Abstract
The fourth chapter discusses Nietzsche’s reception of Spinoza. Nietzsche’s explicit and implicit criticisms will be used in order to identify key points of contact that can help us compare and contrast two philosophies steeped in immanence and naturalism. The first and second parts of this project consist in a diachronic analysis of Nietzsche’s engagement with Spinoza, as Nietzsche knew him from various commentaries, and in a discussion of the major themes in play. The third part is an evaluation of Nietzsche’s criticisms that helps us gain a sense of the coherence running through them, as well as of the core similarities and differences between their philosophies.
This chapter, with some modifications, has appeared in: Ioan, Razvan. 2018. A Case of “Consumption”: Nietzsche’s Diagnosis of Spinoza. Nietzsche-Studien 46 (1): 1–27, Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/nietzstu-2017-0104.
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Notes
- 1.
This project requires explicit justification in light of the claim that, due to the fact that Nietzsche most likely never read Spinoza, “to discuss Nietzsche’s interpretations and misinterpretations of Spinoza in relation to Spinoza’s own writings is simply irrelevant” (Brobjer 2008, p. 77). The validity of this claim depends on the purpose of the analysis of Nietzsche’s claims about Spinoza. If the goal is to analyse Nietzsche’s behaviour as a reader of philosophy, to track the origins of his views on Spinoza or to analyse Nietzsche’s interpretations of Spinoza for their own sake, then Brobjer is surely right. These projects, while undoubtedly indispensible for the history of philosophy, do not exhaust the task that the historian of philosophy can set herself. The themes important to Nietzsche, in his reception of Spinoza, can be used as a guide in building a dialogue between the two outside the limits of Nietzsche’s knowledge of Spinoza. A discussion of intrinsically interesting philosophical topics should be built on sound historical knowledge but has the potential to go beyond it. This depends on an analysis that does justice to Spinoza’s thinking. The benefits of such an approach can, hopefully, open new perspectives on traditional philosophical problems.
- 2.
A similar view is found in Stegmaier (2012, p. 528), who writes that Nietzsche varies wildly both in his views on Spinoza and in the themes of interest, and that this characterizes both the published and the unpublished pronouncements on the Dutch thinker. While important shifts cannot be denied, this is not necessarily the symptom of incoherence.
- 3.
Gawoll has argued that Nietzsche also used the first edition from 1854. His argument is based on Nietzsche’s quote of EIVP67 in Latin, a quote Nietzsche could not have gotten from later editions (Gawoll 2001, p. 49, note 10). This proposition, however, was quite famous, and Scandella argues that it may have appeared in other sources as well, even when they are not directly linked to Spinozism (Scandella 2012, p. 311).
- 4.
Fischer summarizes Spinoza’s philosophy in 4 sentences: 1) rationalism or pure intellect 2) rationalism and pantheism 3) naturalism or system of pure nature 4) dogmatism or system of pure causality (Scandella 2012, p. 312).
- 5.
For a number of other sources see Wurzer 1975, pp. 127–38.
- 6.
Nietzsche writes that Spinoza is the highest realist in 9[178] 12.443.
- 7.
“Spinoza gewann eine solche bejahende Stellung, insofern jeder Moment eine logische Nothwendigkeit hat: und er triumphirte mit seinem logischen Grundinstinkte über eine solche Weltbeschaffenheit.”
- 8.
Notebook 11 from 1881 is key here and will be discussed later in Chap. 6.
- 9.
“Spinoza nahm mit seiner Ethik Rache am jüdischen Gesetz: ‘das Individuum kann thun, was es will’: ähnlich wie Paulus”.
- 10.
“An Spinoza./Dem ‘Eins in Allem’ liebend zugewandt‚/Ein amor dei‚ selig‚ auf Verstand –/Die Schuhe aus! Welch dreimal heilig Land! – –/Doch unter dieser Liebe fraß / ein heimlich glimmender Rachebrand:/– am Judengott fraß Judenhaß! –/– Einsiedler‚ hab ich dich erkannt?”.
