polytheism e

Bulletin de la Sociiti Amhicaine de Philosophie de Langue FranraisVolume 14} Number 2} Fall 2004

Nietzsehe, Polytheism andParody

Pierre I<lossowski

Parody and polytheism in Nietzsche? At first sight, it is not atall clear what relation exists between these two terms, norwhat kind oE concerns would lead one to speak oE them, norwhat interest one n1ight have in raising such a question. If formost people Nietzsche's name is inseparable from theutterance God is dead, then it may seem surprising to speak ofthe religion of many gods with regard to Nietzsche. After all,there are countless people today for whom Nietzsche's namesignifies nothing more than this utterance-and they did notneed Nietzsche to know that all the gods are dead. It mayaisoseem, perhaps, that I am simply using Nietzsche todemonstrate the existence of many gods and to legitimatepolytheism; and, by playing on these words, I will not escapethe reproach, under the pretext of showing the meaning ofparody in Nietzsche, of making a parody of myself and thusof parodying Nietzsche.

If I must open myself to such confusion, I wouldnevertheless like to make one thing clear: insofar as one islead to interpret the thought of a mind [eprit] that one triesto comprehend and make comprehensible, there is no onewho leads his interpreter to parody him as much as Nietzsche.

82

NIETZSCHE, POLYTHEISM, AND PARODY

This is true not only of those interpreters who are smittenwith his thought, but also those who try hard to refute him asa dangerous spirit. Nietzsche himself urged one of his firstinterpreters-no one had yet spoken of hirn-to abandonall pathos, not to take sides in his favor, and to put up a sortof ironic resistance when characterizing him.

Here, then, we cannot avoid being the victim of asort of ruse, nor can we avoid falling into the trap inherent inNietzsche's own experience and thought. Unless we simplyundertake the work of the historian, as Andler did, l themoment we try to elucidate Nietzsche's thought, he is alwaysmade to say more than he says and less than he says. This isnot-as is often the case with other thinkers--due to a simplelack of perspective or even because a determinate point ofdeparture has been omitted. In assimilating Nietzsche, wemake him say more than he says, while in rejecting or alteringhim, we make rum say less than he says-for the simple reasonthat, properly speaking, with Nietzsche there is hardly eithera point of departure or a precise terminus. Nietzsche'scontemporaries and friends were able to follow an evolutionfrom The Birth of Tragedy to The Wanderer and His Shadow andon to The Gqy Science) and from Zarathustra to The Twilight ofthe Idols. But those of us who have at our disposal the youthfulwritings as weil as the posthumous work, including Ecce Homo,have not only been able to follow the ramifications ofNietzsche's posterity, and to witness the accusations madeagainst Nietzsche as a result of recent historical upheavals,but have also been able to discern something which, I think,is not without importance: Nietzsche, who was despiteeverything a professor of philology at Basel, and thus anacademic with absolutely certain pedagogical ambitions, didnot develop a philosophy. Instead, outside of the frameworkof the university, Nietzsche developed variations on a personalthen1e. Living a simple life marked by extreme suffering andconvalescence, forced to sojourn with increasing frequencyat health resorts, while in the midst of the greatest intellectualisolation, Nietzsche was thereby abandoned, in the most

83

PIERRE I<LOSSOWSI<I

auspicious manner, to listen to himself alone [d sa seule audition].This academic, trained in the disciplines of science in

order to teach and train others, found himself compeiled toteach the unteachable. What is unteachable are those momentswhen existence, escaping from the delimitations that producethe notions of history and morality, as weil as the practicalbehavior derived from them, is shown to be given back toitself with no other goal than that of returning to itself. Allthings then appear at once new and quite old; everything ispossible and everything is immediately impossible; and thereare only two courses open to consciousness: either to keepsilent, or to speak; either to do nothing, or to act so as toimprint on one's everyday quotidian ambiance the characterof existence given back to itself; either to lose itself in existenceor to reproduce it.

Nietzsche had immediately attained this unteachablein his own solitude, through his own idiosyncrasies-that is,by descnbing himse!fas a convalescent who had suffered fromthe unresolvecl nihilism of his own era and who had resolvedthis nihilism, to the point where he was able to restore to thenotion of fatum its fuil force. He had grasped the very groundof existence, lived as fortuitous-that is, he had grasped thataspect of existence which, through hirn, was fortuitouslynamed Nietzsche. In this way, he had also grasped the necessityof accepting this fortuitous situation as his own destiny (inthe sense he ascribes to this word), which amounts to adecision to affirm the existence of a universe that has noother end than that of being what it iso

Nietzsche recognized this apprehension ofexistence-which is nothing other than the apprehension ofeternity-in the simulacra of art and religion, but he also sawthat this n10de of apprehension is perpetually denied byscientific activity, which explores existence through its tangibleforms in order to construct a practicable and livable world.Nonetheless, Nietzsche feIt a solidarity with both theseattitudes toward existence: that of simulacra, as weil as thatof science, which declares fiat ventaspereat vita.2

84


Andso heput simulacra into seienee andsaenee into simulacra:in sueh a wqy that the seientist ean sqy: ''Qualis artifexpereo!'3

Nietzsehe was prey to an inelucidable revelation ofexistence that did not know how to express itself exceptthrough song and image. A struggle was being waged withinhim between the poet and the scholar, between the visionaryand the moralist, each of which was trying to disqualify therole of the other. This struggle was provoked by a feeling ofmoral responsibility toward his contemporaries. The differenttendencies, the different attitudes that were fighting overNietzsche's consciousness would endure until a crucial eventwas produced: Nietzsehe would be externalized in a character,a veritable dramatis persona: Zarathustra-a character who isnot only the product of a fictive redoubling, but is in someway achallenge by Nietzsehe the visionary to Nietzsehe theprofessor and man of letters. The character of Zarathustrahas a complex function: on the one hand, he is the Christ, asNietzsehe secretly and jealously understands him; but on theother hand, insofar as he is the Accuser of the traditionalChrist, he is the one who prepares the way for the advent ofDionysus philosophos.

