer’, will not preserve too much of that which should have been destroyed - as Nietzsche claims Christian breeding has done thus contributing to the deterioration of the European race. 20 The new Creator Philosophers are aware of this failing and, of what humanity could instead be bred to be.

Secondly, as commanders and legislators, their creation of values is Will to Power. Instead of the egalitarianism inherent to Christianity and Modern Ideas, they will inculcate an ‘order of rank’ in things as well as people. This ranking is expressive of respective degree of will to power in the strength of inner drives, the ability of such drives to incorporate of other internal and external drives in creative mastering growth manifested in an individual  and, the multiple responsibilities such a more comprehensive, complex person can endure. 21 

Unlike the levelling of life by equality, an Aristocratic society allows vital life, as growing ascending power, as will to power, to fully realise itself. In so doing, it naturally allows the enhancement of humanity.

                                “Every enhancement so far in the type ‘man’ has been the work of an aristocratic society

                                 and that is how it will be again and again…“ 22

So what Nietzsche envisages is an aristocratic and hierarchical society composed of ranks equivalent to their instantiations of will to power. Just as internal drives of a healthy physiology are ordered by stronger drives incorporating the weaker ones to their interests, to their ‘will’; so social ranks are incorporated by the new will that humanity follows - that of the aristos - the Philosopher Creators.

What is Enhancement?

How does the new aristocracy enhance humanity? The answer I think, is to be found in the  theories of evolution that influenced Nietzsche’s thinking and which are indispensable for understanding the general thrust of his ‘philosophy’. From studying the non-Darwinian evolutionist Carl Nageli amongst others, Nietzsche believed that evolution was generated by a perfection principle. 23 Perfection is a tendency toward greater complexity in an organism. As Gregory Moore writes:

              “Nietzsche sees both power and complexity as indices of perfection; or rather, greater organic

                    complexity is the result of a more fundamental will to power in the organism.”  24

Hence his emphasis on the complexity of strong drives in the Philosopher Creators. Note that evolutionary enhancement occurs in an individual organism and not a species;

individuals and not the species are the site of evolutionary change. The species had completed adaption eschewing further variability. Hence Nietzsche critique’s of the ‘herd European’ with its corresponding modern values of equality, levelling, and identity; which reinforce stagnation. Humanity will be enhanced through exceptional individuals - the Philosopher Creators. The suppression of such individuals by the homogenisation of modern ideas would prevent further human evolution. Of course, Nietzsche’s conclusions rest upon the veracity of his premises-the evolutionary theories he relied upon. Theories which are at the very least, contestable.

Assuming Nietzsche’s vision was realised, what would such a society be like?

He writes of his admiration for the Romans, their values against those of Judea so perhaps this indicates the type of society he would like to see? 25 In place of equality will be a hierarchy based on order of rank, incorporated to the will of the Philosopher Creators. 26 Petty politics of Nationalism’s and Anarchism’s will be replaced by the single Will of Grand Politics of a united Europe led by the Philosopher-Creators which, will confront the single will of Russia for domination of the Earth. 27

Conclusion.

It is impossible to fully appreciate Nietzsche’s writings, his doctrine of Will to Power, Ubermensch/Philosopher Creators and his disdain for ‘Modern Ideas and Christianity without an understanding of the theories of evolution on which they are based. For Nietzsche, the justification of human society is the existence of the Philosopher Creators. Their will to power/physiology follows from evolution. That is, to reiterate, theories of evolution that are questionable, perhaps even refuted. If refuted then the whole of Nietzsche’s philosophy especially his criticism of modernity, is also refuted.

References.

1. Zarathustra’s Prologue.           Friedrich Nietzsche. Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

                                              Penguin 1969.

2. Martin Jenkins.                      Nietzsche: The Politics of Physiology.        

                                               Pathways to Philosophy 176.

3. #203.                                   Friedrich Nietzsche. Beyond Good and Evil.

                                              Cambridge University Press. 2002.

4. #18 Third Treatise.               Friedrich Nietzsche. On the Genealogy of Morality.

                                              Hackett. 1998.

5. #28                                     ibid.

6. #242.                                  Beyond Good and Evil. Op cite.

7. # 40, 41.                             Skirmishes of an Untimely Man.

                                             Friedrich Nietzsche. Twilight of the Idols.

                                             Cambridge University Press. 2006.

8. #242.                                 Beyond Good and Evil. Op cite.

9. Prologue.                            Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Op cite.

10. #44, 203, 211.                  Beyond Good and Evil. Op cite. 

11. #211.                               Ibid.

12. #13. First Treatise.            Genealogy of Morality. Op cite.

13. #200.                               Beyond Good and Evil. Op cite. 

14. #212.                               Ibid.

15. #213.                               Ibid.

16.  #258.                                  Ibid.

17. #200.                                   Ibid.

    & The Problem of Socrates. Here Nietzsche describes the anarchic chaos inherent to the  

    bodies of the Greeks. The remedy for this as provided by Socrates was the imposition of 

    Reason and Logic.                       Twilight of the Idols. op cite.

18. #203.                                  Beyond Good and Evil. Op cite.

19. #61.                                    Ibid.

20. #62.                                    Ibid.

21. #108, 117, 212,                    Ibid.

     248, 230. 

     #858.                                  Friedrich Nietzsche. The Will to Power.

                                                Vintage Books. 1968.

22. #257,8.                               Beyond Good and Evil. Op cite.

23. Part 1: Evolution.                 Gregory Moore. Nietzsche, Biology & Metaphor.

                                               Cambridge University Press. 2002.

24. P. 32.                                  Ibid.

25. #16.                                   First Treatise. Genealogy of Morality. Op cite.     

26. #228.                                 Beyond Good and Evil. Op cite.

27. #208.                                 Ibid.

     #39.                                   Twilight of the Idols. Op cite.