- 11.
Claiming that Spinoza suffered from consumption was common in the nineteenth Century (e.g. Hegel 1990, III 103).
- 12.
If Spinoza appears as the theoretician of ego-conservation then Spencer is that of species-conservation (Scandella 2014, p. 181).
- 13.
He develops a more radical critique of compassion, which is seen as dangerous for culture and for the ‘free spirit’ (Wurzer 1975, p. 238).
- 14.
“Die Welt war für Spinoza wieder in jene Unschuld zurückgetreten, in der sie vor der Erfindung des schlechten Gewissens dalag”.
- 15.
Reason and (adequate) knowledge are not synonymous for Nietzsche, but they are for Spinoza, as will be argued later.
- 16.
“[der] reinsten Weisen (Spinoza)”.
- 17.
It is interesting to compare this critique of concord with Schopenhauer’s, who argues that in EIVp29-31 Spinoza is guilty of false reasoning because he confuses the concepts of convenire and communere habere (WWV II 96). Spinoza’s argument moves from the claim that we have something in common with other things (in virtue of being conceived under the same attribute EIVp29) to the claim that nothing can be harmful to us insofar as it has something in common with our nature (EIVp30) and therefore that a thing is good insofar as it agrees (convenit) with our nature (EIVp31). Schopenhauer’s critique, like Nietzsche’s, starts from the assumption that the notion of conflict best describes the fabric of the world. The directions of their critique differ, however, insofar as Schopenhauer does not doubt reason’s capacity to create agreement, but rather problematizes the indeterminateness, the vagueness of the concepts used by Spinoza. We will return to this critique in our discussion of Spinoza’s politics.
- 18.
The references to struggle in this fragment have led Scandella, with good reason, to consider this passage in the light of Nietzsche’s reading of Roux (Scandella 2012, p. 312).
- 19.
“Das bewusste Denken, und namentlich das des Philosophen, ist die unkräftigste und desshalb auch die verhältnissmässig mildeste und ruhigste Art des Denkens”.
- 20.
“wir werden nur durch Begierden und Affekte in unserem Handeln bestimmt. Die Erkenntniß muß Affekt sein, um Motiv zu sein.” The paragraph ends with “Ich sage: sie muß Leidenschaft sein, um Motiv zu sein.”—this important sentence will be the discussed later.
- 21.
“Selbstloses, Harmloses, Sich-selber-Genügendes, wahrhaft Unschuldiges”.
- 22.
“mit dem Mächtigsten, was es giebt, Eins zu werden”.
- 23.
“Die Furcht vor der Macht”.
- 24.
“höchster Ungestörtheit und Stille und Geistigkeit”.
- 25.
“Doch unter dieser Liebe fraß ein heimlich glimmender Rachebrand” (28[49] 11.319).
- 26.
A number of puzzling references in the late work to Spinoza as “der Heilige Goethes” (11[138] 13.64, 12[1] 13.200) can be interpreted starting from Nietzsche’s reading of Spinoza amor intellectualis dei as a purely rational, speculative ideal, divorced from any affect. This might stem from the conflation of Spinoza’s third kind of knowledge with Schopenhauer’s pure, “begierdenlosen” contemplation of Platonic Ideas (see Siemens 2011).
- 27.
“Herr über alle anderen Affekte; sie ist stärker”.
- 28.
“Von der Heuchelei der Philosophen”.
- 29.
“rachsüchtige Affekt”.
- 30.
“der Überwindung der Affekte”.
- 31.
“seine so naiv befürwortete Zerstörung der Affekte durch Analysis und Vivisektion derselben”.
- 32.
“immer Dünnere und Blässere, ward ‘Ideal’, ward ‘reiner Geist’, ward ‘absolutum’, ward ‘Ding an sich’”.
- 33.
“philosophischen Erotik Plato’s”.