The years during which Thus Spoke Zarathustra wasfashioned, and especially those that followed its birth, werefor Nietzsehe astate of unparalleled distress:

One pays dearly for immortality: one has todie several times while still alive. There issomething that I call the rancor of what isgreat: everything great-a work, a deed-isno sooner accomplished than it turns againstthe man who clid it. By doing it, he has becomeweak; he no longer endures his deed, he canno longer face it. Something one was neverpermitted to will lies behind one, something inwhich the knot in the destiny of humanity istied-and now one labors underitI-It almostcrushes one...4

85

PIERRE KLOSSOWSI<I

Zarathustra, to be sure, was latent in the previousworks, but what is important for Nietzsche's life is not onlythe creation and presence of the ineffable songs of the poem.What came to be determinant for Nietzsche's life was themore or less complete identification of Nietzsche with thisphysiognorny, which for him constituted a kind of promise, aresurrection, an ascension. In a certain sense, Zarathustra isthe star of which Nietzsche hirnself is only the satellite. Evenbetter, I would say that Nietzsche, after having paved the wayfor the triumph of Zarathustra, remains behind in a positionsacrificed in the course of a victorious retreat. As he hirnselfsaid, he would pay dearly for this creation. Zarathustraprefigures Nietzsche's own immortality-that immortality bywhich one dies more than once while still alive. When Nietzschemanaged to separate Zarathustra from hirnself, and wastherebyable to encounter him as a superior but still inaccessiblereality, then the world of appearances-which, according tothe divine fable, was created in six days-disappeared alongwith the true world; for in six days the true world became afable once again. Nietzsche casts a retrospective glance at thisre-fabulation of the true world that disappears in six days, orsix periods, which are the inverse of the six days of the world'screation. It is this re-fabulation that he traces out in anaphorism of The Twilight of the Idols entitled "How the TrueWorld' Final!J Became a Fable."

Here is the passage:1. The true world-attainable for the

sage, the pious, the virtuous man; he lives init, he is it. (The oldest form of the idea... acircumlocution for the sentence, "I, Plato, amthe truth.")

2. The true world-unattainable fornow, but promised for the sage, the pious, thevirtuous man, "for the sinner who repents."(progress of the idea: it becomes more subtle,insidious, incomprehensible ... it becomes

86

NIETZSCI--IE, POLYTHEISM, AND PARODY

Christian.)3. The true world-unattainable,

indemonstrable, unpromisable; but the verythought of it-a consolation, an obligation,as an imperative. (At bottom, the old sun, butseen through mist and skepticism. The ideahas become elusive, pale, Nordic,Königsbergian.)

4. The true world-unattainable? Atany rate, unattained. And being unattained,also unknown. Consequently, not consoling,redeeming, or obligating: how couldsomething unknown obligate us? (Graymorning. The first yawn of reason. Thecockcrow of positivism.)

5. The true world-an idea which isno longer good for anything, not evenobligating-an idea that has become uselessand superfluous-consequentlJ, a refuted idea:let us abolish it! (Bright day... return of bonsens and gaiety: Plato's embarrassed blush;pandemonium of all free spirits.)

6. The true world-we have abolished.What world has remained? The apparent oneperhaps? But not With the true world we haveabolished the apparent one. (Noon; moment oftl1e shortest shadow; end of the longest error:Incipit Zarathustra.~5With the true world, we have abolished the apparent

world. When the true world (the Platonie, Christian, spiritualist,idealist, transcendental world) that serves as the point ofreference for the apparent world clisappears, then the apparentworld clisappears as weIl. The apparent world cannot becomethe real world of scientific positivism: the world becomes afable, the world as such is only a fable. "Fable" meanssomething that is narrated, and that exists only in its narration.

87

PIERRE KLOSSOWSKI

The world is something that is narrated, a narrated event, andhence an interpretation. Religion, art, scienee, and history areso many diverse interpretations of the world, or rather, somany variants of the fable.

Is this to say that we are dealing here with a universalillusionism? Not at alle The fable, I said, is an event that isnarrated; it happens, or rather, it must make somethinghappen; and in effeet an action takes plaee and narrates itself;but if we are not content to listen and follow, if we seek toapprehend the narration in order to discern whether behindthe recitation there is not some moment that differs from what weunderstand in the narration, then everything is interruptedand onee again, there is a true world and an apparent world.We have seen how the true world and the apparent worldhave become a fable, but this is not the first time. There issomething in Nietzsche's text that warrants mention: midday,hour of the shortest shadow. After midday, everything beginsagain, including the ancient world, that is to say, the pastinterpretations. In antiquity, the hour of midday was an hourat once lueky and ill-fated ffaste et nifaste] , not only an hour inwhich all activity was suspended under the blinding light ofthe sun, but also an hour of forbidden visions, followed bydelirium. After midday, the day declines into shadows; butthrough these shadows, we will be guided to profoundmidnight by Zarathustra, the master of the fable.

Fable, fabula, comes from the Latin verb fan, whichmeans both "to predict" and "to rave" r,predire et divagueij, toprediet fate and to rave;fatum} fate, is also the past partieipleoffari.

Thus when we say that the world has become fable,we are also saying that it is afatum; one raves, but in raving oneforetells and predicts fate. We emphasize these connotationshere beeause of the role that fatality-the erucial notion offatum-plays in Nietzsche's thought. The re-fabulation of theworld also means that the world exits historical time in orderto reenter the time oE myth, that is, eternity. Or rather, itmeans that the vision oE the world is an apprehension oE

88


eternity. Nietzsche saw that the mental conditions for suchan "exit" [sorlie] lay in the forgetting (of the historical situation)that was preliminary to the act of creating: in forgetting, thepast is remembered [sous-vient a] by humans as their future,which takes the ftgure of the past.6 It is in this way that the pastcomes to [advien~ them in what they create; for what they believethey create in this way does not come to them from thepresent, but is only the pronunciation of a prior possibility inthe momentary forgetting of the (historically determined)present.

Zarathustra's mission is to give a new meaning and anew will to men in a world that he is necessarily going torecreate. But since every created world risks losing its meaningand becoming fabulous and divine once again, and since itmay be rejected and seem intolerable to men now that theyhave come to will nothing rather than something, Zarathustramust reveal to them the true way, which is not a straight pathbut a tortuous one:

For here is all my creating and striving} that I createandcarry together into one what isfragment and riddleand dreadful chance.7

Along with the true world, we have abolished theapparent world-along with the preoccupation with truth,we have liquidated the explanation of appearances.(" 'Explanation' is what we call ilj but it is 'description' that distinguishesus from older stages of knowledge and science. Gur descriptions arebetter--but we do not explain any more than ourpredecessors."~ Allthis is full of consequence, for if the thought of havingabolished the apparent world along with the true world is nota simple quip, it gives an account of what was happening inNietzsche himself. He had given notice to the world in whichhe still carried the name of "Nietzsche" (and if he continuedto write under this name, it was in order to save appearances):everything has cllanged and nothing has changed. It is betterto let those wl~o act believe they are changing something.Does not Nietzsche say that these people are not, in fact,men of action, but rather contemplatives who put a price on

89

PIERRE KLOSSOWSKI

things-and that men of action act only by virtue oE thisappreciation by the contemplatives?

