I post this in honour of Saint Valentine, as it happened to be written on 13 and 14 February 2017. Also in honour of black cats!
::
I’ll make a little piece-by-piece analysis of Dawn 113. I’ll be using the translation found here (while also consulting the German, of course):
http://nietzsche.holtof.com/reader/friedrich-nietzsche/daybreak/aphorism-113-quote_a9a9bf9b4.html
“The striving for distinction keeps a constant eye on the next man and wants to know what his feelings are: but the empathy which this drive requires for its gratification is far from being harmless or sympathetic or kind. We want, rather, to perceive or divine how the next man outwardly or inwardly suffers from us, how he loses control over himself and surrenders to the impressions our hand or even merely the sight of us makes upon him; and even when he who strives after distinction makes and wants to make a joyful, elevating or cheering impression, he nonetheless enjoys this success not inasmuch as he has given joy to the next man or elevated or cheered him, but inasmuch as he has impressed himself on the soul of the other, changed its shape and ruled over it at his own sweet will. The striving for distinction is the striving for domination over the next man, though it be a very indirect domination and only felt or even dreamed.”
This is the main argument of the aphorism. I trust that it doesn’t require a commentary. However, it’s the part we may have to keep going back to, in case something is not clear in the rest of the aphorism.
“There is a long scale of degrees of this secretly desired domination, and a complete catalogue of them would be almost the same thing as a history of culture, from the earliest, still grotesque barbarism up to the grotesqueries of over-refinement and morbid idealism. The striving for distinction brings with it for the next man–to name only a few steps on the ladder–: torment, then blows, then terror, then fearful astonishment, then wonderment, then envy, then admiration, then elevation, then joy, then cheerfulness, then laughter, then derision, then mockery, then ridicule, then giving blows, then imposing torment:–here at the end of the ladder stands the ascetic and martyr, who feels the highest enjoyment by himself enduring, as a consequence of his drive for distinction, precisely that which, on the first step of the ladder, his counterpart the barbarian imposes on others on whom and before whom he wants to distinguish himself.”
This part deserves a careful analysis. We shall suppose that the “few steps on the ladder” Nietzsche mentions are given in (chrono)logical order. It starts with “torment” (Martern, “tortures”). This, I think, is the “grotesque barbarism” mentioned earlier. The word translated as “grotesque”, fratzenhaft, also suggests so much to me as “roguish” (namely by way of the masculine word Fratz, as distinct from the feminine word Fratze): compare GM I 11:
“[T]hey go back to the innocent conscience of the beast of prey, as triumphant monsters who perhaps emerge from a disgusting [scheusslich] procession of murder, arson, rape, and torture, exhilarated and undisturbed of soul, as if it were no more than a students’ prank[.]” (Kaufmann translation.)
Torture is something like a cat does with a mouse when it has catched it–something playful. The next item, “blows”, is where it gets serious, where it’s really just about inflicting hurt or harm, very businesslike and even boring in a way. The next item is “terror”: at this point physical violence no longer necessary; the mere threat thereof suffices (cf. BGE 257, end). “Fearful astonishment” is already a bit weaker than “terror”; this is the intermediate stage between terror and wonderment. “Wonderment”, in turn, is weaker than “astonishment”, and is not really fearful at all anymore. But wonderment (Verwunderung) already points to admiration (Bewunderung); perhaps the difference is that admiration is a more subtle form of wonderment–subtle enough so as not to arouse envy. Only insofar as one isn’t upset by others can one admire them.
Elevation may be when something we find admirable inspires us, so that we ourselves become more admirable to ourselves. Joy, in turn, is itself such an elevated state: we also rejoice in our own condition when we feel joy. And cheerfulness is the mood related to that emotion–a mood being more general than an emotion. The person no longer (just) brings us joy, but now the mere sight or thought of him cheers us up. This is also the point where the distinguished one may become a bit laughable. He may be distinguished by his silliness, or clumsiness etc. From here this becomes increasingly worse: the German says something like “laughter, then derision, then mockery, then scorn, then giving blows, then inflicting tortures”. From mildly ridiculous, the distinguished person now becomes more and more insufferable: I’m reminded of William Blake’s “fool who persists in his folly”. If an early Christian, for example, keeps insisting that some minor god, the god of a small and unfree people, the Jews, is the One God, then it’s no longer funny, and people resort to throwing him to the lions, crucifying him, etc. etc.
