Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-gvh9x Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T13:02:15.103Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Nietzsche's Subject: Retrieving the Repressed

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2010

Matthew Rampley
Affiliation:
Surrey Institute of Art and Design
Get access

Summary

We think that hardness, forcefulness, slavery, danger in the alley and the heart, life in hiding, stoicism, the art of experiment and devilry of every kind, that everything evil, terrible, tyrannical in man, everything in him that is akin to beasts of prey and serpents, serves the enhancement of the species “man” as much as its opposite does.

(BGE §44)

In the previous chapter I argued against overplaying the purely sceptical moment in Nietzsche's critique of metaphysics at the expense of his reconstructive theory of interpretation. Critics of a variety of persuasions have tended to dichotomise the issues at stake within his work, as if it merely revolves around an opposition between rationality and irrationality. Nietzsche's embrace of the other of metaphysical reason, seen in such terms has made him the object of some considerable censure. For example, Habermas, using the case of The Birth of Tragedy, sees Nietzsche as striving for regression to a mythic primal origin, a goal that prepares the way both for Nazism and also for the thought of a figure such as Martin Heidegger. Discussing Heidegger, Habermas writes, ‘It is only after this turn that fascism, like Nietzsche's philosophy, belongs to the objectively ambiguous phase of the overcoming of metaphysics.’ Though he stops short of labelling Nietzsche's work as fascist, in the manner of Lukács's crude assault, its problematic and ambiguous status lends easily to association with fascist thinking. In contrast, thinkers such as Bataille, Deleuze, Sarah Kofman and Jacques Derrida have received Nietzsche with a sense of exhilaration, as providing a mechanism of release from the tyranny of logic and rationality, opening up language to the play of metaphor.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×