But this suppression of the apparent world, with itsreference to the true world, finds expression in a long processthat can be followed only if we take into account thecoexistence, within Nietzsehe, of the scientist and themoralist-or more essentially, the psychologist and thevisionary. Two different terrninologies result from this, which,in their perpetual interference, form an inescapable web. Inthe end, the lucidity of the psychologist, the destroyer ofimages, will simply be put to work by the poet, and thus forthe fable. In his attempt to scrutinize the lived experience ofthe poet-the sleepwalker of the day-the psychologist woulddiscover regions in which he himself was dreaming out loud.

This analysis of the psychologist, before he wasinvaded by the dreams and visions he tried to avoid, allows usto see succinctly how, in the name of the rational principlesof positivism, Nietzsehe winds up ruining not only the rationalconcept of truth but also the concept of conscious thought,including the operations of the intellect; and how, on the otherhand, this depreciation of conscious thought leads Nietzseheto question the validity of any communicability throughlanguage; and we can see more clearly how this analysiswhich reduces rational thought to impulsive forces, but whichattributes to these impulsive forces the quality of authentieexistence-leads to a suppression of the limits between theoutside and the inside, a suppression of the limits betweenexistence individuated here and now and existence returning to itse!!within the person of the philosopher. What presides overthis disintegration of concepts-for obviously somethingn1ust subsist-is always the intensity of the mind which hasbeen excited to a supreme degree of insomnia; a sustainedperspicacity that drives to despair the demand for integrity, aperspicacity whose rigor goes so far as to want to be liberatedfrom these functions of thought as if from a final servitude,a final link with what Nietzsehe called "the spirit of gravity."

The analysis of consciousness that Nietzsehe gives in

90


various aphorisms of The Gay Science may be summarized inthe following observations:

1. Conseiousness was the latest funetion to developin the evolution of organie life; it is also the most fragilefunetion, and eonsequently, the most dangerous one. Ifhumanity had beeome eonseious all at onee, as it has beenbelieved, it would have perished a long time ago. The proofof this lies in the great number of false steps thatconseiousness has provoked in the life of the speeies, andthat it continues to provoke in the live of individuals, insofaras it creates a disequilibrium in their impulses.

2. This undesirable function (undesirable because itcorresponds to an incompatible aspiration, the aspiration totruth) undergoes an initial adaptation to other impulsive forces;for a time, eonseiousness is linked to the life-conservinginstinet; and then one forms the fallacious notion of aconseiousness that is stable, eternal, immutable and,consequently, free and responsible. Because of thisoverestin1ation of conseiousness, its over-hasty elaborationhas been avoided. Prom this arises the notion of substance.

3. The mental operations that this (opportunelyretarded) eonsciousness develops in its elaboration-theseoperations that eonstitute logieal reason and rationalknowledge-are merely the produets of this compromisebetween the impulsive life and eonseiousness. From what islogie born? Obviously from the illogieality whose domain wasoriginally immense. At this stage, aeeording to Nietzsehe'spositivist description, logic becomes the strongest weaponof the impulses, particularly for those beings in whichaggressiveness is translated into affirmation or negation, whileillogicality remains the domain of the weakest impulses.Opportunely retarded in its own development, consciousness(as false consciousness) develops conscious thought out ofthe need to communicate through language. Such is the originof the most subtle operations that constitute logical reasonand rational knowledge.

At bottom, every high degree of caution in

91

PIERRE KLOSSOWSKI

making inferences and every skepticaltendency constitute a great danger for life. Noliving beings would have survived if theopposite tendency-to affirn1 rather thansuspend judgment, to err and make up thingsrather than wait, to assent rather than negate,to pass judgment rather than be just-had notbeen bred to the point where it becameextraordinarily strong.9

4. Consciousness, as a threatening function becauseof its anti-vital aspiration, therefore fmds itself momentarilyin retreat. In the relationship of knowledge, however, thisdangerous power is manifested anew in its true light. Logicalreason, constructed by the impulses in the course of thiscombat with the anti-vital tendency of consciousness,engenders habits of thinking which the still-maladaptedtendency of consciousness is led to detect as errors. Theseerrors-which are precisely those that make life possible, andwhich Nietzsehe will later recognize as forms for theapprehension of existence-always observe the same rulesof the game: namely, that there are durable things; that objects,materials, and bodies exist; that a thing is what it appears tobe; that our will is free; that what is good for me is good in anintrinsic manner-ingrained propositions that have becomethe norms in accordance with which logical reason establishesthe true and the non-true. "It was only very late," saysNietzsche, "that truth emerged-as the weakest form ofknowledge. It seemed that one was unable to live with it: ourorganism was prepared for the opposite."10 Hence, Nietzscheremarks, the strength of different sorts of knowledge doesnot reside in their degree of truth, but in their degree ofantiquity, their degree of incorporation, their character asconditions forelife. Nietzsche here cites the example of theEleatics, who wanted to put our sensible perceptions in doubt.The Eleatics, he says, believed it was possible to live theantinomies of the natural errors. But in order both to aJftrmthe antinomy and to live it, they invented the sage, a person who

92


was both impersonal and unchangeable, and thus they fellinto illusion CI am still citing Nietzsche). Unable to abstractfrom their own human condition, misunderstanding the natureof the knowing subject, and denying the violence of theimpulses in knowledge, the Eleatics, in an absolute fashion,believed they could conceive of reason as a perfectly freeactivity. Probity and skepticism, those dangerousmanifestations of consciousness, were able to develop in evermore subtle ways at the moment when these two contradictorypropositions appeared to be applicable to life because bothwere compatible with fundamental errors-the moment itbecame possible to dispute about their greater or lesser degreeof utility for life. Likewise, other new propositions, while notuseful to life, were nonetheless not harmful to life becausethey were simply expressions in an intellectual game; andconsequently, they bore witness to the innocent and fortunatecharacter of every game. At that moment, the act of knowingand the aspiration to the true were finally integrated as oneneed among other needs. Not only belief or conviction, butalso examination, negation, mistrust, or contradictionconstituted a power [une puissance] , such tl'lat even the badinstincts were subordinated and placed in the service ofknowledge, and acquired the prestige of what is licit, venerated,and useful-and ultimately the look and innocence of theGood. Nietzsche thereby comes to this first conclusion onthe precise situation of the philosopher:

The thinker is now that being in whom the impulse totruth and those liJe-preserving errors clash for theirfirstfight, after the impulsefor truth hasproved to bealso a liJe-preservingpower.11

The impulse to truth is a life-conserving power? Buthere this is only a hypothesis, a momentary concession. Infact, Nietzsehe concludes with a question: "To what extent cantruth endure incorporation? That is the question; that is theexperiment to be performed [/'expenence cl faire]."12

Nietzsche himself will carry this experiment to itsconclusion. When Nietzsehe evoked the exampIe of the

93

PIERRE KLOSSOWSKI

Eleatics as an attempt to live the natural antinomies-anattempt that required the impossible in1personality of thephilosopher in order to succeed-it was his own experiencethat he was projecting into the paste The Eleatics, saidNietzsche, invented the figure of the impersonal andimmutable sage as being both One and All. In so doing, theyfell into illusion, Nietzsche declares, because they remainedunaware of the violence of the impulses in the knowing subject.But if Nietzsehe, in this judgment against the Eleatics, presentshimself as the person in whom this illusory experience hasbeen brought to consciousness, it is precisely because hehimself, obscurely, aspires to be both One and All, as if henow saw the secret of the experiment in areturn of consciousnessto the unconsciousJ and 0/ the unconscious to consciousness-socompletely and so well that, at the end as at the beginning, itwould seem that the true world exists nowhere else than inthe sage.