- 34.
They point out that, while Fischer took Spinoza’s system to be consistent (he is close to Fichte on this), Trendelenburg accuses Spinoza of inconsistency because, he claims, Spinoza surreptitiously re-introduced final causes (striving for self-preservation) in a system which was supposed to eliminate them. Crucially, Trendelenburg uses the word “Inconsequenz”, which Nietzsche takes up in JGB 13 (Rupschus and Stegmaier 2009, pp. 300–1).
- 35.
“Die Begierde ist das Wesen des Menschen selbst, nämlich das Streben, kraft dessen der Mensch in seinem Sein beharren will” (11[193] 9.517).
- 36.
See Wurzer 1975, 190.
- 37.
For more on Nietzsche’s critique of mechanism, see Chap. 3.
- 38.
“eine gedrückte Seele aus, voller Mißtrauen und schlimmer Erfahrung”.
- 39.
Nietzsche’s evaluation of the geometrical method has itself an interesting history. In the very first fragment to mention Spinoza, Nietzsche considers the geometrical form acceptable only as an aesthetic expression: “Die starre mathematische Formel (wie bei Spinoza)—die auf Göthe einen so beruhigenden Eindruck machte, hat eben nur noch als ästhetisches Ausdrucksmittel ein Recht” (19[47] 7.434). In this fragment Nietzsche’s claim is that the value of a philosophy should be judged from an artistic perspective, as a work of art. In JGB 5 5.19 he writes that the mathematical form used by Spinoza is “hocus pocus” and that that it only serves to rationalize an insight which has been reached by means other than cold, pure dialectics. However, in the 1886 Nachlass, as we have seen, Nietzsche sees some benefits to using this method.
- 40.
“Dieselbe als Morphologie und Entwicklungslehre des Willens zur Macht zu fassen, wie ich sie fasse—daran hat noch Niemand in seinen Gedanken selbst gestreift:”.
- 41.
I am indebted to Keith Ansell-Pearson for pointing out the following interesting point: Nietzsche read a French author named Jean-Marie Guyau, who developed an account of desire that is spinozistic. In his annotations to Guyau’s work, Nietzsche writes, next to the French thinker’s account of desire: “will to power”. Without engaging here in an analysis of this interesting fact, we must note that it is indicative of the similarities Nietzsche himself saw between his doctrine of “will to power” and the Spinozistic notion of “desire” or “conatus”.
- 42.
“Kategorien, Formeln, Worte”.
- 43.
This line is pursued by Matthew Kissner in his Spinoza on Human Freedom (2011).
- 44.
“immer Dünnere und Blässere”.
- 45.
The problem with self-preservation is that it is teleological. Spinoza claims that humans act on account of ends, an endorsement of teleology, only because he believes that our representations act as efficient causes: final causes are revealed to be nothing more than a special case of efficient causation.
- 46.
Deleuze speaks of an “affirmative conception of essence: the degree of power as affirmation of the essence of God” (Deleuze 1981, p. 140).
- 47.
We must nevertheless nuance this claim by pointing out textual considerations that seem to justify Nietzsche’s worries that Spinoza did not fully understand what is required for “thoughtful egoism”. Bar a small number of texts, most notably the TIE, Spinoza prefers the first person plural pronoun (‘we’) to the singular (‘I’). We can observe this predilection clearly in the Ethics, together with a preference for impersonal formulations, e.g. “man thinks” (EIIA2; cf. Jaquet 2011, pp. 351–2). Furthermore, Spinoza argues that the greatest good is “common to all” (EIVp36). This can raise doubts over Spinoza’s ability to think “thoughtful egoism” and to oppose it to the demands of social drives in the way Nietzsche does. Whether this is the case can only be discussed after an exposition of their respective ethical and political commitments.
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Ioan, R. (2019). Nietzsche’s Diagnosis of Spinoza. In: The Body in Spinoza and Nietzsche. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20987-2_4
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