16
PARTISAN REVIEW
The man whom Nietzsche praises is neither an epicurean nor
a monk, however burning and however seized, but he combines sensu–
ousness and spirituality, profound feeling and a penetrating intellect.
He is the man of reflective passion and passionate reflection. All of
Nietzsche's heroes, from Heraclitus and Socrates to Caesar,
Leonardo~
and Goethe are models and anticipations of such a type, "as mani–
fold as whole, as wide as full."
What Rilke has in common with Nietzsche is not praise for the
sake of praising, but rather that he praised the same kind of life
and, again like Nietzsche, praised it not merely implicitly but with
all his power and consciousness. And it is this that distinguishes
Nietzsche and Rilke from most philosophers and poets of the past.
Moreover, it is from Nietzsche above all others that one learns to
ask about every philosophy and every religion, and about great poets
and artists too: what is it that they praise?
Once we ask this question, we cannot fail to see how much
closer Nietzsche is to Plato, Aristotle, and Shakespeare than are most
of the defenders of "the tradition," let alone those who believe in
the trinity of Christianity, science, and democracy. One invokes the
awesome name of Aristotle but ignores his striking portrait of the
great-souled man. One cannot but admit Shakespeare's greatness but
does not ask what kind of man and life he praised; one ignores, or
tries to explain away, his 94th sonnet instead of comparing it with
his plays or such lines as these from
Measure for Measure:
0, it is excellent
To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.
Surely, this is Nietzsche in a nutshell. Consider Zarathustra's discourse
"On Those Who Are Sublime": "There is nobody from whom I
want beauty as much as from you who are powerful: let your kind–
ness be your final self-conquest. Of all evil I deem you capable:
therefore I want the good from you. Verily, I have often laughed at
the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no
claws." But when Nietzsche himself sums up in six words what he
praises, "the Roman Caesar with Christ's soul"
(The Will to Power,
section 983), Jaspers mistakes this crowning image for a mere
juggling of hollow concepts, "without any power of vision and un-