Here, we must immediately distinguish between theexperiment to be performed and the lived experience[l'experience dfaire et l'experience vecue], between the sufJering andthe willing.

In effect, we would like to know if the livedexperience-Nietzsche's specific experience, the ecstasy ofthe eternal return in which the ego would suddenly find itselfto be both One and All, One and Multiple-could be madethe object of a demonstration, and thus constitute the pointof departure for a moral teaching.

But we must confine ourselves here to the questionwe posed earlier: Could the philosopher have knowledge of astate in which he would be both One and All, one and multiple,given the fact that he will always ascribe more and moreconsciousness to his pathos?

In other words: How could he possess his pathosknowingly insofar as the pathos would be an apprehensionof existence returning upon itself?

In aphorisn1 333 of The Gqy Science, Nietzsche providesa commentary on one of Spinoza's propositions that takes us

94


to the heart of this problem:The meaning of knowing.- Non ndere} non lugere}neque detestan} sed intelligere! says Spinoza assimply and sublimely as is his wont. Yet in thelast analysis, what else is this intelligere than theform in which we come to feel the other threeat once? One result of the different andmutually opposed impulses to laugh, lament,and curse? Before knowledge is possible, eachof these impulses must first have presentedits one-sided view of the thing or the event;after this comes the fight between these onesided views, and occasionally this results in amean, one grows calm, one finds all three sidesright, and there is a kind of justice and acontract; for by virtue of justice and a contractall these instincts can maintain their existenceand assert their rights against each other. Sinceonly the last scenes of reconciliation and thefinal accounting at the end of this long processrise to our consciousness, we suppose thatintelligere must be something conciliatory, just,and good-something that stands essentiallyopposed to the instincts, while it is actuallynothing but a certain behaviorof the instincts towardone another.

For the longest time, consciousthought was considered thought itself. Orllynow does the truth dawn on us that by far thegreatest part of our spirit's activity remainsunconscious and unfelt. But I suppose thatthese instincts which are here contendingagainst one another understand very wen howto make themselves feIt by, and how to hurt,one another. This may wen be the source of thatsudden and violent exhaustion that afflicts anthinkers (it is tl1e exhaustion on a battlefield).

95

PIERRE KLOSSOWSI<I

Indeed, there may he occasions of concealedheroism in our warring depths, but certainlynothing divine that eternally rests in itself, asSpinoza supposed. Conscious thinking,especially that of the philosopher, is the leastvigorous and therefore also the relativelymildest and calmest form of thinking; and thusprecisely philosophers are most apt to be ledastray about the nature of knowledge.In this very beautiful passage, I suspect that Nietzsche

has defined, in a negative manner, his own mode ofcomprehending and knowing: ndere} lugere} detestan Oaughing,crying, hating) are three ways of apprehending existence. Butwhat is a science that laughs, or cries, or detests? A patheticknowledge? Our pathos knows, but we are never able to shareits mode of knowing. For Nietzsche, every intellectual actcorresponds to variations of astate of humor. Now, toattribute a character of absolute value to pathos ruins, in asingle hlow, the notion that knowledge is impartial, since itwas only from an acquired degree of in1partiality that onecalled into dO~Lht that same impartiality. This ingratitude isthe inverse of knowledge, which is disavowed as soon as itmakes us comprehend that we cannot know-an ingratitudethat will give birth to a new impartiality, hut within an absolutepartiality: For if logical conclusions are nothing hut the conflictamong the impulses that can only end in something unjust, toaspire to more partialitywould be to observe the highest justice.

If the thinker, as Nietzsche says, is the being in whomthe impulse to truth and the life-preserving errors live andstruggle together, and if the question is knowing to what extenttruth can bear incorporation-if that is the experiment thatmust now be performed-then let us now try to see in whatsense pathos is capable of this incorporation as anapprehension of existence. Now that the intellectual act hasbeen devalorized-since it only takes place at the price of asupreme exhaustion-why not admit hilarity as much asseriousness as an organ of knowledge, for example, or anger

96


,as much as serenity? Once seriousness is admitted to be astate as doubtfl.ll as hatred or even love, why could not hilaritybe as valid and obvious an apprehension of existence asseriousness?

The act of knowing, judging, or concluding is nothingbut the result of a certain behavior of the impulses towardeach other. Moreover, conscious thought-especially thethought of the philosopher-is most often the expressionof a fall, adepression provoked by a terrible quarrel betweentwo or three contradictory impulses that results in somethingunjust in itself. Does this mean that the philosopher (or thethinker or the sage, in the Nietzschean sense) should givehimself over to a similarly contradictory behavior among theimpulses? Or that he should never speak except in statementsthat participate in two or three simultaneous impulses, therebygiving an account of existence apprehended through thesetwo or three impulses?

If the act of comprehending something is at this pointsuspect-since it never reaches a conclusion except byeliminating one of the impulses that has, in varying degrees,contributed to its formation-and if comprehending isnothing other than a precarious armistice between obscureforces, then, out of this concern for integrity that directsNietzsche's investigation so as to bring more consciousnessto our impulsive forces, comprehending can act only byexercising a perpetual complicity with our tendencies, goodor bad. However, does it not seem that this illusion is worsethan the one for which Nietzsche reproached Spinoza, whenSpinoza opposed the act of comprehending to the fact oflaughing, crying, and hating? How can an obscure force reachconsciousness as an obscure force ifit does not already belongto the fulllight of consciousness? As the Apostle said, "Allthings that are condemned are made manifest by the light, jor whatevermakes manifest is light."13 How to manifestwithout condemning? Howcan an obscure force be made manifest without condemningitself to be illuminated? Could there not be a light that is nota condemnation of the shadows? Pathos knows, no doubt,

9

PIERRE KLOSSOWSI<I

but we cannot share in its mode of knowing except throughthis condemnation: "Take no part in the unfruitful works ofthe shadows," said the Apostle. 14 N evertheless, it is writtenthat "the light shines in the darkness) hut the darkness did not receiveit. JJ15 The light wanted to be received by the shadows; there isthus a moment when the light is a condemnation, and thereis a moment when the light seeks to he received by the shadows.