By the way, in the German it does not really say the ascetic and martyr “feels the highest enjoyment by himself enduring” etc., but “by himself carrying away”–like a prize. The prize that the martyr carries away as a consequence of his drive for distinction is in the first place his reducing others to the level of the barbarian, compelling them to act barbaric toward him. (I’m reminded of Socrates: “The dialectician leaves it to his opponent to demonstrate that he’s not an idiot: he enrages, he at the same time makes helpless. The dialectian devitalizes his opponent’s intellect.” (TI “Problem of Socrates” 7, Hollingdale translation. At the end of section 6, Nietzsche points out that, like Socrates, the Jews were dialecticians too…))
“The triumph of the ascetic over himself, his glance turned inwards which beholds man split asunder into a sufferer and a spectator, and henceforth gazes out into the outer world only in order to gather as it were wood for his own pyre, this final tragedy of the drive for distinction in which there is only one character burning and consuming himself–this is a worthy conclusion and one appropriate to the commencement: in both cases an unspeakable happiness at the sight of torment!”
Let us first go back to the commencement:
“The striving for distinction keeps a constant eye on the next man and wants to know what his feelings are: but the empathy which this drive requires for its gratification is far from being harmless or sympathetic or kind. We want, rather, to perceive or divine how the next man outwardly or inwardly suffers from us, how he loses control over himself and surrenders to the impressions our hand or even merely the sight of us makes upon him[.]”
Note: the cruelty of the barbarian already requires empathy. This empathy is preserved through all the steps on the ladder. So when the barbarian has evolved all the way to “the ascetic and martyr”, he becomes the sufferer but empathises with the one he compels to be barbaric towards him; this empathy is what enables him to be a spectator as well as a sufferer.
“Indeed, happiness, conceived of as the liveliest feeling of power, has perhaps been nowhere greater on earth than in the souls of superstitious ascetics. The Brahmins give expression to this in the story of King Visvamitra, who derived such strength from practising penance for a thousand years that he undertook to construct a new Heaven. I believe that in this whole species of inner experience we are now incompetent novices groping after the solution of riddles: they knew more about these infamous refinements of self-enjoyment 4,000 years ago. The creation of the world: perhaps it was then thought of by some Indian dreamer as an ascetic operation on the part of a god! Perhaps the god wanted to banish himself into active and moving nature as into an instrument of torture, in order thereby to feel his bliss and power doubled!”
This is where the god comes in. The ascetic, who is “only one character burning and consuming himself” (i.e., he is usually alone), is superstitious in that he believes in “gods and genii of all the heights and depths, in short something that roams even in secret, hidden places, sees even in the dark, and will not easily let an interesting painful spectacle pass unnoticed.” (GM II 7.)
This, I think, is what Nietzsche means when says the ascetic “gazes out into the outer world only in order to gather as it were wood for his own pyre”: he looks everywhere for things that may cause suffering to him. And his triumph consists in “the fact that he feels no pain where he had expected to feel it.” (BGE 124.) He identifies wholly with the spectator–that is, with the one who identifies or is one with the cause of his suffering. For this is what cruelty is: to identify with the cause of some suffering and thereby feel the power to cause it. This feeling of power is the pleasure of cruelty.
The god feels his bliss and power doubled because he does not just feel his power to create a world, but, by turning the world into an instrument of torture, also feels his power to cause suffering.
“And supposing it was a god of love: what enjoyment for such a god to create suffering men, to suffer divinely and superhumanly from the ceaseless torment of the sight of them, and thus to tyrannise over himself!”
Here the god no longer (just) used the world as an instrument of torture against himself directly, but (also) indirectly, by using it against other sentient beings and, because of his love for them, feeling com-passion for them (“passion” as in “the passion of the Christ”, the suffering of Jesus).
“And even supposing it was not only a god of love, but also a god of holiness and sinlessness: what deliriums of the divine ascetic can be imagined when he creates sin and sinners and eternal damnation and a vast abode of eternal affliction and eternal groaning and sighing!–It is not altogether impossible that the souls of Dante, Paul, Calvin and their like may also once have penetrated the gruesome secrets of such voluptuousness of power–and in face of such souls one can ask: is the circle of striving for distinction really at an end with the ascetic? Could this circle not be run through again from the beginning, holding fast to the basic disposition of the ascetic and at the same time that of the pitying god? That is to say, doing hurt to others in order thereby to hurt oneself, in order then to triumph over oneself and one’s pity and to revel in an extremity of power! Excuse these extravagant reflections on all that may have been possible on earth through the psychical extravagance of the lust for power!”
Running through the circle again from the beginning while holding fast to the basic disposition of the divine ascetic: that means, for example, imposing torment and giving blows like the barbarian, but now in order to hurt oneself through one’s compassion.
Willing the recurrence means creating the world anew. This is how the Primordial One (the god who banishes himself into active and moving nature as into an instrument of torture) is sublated into the Eternal Recurrence (in WP 1041, Nietzsche uses the same word as in D 113, namely “Kreislauf”–“circle-run, circulation”). The artists’ metaphysics is not replaced by the philosophy of the will to power; it is sublated (cancelled, preserved, and elevated) into it…