Abstract
Against pictures of philosophy as somber or gloomy, Montagine offers a “gay and sociable wisdom” continuous with a tradition of la gaya scienza that goes back to the Provencal troubadours. Nietzsche locates Montaigne in this tradition and takes his own place in it. At the same time, he departs from Montaigne by calling his own project a Wissenschaft, a “science.” After showing how Nietzsche combines science and cheerfulness, this chapter turns to the perspectivism that lies at the core of both Montaigne and Nietzsche. It moves from Montaigne’s perspectivism, showing that it cannot be reduced to scepticism, to that of Nietzsche, whose perspectivism is not to be confused with those whom Bernard Williams calls truth “deniers,” since it proceeds in the service of knowledge. The analysis concludes by interpreting Nietzsche’s perspectivism in a way that does justice to both its playful character and its capacity to serve knowledge.
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Notes
- 1.
See Boswell (1992, 842). In a letter of 2 March 1782 to Lucy Porter , Johnson writes: “But whatever befalls us, though it is wise to be serious, it is useless and foolish, and perhaps sinful, to be gloomy.”
- 2.
“The soul in which philosophy dwells should by its health make even the body healthy” (I.25.161/144). Nietzsche copied this passage into his notebooks in 1885 (see KSA 11:40[59].1.657). His persistent sense that “for a psychologist there are few questions that are as attractive as that concerning the relation of health and philosophy” (as he puts it in the 1887 Preface of GS, Sect. 2) owes much to Montaigne.
- 3.
The inscriptions carved in the beams of Montaigne’s library are catalogued in Norton (1904, 163–188). For the inscription quoted (my translation), see 171–172.
- 4.
Montaigne values cheerfulness highly throughout the Essais. Early in Book I: sadness is a “[C] stupid and monstrous ornament” with which to clothe wisdom , virtue , and conscience (I.2.11/6). Later in Book I: “[C] I would live solely in the presence of gay, healthy people” (I.21.97/82).
- 5.
- 6.
Compare Hans-Georg Gadamer : “Seriousness is not merely something that calls us away from play; rather seriousness in playing is necessary to make the play wholly play. Someone who doesn't take the game seriously is a spoilsport;” see Gadamer (1989, 102). In a similar spirit, C.S. Lewis observes: “The serious man, far from being a serious student, may be a dabbler and a dilettante. The serious student may be as playful as Mercutio. A thing may be done seriously in the one sense and yet not in the other. The man who plays football for his health is a serious man: but no real footballer will call him a serious player. He is not wholehearted about the game; doesn’t really care;” see Lewis (1961, 11).
- 7.
Horace (1929, 6) (Satires 1.24).
- 8.
Ecce Homo “is in a sense Nietzsche’s Montaignean self-portrait,” as Marchi (1994, 126) suggests. Though Marchi’s chapter on Emerson and Nietzsche is full of insights, I would disagree with his claim that “the presence of Montaigne is only incidental to Nietzsche’s work” (124). More adequate is the judgment at which he arrives later in his chapter: “The Essais are not always recognizable in his work, yet they played an underlying, often catalytic role” (132).
- 9.
In describing Montaigne as sportive and playful, Nietzsche reveals himself to have a good ear for Montaigne’s tone. This should not be taken for granted, since some otherwise brilliant readers have not displayed such an ear. Charles Taylor (1989, 183), for example, speaks of Montaigne’s “laborious self-examination .” There is nothing laborious or labored about the Essais.
- 10.
Kaufmann (1974, 4–5). But Kaufmann is not faultless in this respect; he mistranslates “Erkentniss” in BGE 129 as “wisdom ” (“the devil being the most ancient friend of wisdom”).
- 11.
The later Nietzsche does not abandon this view. See A 13: “The most valuable insights are the last to be discovered; but the most valuable insights are methods.”
- 12.
The intellectual conscience first appears by name in Nietzsche’s published texts at HH 109; see also AOM 26, TI “Expeditions” 18, A 47. The intellectual conscience, I suspect, is what links the “gray” science of HH (as Meyer 2014, 21 calls it) to gay science.
- 13.
One may connect BGE 213’s “bold and exuberant spirituality that runs presto” to the “sportiveness” that Nietzsche associates with Montaigne at EH “Clever” 3. Felicity Green (2012, 149–151) argues that the quality which Montaigne refers to as his “idleness” (oysiveté) is not mere indolence, but more nearly an artless nonchalance that is a version of Castiglione’s sprezzatura.
- 14.
Vivetta Vivarelli (1994, 81) cites an 1876 notebook entry that deplores the devaluation of the vita contemplativa and observes that “formerly the clergy and the esprit fort were opposites, both within the contemplative life” (KSA 8:17[41].304). She also notes (at 84) that in 1876 Nietzsche told a correspondent that he would be going to Sorrento for a year with two friends and a student: “We all have a house together and moreover a higher interest together: it will be a kind of monastery for free spirits ” (Letter to Reinhart von Seydlitz, 24 September 1876, KSB 5:188).