Everything that rises up into the full light ofconsciousness rises up upside down-the images of nightare reversed in the mirrar of conscious thought. Later we willsee that there is a necessity deeply inscribed in the law ofbeing that is explicated as the universal wheel, the image ofeternity-and that the results of this law is the inversion ofnight into day, and of sleep into the wakefulness ofconsciousness. Conscious thought is constituted only in andthrough an ignorance of this law of return. Every consciousthought looks forward, identifying itself with a goal that itposits before itself as its own definition. But if consciousthought tends to invert the images of the night in full day,this is because, in taking exteriority as a point of departure, itclaims to be speaking, even as it mistranslates an original textof which it is unaware. As Nietzsche says:

Consciousness does not really belang to man'sindividual existence ....The thinking that risesto consciousness is only a tiny part of ourselvesthe most superficial and warst part-for onlythis conscious thinking takes the form of words,which is to say, signs of communication.. ..Theemergence of our sense impressions into ourown consciousness, the ability to fix them and,as it were, exhibit them externally, increasedproportionally with the need to communicatethem to others by means ofsigns ....Consciousness has developed subtletyonly insofar as this is required by social or herdutility. Consequently, given the best will in theworld to understand ourselves as individually

98


as possible, 'to know ourselves,' each of uswill only succeed in becoming conscious onlyof what is not individual but'average' ....Fundamentally, all our actions arealtogether incomparably personal, unique, andinfinitely individual; there is no doubt of that.But as soon as we translate them intoconsciousness thry no longer seem 10 be. 16

conclude: every coming to consciousness is the result ofan operation of generalization, of falsification, and thus is afundamentally ruinous operation.

It is not the opposition of subject and objectthat concerns me here: this distinction I leaveto the epistemologists who have becomeentangled in the snares of grammar (themetaphysics of the people). It is even less theopposition of 'thing-in-itself' and appearance;for we do now 'know' nearly enough to beentided to any such distinction. We simply lackanyorgan for knowledge, for 'truth': we 'know'(or believe or imagine) just as much as may beusejul in the interests oE the human herd, thespecies; and even what is here called 'utility' isultimately also a mere belief, somethingimaginary, and perhaps precisely that mostcalamitous stupidity of which we shall perishsomeday.17According to this definition, what conscious thought

produces is always only the most utilizable part of ourselves,because only that part is communicable; what we have of themost essential part of ourselves will thus remain anincommunicable and non-utilizable pathos.

By the individual, by the personal, by the most essentialpart of ourselves, Nietzsche in no way means what is generallyunderstood by the term "individualism." We will see, on thecontrary, that the individual and the non-individual will belinked in an indiscernible unity, which is indicated by this very

99

PIERRE KLOSSOWSI<I

concern for the authentie. But here we eneounter a numberof diffieulties in Nietzsehe.

If conscious thought inevitably betrays what we haveof the most essential part of ourselves, how can this essentialaspeet be communicated to us? How can it be distinguishedfrom the gregarious and, since the gregarious is always taintedby the pejorative notion of utility, how will this essential aspeetof ourselves escape our own utilitarian thought? Will what isauthentie in us be something entirely useless in its integrity,and thus properly valuable in Nietzsche's sense, such that herewe at last find an apprehension of existence that is sufficientin itself, a possibility of being both One andAIR

For conscious thought-the so-called gregariousthought that reveals nothing essential of ourselves, the thoughtdisqualified by Nietzsche-the greatest distress is to remainwithout a goal, for example, the absence of a truth to besought for and attained as the supreme goal of conseiousthought. By its nature and by definition, conseious thought initself is always projecting itself forward in search of a goal.

On the other hand, the greatest pleasure of ourpathos-the uneonseious life of the impulses, the essentialaspeet of ourselves-is to be without any goal. Inversely, ifthe belief in a goal makes eonseiousness happier and proeuresa degree of security for eonseious thought, the effect of thisassignation of an end is feIt (or can be feIt) in our pathos onlyas the greatest distress. When Nietzsehe critiques Spinoza, hemeans nothing other than this. For although the impulses asneeds are obviously unaware of what consciousness wants,they nevertheless imagine that of whieh they are themselvesthe need. As soon as consciousness posits a goal, the impulsesmomentarily lose this image they have of themselves. Asimages of themselves, the impulses are alienated from theirown image for the benefit of the goal-of which they are, bynature, unaware.

If the essential aspeet of ourselves lies in our pathos\which is inexpressible or incommunicable by itself-thenfnsofar as it forms the ensemble of our impulsive life, it also

[00


constitutes an ensemble of needs. But does it not then seekto satisfy itself in its own dissipation [dpense]?18 And how wouldthis dissipation effect itself and find satisfaction? When ourdeepest need expresses the most essential part of ourselvesin laughter and tears, for example, it would dissipate itself aslaughing and crying, which are in themselves the image ofthis need. The laughing and crying would be producedindependently of any motive that conscious thought wouldattribute to them, rightly or wrongly, from its goal-orientedperspective. And being thus dissipated, our most profoundneed and the loss of any goal would coincide, for an instant,with our profound happiness.

Even when we do not know how to share its modeof understanding, our pathos does not thereby prevent usfrom understanding ourselves. For where do such suddensatisfactions, coupled with the absence of any rational motive,come from-for instance, when I laugh or cry, seeminglywithout reason, before some spectacle such as those offeredby the view of a suddenly-discovered landscape or of tidalpools at the edge of the ocean? Something is laughing orcrying in us that, by making use of us, is robbing us of ourselvesand concealing us from ourselves; hut which, hy making useof us, is concealing itself. Does this mean that this somethingwas not present otherwise than in the tears and laughter? Forif I laugh and cry in this way, I take myself to be expressingnothing but the immediate vanishing of this unknown motive,which has found in me neither figure nor sense, apart fromthe image of this forest or these waves greedy for buriedtreasures. In relation to this unknown motive, which is hiddenfrom me by these outward images, I am, in Nietzsche's sense,only a fragment, an enigma to myself, a horrifying chance. And Iwill remain afragment, an enigma, and a chance in relation to thatmost essential aspect of myself, which speaks through thislaughter and these tears without any rational motive. But thismost essential aspect of myself, which is made manifest inthis way, corresponds to an image hidden in the fulllight ofconsciousness, an image that appears to me as inverted and

101

PIERRE KLOSSOWSI<I

that arrives late in the goal-oriented perspective, which wantsto lend as much consciousness as possible to this laughter orto these tears. Thus there must be a necessity that wills me tolaugh or cry as if I were crying or laughing freely. But is notthis necessity the very same necessity that inverts night into day,which inverts sleep into the wakefulness where consciousnessposits its goal? Is this not the same necessity that will reinvert the images of the day into those of night? To live andto think in the goal-oriented perspective is to distance myselffrom what is most essential in me, or from the necessity thattestifies, within me, to my deepest need. To want to recuperatethis most essential part of myself amounts to living backwardsfrom my consciousness, and therefore I willput all my will andconfidence in the necessity that has made me laugh and cry without anymotive. For the movement that throws consciousness out ofthe night and into the dawn, where it posits its goal, is thesame movement that carries n1e far from this goal in order tolead me back, at deepest midnight, to what I have that is mostessentiaL To suffer trus necessity is one thing; it is quite anotherthing to adhere to it as a law; and still another thing toformulate this law in the image of a circle.

