Vol. 26 No. 2 1959 - page 296

296
PARTISAN REVIEW
Not surprisingly, therefore, Nietzsche is a source of real trouble to
Mr. Barrett. In the chapter on Kierkegaard, he explicitly and rightly
warns the reader against a psychoanalytic interpretation; in the case
of Nietzsche, however, Mr. Barrett himself takes the stance of an
allegedly "unprejudiced psychological observer" who notes that "the
process of ego-inflation has already gone beyond . . . neurosis."
Perhaps so; but surely there is no difference between Nietzsche and
Kierkegaard as case studies in psychopathology. Nor will ·it do to charge
Nietzsche with "failure as a thinker" because he "did not come to terms
with his own devil." This is again the language of religion, whether or–
thodox or psychological, where the alternative is either God or Satan; or
it is the language of poetry. But philosophy is neither theology nor
poetry if for no other reason than the fact that both God and Satan
may be judged in a philosophical inquiry-and found wanting.
Hence, Nietzsche's ideas, too, must be taken out of this religious–
psychological context if they are to be taken seriously and if they
are not to be misrepresented. The much abused concept of the "will
to power" does not mean, as Mr. Barrett says, "power for power's
sake"-that puts Nietzsche into the political dimension he detested;
but power for the sake of self-mastery or for the sake of capturing a mo–
ment of eternal joy on earth, which puts him into the ranks of existen–
tial thinkers. More importantly, the highest expression of the will to
power is the will to truth. It is upon this stubborn will that Christianity
and bourgeois morality suffer shipwreck. Thus Nietzsche was not only
the romantic Dionysian of the "Birth of Tragedy"; he was also a free,
hard, and enlightened spirit-a great skeptic. "Great spirits are skeptics,"
he wrote in his last work. "Zarathustra is a skeptic. Strength-freedom
which is born of the strength of the
~pirit-proves
itself by skepti–
cism....Conversely, the need for faith... is a need born of weakness."
Nor did he fail to see that this was hard to take for people who were
looking for inner peace and blessedness. "What does it mean to have
integrity in matters of the spirit? That one is severe against one's heart,
that one despises 'beautiful sentiments.' .. He repudiated the popular,
pragmatic justification of faith, i.e., the argument that "faith makes
blessed; hence, it is true." Beliefs are not true because they induce
beautiful states of mind or soul; on the contrary, he concluded "faith
makes blessed; consequently, it lies."
These aspects of Nietzsche's thought are not to be found in Mr.
Barrett's account; yet they are very important because they indicate
that existentialism may appear in quite a different light. Nietzsche oc–
cupies a pivotal place in modern thought precisely because, though deep-
159...,286,287,288,289,290,291,292,293,294,295 297,298,299,300,301,302,303,304,305,306,...354
Powered by FlippingBook