- 15.
On Nietzsche’s indebtedness to the troubadours and the sense in which he considers them “kindred spirits,” see Higgins (2000, 14–21).
- 16.
It is not wrong to cite Leibniz as a precursor of Nietzsche’s perspectivism as does Nehamas (1985, 242n5); the relevant Leibnizian text is Monadology §57. But the reader who appreciates Nietzsche’s deep admiration for the Renaissance in general, and Montaigne in particular, will find it strange to stop at Leibniz. Anderson (1998, 5–6) rightly mentions the important precedent of Alberti.
- 17.
As Scholar (2010, 73) notes, this passage combines visual and tactile metaphors.
- 18.
On this important point, I concur with Regosin’s reading of Montaigne: “The three elements that comprise Montaigne’s world —the self, things (les choses), and words (les mots)—interrelate in a way that is both tenuous and tentative. Things, both physical and intellectual, whether laid hold of by the senses of the mind, exist essentially apart from the self, impenetrable both because of the weakness of the view or seeker and because of their own opacity;” see Regosin (1977, 97).
- 19.
Regosin (1977, 143) puts the point well, describing Montaigne’s “customary practice of refracting subjects through different thematic lenses.”
- 20.
See KSA 7:30[26].741.
- 21.
See Clark (1990, 136).
- 22.
This point is well made at Berry (2011, 17 and 91).
- 23.
These four components of perspectivism are negations or inversions of the claims that Leiter (1994, 344) describes as the “Received View ” of Nietzsche’s perspectivism, held by Danto , Schrift , Rorty , and Nehamas.
- 24.
- 25.
For example: “There is no one perspective which is privileged over any other” (Danto 2005, 59). For a particularly effective statement of the self-undermining character of such versions of perspectivism, which tend to become their “own universal acid,” see Berry (2011, 8). Also relevant is Anderson (1998, 7–8).
- 26.
Graham Parkes (1994, 452n3) is one of the few commentators to notice the interest of this passage for readers of Nietzsche.
- 27.
As we saw in the last chapter, Montaigne reads Plato and other dogmatists as concealed skeptics. Nietzsche entertains the same possibility in Plato’s case. An 1885 notebook entry of Nietzsche reads: “What’s needed first is absolute scepticism towards all received concepts (something perhaps possessed by one philosopher—Plato: of course, he taught the opposite — —)” (KSA 11:34[195].487).
- 28.
- 29.
KSA 7:30[26].741.
- 30.
Though I am not directly entering into the question of the precise sense in which Nietzsche is (or is not) a naturalist, I do not mean to suggest that ignorance of this debate is a good idea. Leiter (2002, 3–12) distinguishes “methodological” from “substantive” naturalism and argues that Nietzsche is a “speculative methodological naturalist” for whom philosophical inquiry should be continuous with empirical inquiry in the sciences. Is Nietzsche also a “substantive naturalist?” He is, Leiter argues, if “substantive naturalist” is taken to mean “anti-supernaturalist.” But he is not a substantive naturalist, if the term is taken to include a commitment to “physicalism, the doctrine that only those properties picked out by the laws of the physical sciences are real” (Leiter 2012, 5–6; see also 24–25 for a clear statement of the difference between Nietzsche’s naturalism and materialism). For a critique of Leiter’s application to Nietzsche of the distinction between methodological and substantive naturalism, see Emden ( 2014, 62–65).
- 31.
Nehamas (1985, 52), citing BGE 55 and BGE 188.
- 32.
For more on this point, see Shaw (2007, 72), who observes that for Nietzsche the philosopher “has to engage in constant self-overcoming , to avoid the smug belief that he has arrived at true knowledge when he has merely assured himself about his own errors.”
- 33.
C.S. Lewis observes that we seek other perspectives, even if we disagree with some (or many) claims made within those perspectives, because “we seek an enlargement of our being. We want to be more than ourselves … We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own” (1961, 137). Perspectival seeing, Lewis argues, “is connaître not savoir; it is erleben; we become these other selves. Not only nor chiefly in order to see what they are like but in order to see what they see, to occupy, for a while, their seat in the great theatre” (139).
- 34.
Berry (2011, 137) notes the importance of this passage.
- 35.
For an extended and instructive comparison between HL’s use of history and the Essais, see Marchi (1994, 132–142).
- 36.
Many construe the positive statements about Christianity that appear in Nietzsche as consisting entirely of “backhanded compliments” (Pippin 2010, 26). One can juxtapose such interpretations with E.M. Cioran’s description of Nietzsche as belonging to the set of “anti-Christian Christians” (1998, 89).
- 37.
For an excellent demonstration of this point, see the insightful analysis of Nietzsche’s comments on prayer in GS at Higgins (2000, 34–39). Higgins concludes that “Nietzsche had learned from the prayers and scriptural passages of his religious background. He learned the world view that he came to abhor; but he also learned the psychological power of these formats themselves, evident especially when he began to resist the contents they bore” (39).
- 38.