We have seen that the aspiration to truth is given tous as an impulse, and that this impulse becomes identifiedwith the function of consciousness. Consequently, to askwhether the aspiration to truth can be assimilated to pathosand its errors amounts to asking whether pathos can producesomething that it must still assimilate. Thus, if consciousnesssimply pursues this aspiration as its own impulse, by this veryfact that impulse works toward its own ruin in the name oftruth. What is this thing that pursues such an impulsiveaspiration, this thing or this state of things that consciousnessposits, in the fulllight of day, under the name of truth and asits own end? What is this word "truth" if not the invertedimage of what produced this impulse to truth as a need? Tore-invert this ultimate impulse called the "aspiration totruth"-this aspiration of the totality of pathos takentogether-to re-invert the image of this aspiration would come

102


down to formulating what Nietzsehe states in the followingproposition: "Truth is an error without which a certain species of lifecould not live. The value for life is ultimate/y decisive."19 The mostreeent aspiration that has eome to life-this dangerousaspiration to truth-is l~othingother than the return of pathosin its totality in the form of a goal.

But here we diseover something disquieting inNietzsehe. What did he mean by posing the question ofknowing if truth could endure its incorporation as a condition of life?What did he mean by saying that the impulsive aspiration to truthhad beeome life-preserving at the same time as the natural errors?Are not these questions asked from the viewpoint of eonseiousand gregarious thought, that is, in the terms of the veryeonseiousness that neeessarily gives itself a goal? And wouldnot the terms "error" and "truth," whieh had previously beenemptied of their gregarious meaning, immediately be filledagain with this same eontent?

For the philosopher (or the thinker or the sage in theNietzsehean sense), the question is: "What form eould begiven to this experienee so that it eould be taught?" Howeould the will be persuaded to will the opposite of every goalgiven by conscious thought, such that the will could strive toreeuperate its most essential and least eommunieable aspeet?How eould the will be persuaded to take itself as its ownobjeet, thereby produeing an apprehension of existeneereturning to itself just as the will returns to itself? Was it notneeessary to appeal to eonseious thought, and thus to borrowfrom the language of the herd (in this ease, the language ofpositivism), and thus to take up onee again the notions ofutility and goal, and direet them toward and against every utility,toward and against every goal?

In his retrospeetive prefaee to The Gqy Science, dated1886, we read:

'Incipit tragedia' is written at the end of thisbook, with a disquieting easualness-Beware!Something downright wieked and malieiousis announeed here: incipitparodia.20

103

PIERRE KLOSSOWSI<I

In the first aphorism of The Gay Science, Nietzscheasks:

What is the meaning of the ever newappearance of these founders of moralitiesand religions ... these teachers of remorse andreligious wars? What is the meaning of theseheroes on this stage? ...It is obvious that thesetrageclians, tao, promote the interest of Godor work as God's emissaries. They, tao,promote the life of the species bypromoting thefaith in lift. 'Life is worth living,' every one ofthem shouts; 'there is samething to life, thereis samething behind life, beneath it; bewarelFrom time to time this instinct, which is atwork equally in the highest and basest menthe instinct for the preservation of thespecies-erupts as reason and as passion ofthe spirit. Then it is surrounded by aresplendent retinue of reason and tries withall the force at its command to make us forgetthat at bottom it is instinct, drive, folly, lackof reasons. Life shallbe loved, because-/Manshall advance himself and his neighbor,because-I.... In order that what happensnecessarily and always, spontaneously andwithout any purpose, may henceforth appearto be done for same purpase and strike manas rational and an ultimate commandment, theethical teacher comes on the stage, as theteacher of the purpose of existence; and tothis end he invents a second, differentexistence and unhinges by means of his newmechanies the old, orclinary existence." 21

And Nietzsche cancludes:Not only laughter and gay wisdom but thetragic, tao, with all its sublime unreason,belangs amang the means and necessities of

104


the preservation of the species.Consequently-. Consequently. Consequently.0, do you understand me, my brothers? Doyou understand trus new law of ebb and flood?There is a time for us, toO!22Does this mean that Nietzsehe in turn would like to

enter the stage as a new doctor of the goal of existence? As anew doctor of morality? Does this mean that, in order tocome to the aid of the most essential aspect of ourselves, wemust inevitably appeal to the rationalizations of consciousthought and the positing of a goal-even though it is aquestion of apprehending an existence without a goal?Nietzsehe always has a formula that seems to imply animperative: the will to power.

Trus entails a serious question: what is Nietzsche's truelanguage? Is it the language of lived experience, or ofinspiration, or of revelation, or perhaps of the experiment tobe performed, the language of experimentation? Is there not,in each case, an interference between these various languages,which intervenes in the desire to legitimate theincommunicable lived experience of the eternal return by wayof a demonstration? Does not Nietzsehe provide thisdemonstration at the level of the scientifically verifiablecosmos-and on the moral plane, by elaborating an imperativethat can command the will under its relation to the will topower? Is this not the point where the dubious references toscience and biology intervene, when Nietzsche's fundamentalexperience is already being expressed on an entirely differentlevel by the character of Zarathustra? Perhaps we have hereone of the alternating terms, one of the aspects of Nietzsche'santinomy: the experience of the eternity of the self at theecstatic moment of the eternal return of all things could notbe the object of al1 experimentation any more than it couldbe the object of a rationally constructed elucidation; any morethan the lived, inexpressible, and therefore incommunicableexperience could ground an etrucal imperative that would turnthe lived into something willed and rewilled, insofar as the

105

PIERRE KLOSSOWSKI

universal movement of the eternal return is supposed to leadthe will to will infallibly at the willedmoment. The lived experienceis thus entirely implicit in a contemplation where the will iscompletely absorbed in an existence rendered to itself-sothat the will to power is simply an attribute of existence, whichwills itself only insofar as it iso This explains the often doubtfulcharacter of those propositions of Nietzsche's, in thefragments on the transvaluation of values, that consider will topower independently of the law of the eternal return,independently of this revelation from which it is inseparable.At the level of lived experience, Nietzsche is already surpassedby his own Zarathustra. Nietzsche is no more than the doctorof a counter-morality that is seemingly expressed in clearlanguage, and whose worth comes from this audacious use ofconscious thought for the benefit of that which has no goal.He is the doctor of a goal for existence, charged with coveringup his own retreat into that region where, in reality, he hasalready retired-this immortality from which he has perished,as he says more than onee, and from which he will return indelirious transports to show what he is under two differentnan1es: Dionysus and the Crucified.

