Nietzsche Contra Postmodernism

Abstract

Is there today indeed enough pride, daring, courage, self-assurance, intellectual energy, responsibility,freedom of will so that in reality philosophy is now even possible on this earth?1 Apparently not, at least if one judges from the chorus of postmodernist and deconstructionist voices heard in our world today. It is not selfassurance, intellectual energy, and courage to think that greets our ears but a sometimes strained and sometimes shrill chorus of claims not merely to have overcome metaphysics, as Nietzsche had sought, but to have gone beyond and to have overcome philosophy itself. Where is one, once one has left behind the love of wisdom? What does this loud trumpeting signify? What do these brash pronouncements of the end of philosophy mean? Since Nietzsche is often regarded as an inspiration for or, if one dare say so, a source of such opinions, I thought it would be instructive to borrow his hammer and do a little philosophizing of my own, sound out a few idols. What do I hear? Not very delicate sounds, but then a hammer is a somewhat crude instrument. Which is not to say it is not entirely appropriate. If my ear is attuned aright, what do I hear? Inharmonious, illtempered wrangling, vengeance, spite, rancor, a chorus of no say-ers, renouncers of all values and despisers of all creators of value, refusers of all that life has offered and has to offer. so hard? the kitchen coal once said to the diamond. After all, are we not close relatives? Why so soft, O my brothers, thus I ask you. Are you not my brothers? Why so soft, so pliant, so yielding? Why is there so much denial, self-denial, in your hearts? So little destiny in your eyes?2 Indeed, why so hard, for we are brothers and sisters, we philosophers and you postmoderns, deconstructionists, and assorted fellow travelers. So hard because I hear emptiness, the resonance of the void, in the hollow ring that answers from my hammer blows. A chorus of raucous, discordant voices, voices of spirits out of tune with themselves, stealth priests whose loud chanting is cover for rejection of life. The priestly crafts are as enchanting and as toxic to the human spirit as ever they were. These clever priests mask their service to the void, to the ascetic ideal, in cloaks of illusion woven of discourses of freedom, play, otherness, and difference. Cross-dressers of the intellect, they, like those of other eras, set traps for unwary but venturesome spirits. How cunning of the ascetic ideal to mask itself, disguise itself once again, and appear in the guise of the free spirit. Clearly all this is very unclear. But then, to deconstruct deconstruction, even for the sake of the love of wisdom, does not necessarily entail enlightenment. Nietzsche's recurring insistence that all truth is perspectival, all seeing interpretive, all knowing interested, perspectival, and interpretive, is itself open to more than one reading. His thinking is complex, multilayered, and diverse. The result is that at times the various themes produce what is a difficult harmony at best. He vacillates between two ontologies and what the perspectival character of knowing means varies depending on which ontology is at the moment the interpretive stance. One ontology produces the reading that it is the human role to be the creator of values. It entails a self-assured, active confidence and self respect. The other leads to the ascetic ideal. They share the insistence that truths, values, convictions, are prisons, that one must be free not only of Eternal Truth but eternal truths and finally of truth itself. To see how vastly different in meaning the perspectival character of knowing can be, let us sound out two of Nietzsche's strongly drawn images, his Three Metamorphoses of the Spirit from Zarathustra and his image of lambs and birds of prey from The Genealogy of Morals. Herr Nietzsche, your hammer, please. In the Zarathustra image the spirit is imaged as camel, lion or child depending on the relation to the Great Dragon which symbolizes Truth, Value, Absolute Good. …