A few classes ago, we discussed to what extent Kierkegaard's authorial intentions or personal motivations affected our interpretation of the text. I'm generally of the opinion that authorial intention has little to no bearing on the meaning of a text, so somewhat predictably, I was particularly interested in section 4 from Nietzsche's third essay. Now, I think Nietzsche is qualifying his statement when he says "In such a case as this," meaning in Wagner's case, a case where an artist undergoes some sort of radical conceptual shift. Setting aside this qualification, Nietzsche argues that readers should focus on the text rather than the author behind the text (recall his preference for the deed over the "neutral substratum" of the subject): "one does best to separate an artist from his work, not taking him as seriously as his work. He is, after all, only the precondition of his work, the womb, the soil, sometimes the dung and manure on which, out of which, it grows--and therefore in most cases something one must forget if one is to enjoy the work itself" (100-1).
There are all kinds of interesting images going on in this passage, images that have echoes throughout Genealogy of Morals, and I can't give them a full treatment here. But this passage did raise another question that I've been struggling with in some form or another throughout this text. Obviously, as we've all noted I'm sure, there's some pretty racist and misogynistic stuff going on in here. How much of this is just Nietzsche the author, being a white male in the 19th century, and how much of this is Nietzsche's text? If it is just Nietzsche the author, maybe we can "set it aside" (but maybe we shouldn't). If it's the text, I tend to think we can't set it aside. Now, this is a problem I am honestly struggling with here, so feel free to help me out, though I'm not sure it's a resolvable problem. I'll point to one (though we all know there are plenty) of such troublesome passages: "A predominance of mandarins [scholars?] always means something is wrong; so do the advent of democracy, international courts in place of war, equal rights for women, the religion of pity, and whatever other symptoms of declining life there are" (154).
This is really, it seems, a two part question. First: to what extent are Nietzsche's racist, misogynistic, and (I might say) classist comments part or a result of the argument itself? In other words, are they a necessary outcome of the will to power or the ascendancy of the overman? Second: if they aren't necessary outcomes of Nietzsche's argument, how do we respond to their appearance in the text? If they are in the text (which, obviously, they are), shouldn't we account for them in our reading of the text? Even if we could say that these comments are not necessary to the argument itself, can we ignore them in our evaluation of the argument? Or, and this might be a separate question, in our evaluation of the text? I feel like this last question raises yet another question, that is, how do we separate the text's argument from the text itself, and if we can't, does every part of the text need to be accounted for in our evaluation of the argument?
To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world looks rationally back. --G.W.F. Hegel
If we take the metaphor of the author as soil seriously, then we would be completely justified in pointing out how the soil affects the quality of what springs from it. While it may be academic policy to forget the author and what we think of them and their racism in order to be honest with their arguments, there is a certain importance in seeing origin (dare I say genealogy) of certain arguments and claims as they are the prerequisite for even having the view. The idea that people just have a view which they can change based on reason is flawed because we don't just have beliefs, we gain them under unique circumstances, which is why one cannot truly engage with Nietzsche argument in meaningful way without sharing in some of the manure. For Nietzsche's argument to grow in you, you must be ready for it, in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you brought this up in relation to the passage from the beginning of the third essay, as I think it is an interesting issue. There is no question that racist and misogynistic elements existed inside Nietzsche himself, but it is questionable whether those elements really affect the meaning of the text. Going off of Eric's point, I think the question of how these views interact with the text depends on where the reader is coming from. That being said, Nietzsche's insertion of racist and misogynistic statements in the text might not be a concrete reflection of the argument at all, but instead might be reflections of how Nietzsche interprets and applies his own argument. So I question whether those statements are a part of the argument or simply a part of the argument's resonation within Nietzsche. Interestingly, this viewpoint makes Nietzsche both the creator of and spectator of his work, which is interesting to think about. Ultimately, however, I think this question has the potential to be very complicated, and I think you might be right that there might not be a concrete answer.
ReplyDeleteWhile I do think we can parse out some of the more racist and misogynistic portions of Nietzsche, and still look critically at his ideas, as we could for anyone, I am still not entirely convinced that we can ever separate an authors work from an author, or an author from a social, cultural, and historical location. I don't mean that we cant, as in we shouldn't, because I think there is some value in attempting to look just at ideas, the same way there is value in trying to be "objective." I mean we cant (as in it is impossible to do so), we will always attribute words to a mouth, or writing to a hand, even in the case of a pseudonymous writing, we continue to see ideas as opinions. Moreover, I think it is a bit paradoxical or contradictory for Nietzsche to expect us to do so, since it would be against our nature as value creating, philosophical animals to not be curious or make inferences/ assumptions. Furthermore, telling a reader "don't think about the author, just think about the ideas" is at least a little tinged slavish moral ideas of no-saying. Finally, back to the idea of objectivity. I can sort of accept the idea that thoughts can be appreciated independent of a thinker, but interpretation on the part of the reader, understanding on the part of the reader, is always socially, culturally, and historically contextualized. A reader who claims to be able to read and understand a text with absolute 'objectivity' is lying to themselves, and doing so in a manner which inevitably results in an unevaluated, and therefore incomplete, understanding. It is, therefore, interesting that we do not think about authorship the same way we think about readership. PS. great blog post Maggie, and great comment Eric.
ReplyDeleteSorry about that, computer was logged into my wife Chelsea's Google account. lol.
ReplyDelete"It is, therefore, interesting that we do not think about authorship the same way we think about readership." I like this so much, Jonathan. It reminds me of Nietzsche's criticism of Kant's aesthetics, that considers beauty from the perspective of the spectator and not of the artist. And I also think you're right about it being nearly impossible for readers to totally disregard the author. The novelist William Gass says something really interesting about the post Roland Barthes' theories of the "death of the author": "this anonymity may mean many things, but one thing which it cannot mean is that no one did it." If anything, it seems particularly difficult to disregard the author in Nietzsche's case--his own "vitalist force" is difficult to ignore.
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