How to Read Nietzsche Badly - By Seeing Him as an Existentialist

 

 

Perhaps the most common definition of existentialism is the one given by Sartre- the idea that, as he puts it, “existence precedes essence” or, in other words, that there is no given meaning for experience, and therefore you have a responsibility to create meaning for your own experience. There is a long tradition that this comes from - most notably Kierkegaard - or you could go further back and look at Schelling’s call for a “philosophy of existence”.  Arguably one can find similar sentiments expressed throughout history.

 

Briefly, I don’t think this definition fits Nietzsche very well. In fact I think he would have seen some unexamined Kantian vestiges in Sartre’s definition. Sartre was an avowed humanist, and Nietzsche was contemptuous of humanism. He thought that the death of God also implied the end of humanism. And I think Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are as different as night and day.

Sartre famously opined that we are all "doomed to be free" - that, once man "is thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does."  But I don't think that's how Nietzsche saw things- rather than thinking that we are all condemned to freedom, Nietzsche thought that there were many people who were ruled and quite content to be ruled.  If he had lived to read Sartre, he probably would have dismissed Sartre's insistence that we are all condemned to be free as a product of an egalitarian impulse for which Nietzsche had nothing but contempt.  Nietzsche would regard the doctrine everyone is free as mere wishful thinking.

If anything, rather than seeing Nietzsche as an existentialist, I'd see him as an essentialist, of sorts - but for him, the essence of humanity, or perhaps of life itself, is the will-to-power.  Come to think of it, his doctrine of "eternal recurrence" also has essentialist overtones as well.  He'd probably reject the notion that existence precedes essence as compromise with empiricism - one of the "British ideas" that he so despised.  And had a Sartrean existentialist, or someone of a similar bent, accused him of essentialism, Nietzsche would, in my mind, have likely replied, Yes?  And what of it?  Nietzsche proudly declared that humanity's essence was to be a rope stretched from the animal to the übermensch - a rope over an abyss - "A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal."

Nietzsche believed that humanity has a goal, not that humanity is a goal.  For Nietzsche, humanity has a purpose, and that purpose is the übermensch.  It is towards this purpose that the entire being of the human is oriented.  This teleology also implied a standard by which one can measure a specific person's value, their "greatness": namely, to what extent they were able to attain or approach this goal.  Nietzsche alludes obliquely to bridgemen - admired aspirants who show signs of moving towards the goal of the übermensch, or who perhaps show some glimmer of awareness of the possibility of this goal, even if they utterly fail to move toward it.

Sartre, on the other hand, thought that humanity is a goal - each individual human is an end-in-itself (more evidence of the Kantian influence on Sartre).  Indeed, it is precisely the fact that there is no given purpose to human existence that makes radical autonomy - the existential decision - possible.  But Nietzsche would have seen Sartre's refusal to acknowledge an external purpose to human existence as nothing but weakness and self-deception.  In Nietzsche's metaphor of the rope over the abyss, the abyss of course represents nihilism.  Nietzsche would have seen Sartre as one who fell into nihilism, motivated by egalitarian relativism and an unwillingness or inability to realize and recognize his purpose.

So, no.  Nietzsche was not an existentialist.

All of this, however, does not stop you from being an existentialist, if you would like to be. Go right ahead.  No one is stopping you.

But I have to ask: if you're an aspiring existentialist, why do you find it necessary to distort the memory of Nietzsche, to lie to yourself about him, and tell yourself that he was, so to speak, on your side?  Is it because you desire to have some revered, ancient wiseman to authorize and give meaning to your adventure, to add the weight of history and legacy to your philosophical tradition?  But doesn't that very desire go against the principles of existentialism?  (And what are the principles of existentialism, anyway?)

Simply understand that Nietzsche is your enemy - and defeat him.