Nor do I want to argue that every Nietzschean text engages in the dance . There is not much dancing in A; instead, “we are treated to a single point of view, argued in a relentless high pitch,” as Bett (2000, 84) argues. Though I do not think that Nietzsche actually abandons perspectivism when he writes A (contrary to Bett 2000, 69 and 82), it is not difficult to see why some are tempted by the thought.
- 39.
It is, however, plausible to attribute to Nietzsche a view akin to a sophisticated positivism, e.g., of the type theorized by Mach, as Hussain (2004) argues in his (remarkably convincing) presentation of a “Machian Nietzsche.”
- 40.
- 41.
Some readers will wonder whether or how this passage can be reconciled with the notebook entry alleging that “facts are precisely what there are not, only interpretations” (KSA 12:7[60].315 [=WP 481]). One might hold that on this point a conflict exists, and argue that when the notebooks and the published texts conflict, the latter ought to be preferred. For the question of how much (or how little) weight should be given to Nachlass passages, see Magnus (1988b). See also Clark (1990, 25–27) and Meyer (2014, 12–22). But we should not be too quick to grant the real existence of the conflict. Examination of the remark in its context, Leiter (2002) (38) claims, shows that the notebook entry is an attack “on the positivist idea of a ‘naked’ or ‘brute’ fact; and it presupposes the distinction between the noumenal and phenomenal world ” that Nietzsche rejects in TI, if not before. As Leiter (2002, 275) argues, we should not confuse Nietzsche’s denial that we have epistemic access to “any fact ‘in itself’” with the ontological claim that there are (or are not) facts about the world.
- 42.
- 43.
See Anderson (1996, 327) and Cox (1999, 151). Meyer also questions interpretations of Nietzsche that assert continuity between “the scientific world of swarming molecules and the middle-sized objects of everyday experience,” attributing such a view to Cox (1999, 154). Instead, he proposes that “Nietzsche’s naturalism commits him to a view of the world that deems the middle-sized objects of everyday experience falsifications of a true world that is best described in terms of dynamic relations” (Meyer 2014, 49).
- 44.
As Hussain (2004, 357) observes against Clark’s reading, Spir expressly criticizes the ordinary notion of a thing on the ground that it is contradicted by everything empirical. This makes it more plausible than Clark allows to suppose that Nietzsche would engage in the critique of commonsense things, without taking such a critique to defy the basic requirements of empiricism. For Clark’s reply to Hussain’s reading, see Clark and Dudrick (2004).
- 45.
- 46.
Here I am following the general strategy recommended by Anderson (2005, 186), but not its particular execution. Anderson accurately notes that some interpreters (e.g., Poellner 1995) have despaired of being able to reconcile Nietzsche’s seemingly conflicting claims on truth and falsification. Poellner’s view, as Anderson puts it, is that in effect “the conflicts raging in the recent secondary literature began already within the body of Nietzsche’s own beliefs!”
- 47.
The notebook entry is KSA 12:9[106].396 (=WP 569). See Wilcox (1974, 133) and Clark (1990, 120). Anderson (2005, 190–191) “puts this fragment to significant use, proposing that Nietzsche’s “chaos of sensations ” is modeled on the “petites perceptions” of Leibniz. For some critical remarks on Anderson’s comparison of Nietzsche’s chaos to Leibniz’s petites perceptions, see Andresen (2013, 479n12).
- 48.
KSA 12:9[106].395 (=WP 569).
- 49.
KSA 12:9[106].396 (=WP 569). Riccardi (2013, 223) argues against identifying what is falsified with the chaos of sensation , on the ground that the standard understanding of “chaos of sensation” would take it as mind-dependent and that Nietzsche expressly calls it another “phenomenal world ,” rather than a “true world.” Neither of these points are decisive. Even if the “chaos of sensation” is “another kind of phenomenal world,” (as WP 569 says) and so in some sense mind-dependent, that does not prevent it from being falsifiable. As Hill (2003, 137) suggests, falsification can occur “within the sphere of the mind-dependent.”
- 50.
For other, related problems with Clark’s chronology, see Riccardi (2013, 223).
- 51.
- 52.
- 53.
- 54.
It is quite possible, of course, that Nietzsche’s view is closer to the dynamism of Roger Boscovich (mentioned explicitly at BGE 12) than to Mach’s sensory monism. However this may be, Riccardi (2013, 232) is undoubtedly correct to distinguish BGE 15’s “qualified sensualism” from the “folk sensualism ” that Nietzsche frequently connects to materialist mechanism. On Nietzsche and Boscovich, see Stack (1983, 225–227); Whitlock (1996); Emden (2014, 105–107).
- 55.
- 56.
- 57.
- 58.
Berry (2011, 108–112) vigorously denies that we should attribute any ontology to Nietzsche, on the ground that doing so commits him to answering metaphysical questions on which he prefers to suspend judgment, in keeping with his anti-metaphysical stance.
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Miner, R. (2017). Gay Science and the Practice of Perspectivism. In: Nietzsche and Montaigne. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66745-4_3
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