After the proposition: Truth is a necessary error, we findthis other proposition: Art is a higher value than truth, which isthe conclusion of those propositions which declare that artprevents usfrom losing ourselves in the truth or artprotects usfrom thetruth. All these propositions have the same pragmatic characteras the preceding proposition: truth is on!J a necessary error3-acharacter that holds precisely because everything is beingconsidered solely from the viewpoint of its usefulness.

Nevertheless, as soon as error creates forms, it goeswithout saying that art must effectively beeome that domainwhere willed error inaugurates a rule of the game. Just as it iscontradictory to give a practical application of truth as error,so it appears that, in this domain of the game par excellencewhich is art, imposture constitutes a legitimate activity in accordwith the reason of fiction. But art has a very wide meaning,and in Nietzsche, this category includes institutions as much

106

I NIETZSCHE, POLYTHEISM, AND PARODY

las works of free creation. For example-and here we can see[mmecliately what is at issue-how does Nietzsche considerIthe Church? For him, the Church is constitutedgrosso modo bya cast of profound impostors: the priests. The Church is amasterpiece of spiritual domination, and it required thatimpossible plebian monk, Luther, to dream of ruining thatmasterpiece, the last eclifice of Roman civilization among usoThe admiration Nietzsehe always had for the Church and thepapacy rests precisely upon the idea that truth is an error, andthat art, as willed error, is higher than truth. This is whyZarathustra confesses his affinity with the priest, and why, inthe Fourth Part, during that extraorclinary gathering of thedifferent kinds of higher men in Zarathustra's cave, the Popethe Last Pope-is one of the prophet's guests of honor.24

This betrays, I think, Nietzsche's temptation to foresee a rulingclass of great meta-p!Jchologists who would take charge of thedestinies of future humanity, since they would know perfectlyboth the different aspirations and the different resourcescapable of satisfying them. What interests us, however, is aparticular problem that never ceased to preoccupy Nietzsehe:the problem of the actor. We read in aphorism 361 of TheGqy 5cience:

Falseness with a good conscience; the delightin simulation exploding as apower that pushesaside one's so-called 'character,' flooding it andat times extinguishing it; the inner craving fora role and mask, for appearance; an excess ofthe capacity for all kinds of adaptations thatcan no longer be satisfied in the service ofthe most immediate and narrow utility-allof this is perhaps not only peculiar to theactor.25

Let us take careful note of everything Nietzsehe isrevealing here: delight in simulation exploding as apower; pushingaside one} so-called ucharacter," submerging it sometimes to thepoint ofextinguishing it-here we suddenly perceive what wasthreatening Nietzsehe himself: first of all, simulation exploding

107

PIERRE KLOSSOWSKI

as power to the point of submerging or extinguishing one'sso-ealled "eharaeter." The point here is that simulation is notonly a means but also apower--and thus that there is an irruptionof something ineompatible with one's so-ealled "eharaeter,"a putting into question of what one is in a situation that hasbeen determined by this same indeterminable. Nietzsehe eallsthis putting into question a surplus of the adaptive faculties, butthis surplus, he remarks, never manages to satisJy itse!/, or to servean immediate and strict utiliry. This is why that which is expressedby thus surplus of the faeulties of adaptation has a role, whiehis existence itse!f-existenee without a goal, existenee suffieientunto itselE But let us return, onee again, to the [lIst line:falsenesswith agood conscience. Here we eonfront anew the notion of thewilled error. In the rationality of simulaera, it is willed error thatprovides an aeeount of that existenee whose very essenee liesin the truth that eoneeals itself, that refuses itself.

Existence seeks a physiognomy in order to reveal itse!/; theactor is its medium. What reveals existenee? A possiblephysiognomy: perhaps that oE a gode

In another eurious passage from The Gay 5cience(aphorism 356), entitled "How things will become evermore ~rtistic'

in Europe," Nietzsehe remarks that the need to make a livingeompels almost all Europeans to adopt a partieular role, their"oeeupation." Some people manage to retain the merelyapparent freedom of ehoosing this role for themselves, whilefor most people it is preseribed in advanee. The result is quitesingular: almost everyone identifies themselves with theirrole-everyoneforgets at whatpoint chance) disposition) andarbitrarinesswere at work in them when the question of their so-ealled"voeation" was deeided-and how many other roles theymight perhaps have been able to play, although now it is toolate. In a more profound sense) the role has actual!J become characte!;and art has become nature. Later, the same aphorism diseussesthe question of soeial degradation, but what I would like toemphasize is this: what is here deseribed as a phenomenonof eontemporary soeiallife appears in reality as the image ofdestiny itself-and of Nietzsehe's destiny in partieular. We

108


believe we choose freely to be what we are, but not beingwhat we are, we are in fact constrained to play a role-andthus to play the role of what we are outside ourselves. We arenever where we are, but always where we are only the actor ofthis other that we are. The role represents the fortuitousness inthe necessity of destiny. We cannot not will, but we can neverwill something other than a role. To know this is to play ingood conscience, and to playas weIl as possible amounts todissimulating oneself. Thus, to be aprofessor ofphilology at Baselor even the author of Zarathustra is nothing other than to playa role. What one dissimulates is the fact that one is nothingother than existence, and one dissimulates the fact that therole one plays refers to existence itself.

This problem of the actor in Nietzsehe, and thisirruption of a power in a so-called "character" that threatensto submerge it to the point of extinguishing it-this problem,I am saying, is immediately relevant to Nietzsche's own identity,to the putting in question of this identity considered asfortuitously received and then taken on as a role-just as therole someone chooses to play can be rejected as a mask infavor of another one from among the thousands of masksof his tory. Having produced this conception from thevalorization of the willed error, the valorization of impostureas a simulacrum, it now remains to determine to what extentthe simulacrum, if it is an apprehension of existence,constitutes a manifestation of being in the existent being-amanifestation of being in the fortuitous existent.

Is existence still capable of a God? asks Heidegger. Thisquestion is asked as much in the biographical context of theperson who formulates it for the first time as a piece of newsGod is dead-as it is asked in the context of the events and thethought of the contemporary epoche

The day after bis collapse, in Turin, Nietzsche awakenswith the feeling of being both Dionysus and the Crucified,and he signs the letters he sends to Strindberg, Burckhardt,and other notable figures with one of these divine names.

Until this point, it had always been a matter of

109

PIERRE KLOSSOWSI<I

opposing Dionysus and the Crucified: "Have I been understood?Dionysus versus the Crucifted"26 Now that Nietzsche the professorhas Eaded-or rather, now that he has finally abolished alllimits between outside and inside-he declares that the !wo

gods are living together in rum. Let us distance ourselves Eromall questions oE pathology, and retain trus declaration as avalid judgment of rus own apprehension oE existence. Thesubstitution of the divine names for that oE "Nietzsche"immediately touches upon the problem oE the identity of theperson in relation to a single God, who is the truth, and to theexistence of many gods, insofar as they are the explication oEbeing, on the one hand, and an expression oE the pluralitywitrun a single individual, witrun each and every individual, onthe other.

Thus Nietzsche maintains witrun rumself the imageof Christ, or rather, as he says, oE the Crucified, a supremesymbol that remains in rum as the indispensable opposite ofDionysus. Through their very antagonism, the two names"Christ" and "Dionysus" constitute an equilibrium.

It is clear that trus brings us back to the problem ofthe authentie incommunieable. It is in trus context that I<arlLöwith, in rus in1portant book on the eternal return, posesthe following question oE credibility to Nietzsche's doctrine:If he is not Dionysus, does not the whole edifice fall intoruin?27 But I am elaiming that trus question does not see inwhat sense the simulacrum can or cannot give an aceount ofthe authentie.

When Nietzsche announces that God is dead, thisamounts to saying that Nietzsche must neeessarily lose rusown identity. What is presented here as an ontologicalcatastrophe corresponds exactly to the re-absorption of boththe true world and apparent world into the fable. Witrun thefable, there is a plurality of norms; or rather, there is no normat all properly speaking, beeause the very principle of aresponsible identity is unknown in the fable, insofar asexistence is neither clarified nor revealed in the physiognomyof a unique God who, as the judge of a responsible self, would

110


extract the individual from a potential plurality.God is dead does not mean that the divinity ceases to

act as a clarification of existence, but rather that the absoluteguarantee of the identity of the responsible self vanishes fromthe horizon of Nietzsche's consciousness, which in turnmerges with this disappearance.

Jf the concept of identity vanishes, at first sight allthat remains is the fortuitousness that befalls consciousness.Up until then, consciousness recognized the fortuitous byvirtue of its apparently necessary identity, which judges thatall things around it are either necessary or fortuitous.

But, as soon as the fortuitous is revealed toconsciousness as the necessary effect of a universal law, asthe wheel of fortune, it can consider itself to be fortuitous.All that remains for consciousness is to declare that its ownidentity is a fortuitous case arbitrarily maintained as necessary,even if this means understanding itself through this universalwheel of fortune, and even if this means embracing (ifpossible) the totality of cases-fortuitousness itself in itsnecessary totality.

What subsists then is being, and the verb "to be" isnever applicable to being itself, but to the fortuitous. InNietzsche's declaration, "1 am ChambigeJ 1 am Badinguet; 1 amPrado...At bottom 1 am every name in history,"28 we can see hisconsciousness enumerating, like so many drawings in a lottery,the differel1t possibilities of being that, taken together, wouldbe being itself. These different possibilities make use of themomentary success that is named Nietzsehe, but who, as asuccess, winds up abdicating himself for a more generousdemonstration of being. "In the end I would much rather be aBaselprofessor than God; but I have not daredpush mypersonal egoismsofar as to desistfor its sakefrom the creation oJ the world. .. One mustmake sacriftces however and wherever one lives."29

Existence as the eternal return of all things is producedin the physiognomies of as many multiple gods as it haspossible manifestations in the souls ofmen. Jf the will adheresto this perpetual movement of the universe, what i

111

PIERRE KLOSSOWSI<I

contemplates is first the wheel of the gods, as it is said inZarathustra: The universe is on!y "many gods eternal!Y fleeing and reseeking one anothet; many gods blissfullY se!f-contradictingJ communingagain and belonging again to one another."30

No doubt, the Nietzschean version of polytheism isnecessarily as distant from the devotion of antiquity as hisconcept of a divine instinct generating many gods is necessarilydistant from the Christian notion of divinity. But what this"version" shows is the refusal to settle into an atheistic moralitythat, for Nietzsche, was no less suffocating than themonotheistic morality. He could not help but see in atheisticand humanistic morality merely the continuation of what hefeIt was the tyranny of a unique truth, whatever its name mightbe-whether it appeared in the form of a categoricalimperative or as the physiognomy of an exclusive and personalGod. Thus, the disbelief in a unique and normative God, in aGod who is the Truth, is nonetheless affirmed as an impierythat is divine/y inspired, which forbids any re-folding of reasonback into strictly human limits. Nietzschean impiety not onlydiscredits rational man, but remains complicit with all thephantasms that are reflections in the soul of everything thatn1an has had to expel in order to arrive at a rational definitionof his nature. This impiety, however, does not aspire to apure and simple unleashing of blind forces, as some are oftenled to say with regard to Nietzsehe. He has nothing in commonwith a vitalism that would make a clean slate of all of theelaborated forms of culture. Nietzsche is at the antipodes ofany naturalism; and his impiety declares itself to be a tributaryof his culture. This is why one finds, in Zarathustra'sincantation, something like an appeal to an insurrection ofimages-those images that the human soul is able to form, inits phantasms, from its own obscure forces. These phantasmstestify to the soul's aptitude for an always-inexhaustiblemetamorphosis, its need for an unappeasable and universalinvestment, in which various diverse extra-human forms ofexistence are offered to the soul as so many possibilities ofbeing-stone, plant, animal, star-but precisely insofar as they

112

I NIETZSCHE, POLYTHEISM, AND PARODY

would always be possibilities for the life of the soul itself.This aptitude for metamorphosis (whieh, under the regimeof an exelusive normative prineiple, is one of the majortemptations that man has had to struggle against for millenniain order to eonquer and define himself) has not itselfeontributed to the eliminatory formation that had to lead toman. The proof of this ean be found in the delimitation ofthe divine and the human, and in that admirable eompensationby whieh man-to the extent that he renounees his bestiality,vegetality, and minerality, and hierarehizes his desires andpassions aeeording to always-variable eriteria-reveals withinhimself an analogous hierarehy in regions that are supra- orinfra-worldly. The universe is populated by many divinities,by various divinities of both sexes, and thus divinities that areeapable of pursuing, fleeing from, and unitingwith eaeh other.So it was at that moment when the surprising equilibrium ofthe world blossomed into myth, when-thanks to thesimulaera of multiple gods, diverse with regard to their genderand sex31-neither "eonseious" nor "uneonseious," neither"outside" nor "inside," neither "obseure forees" nor"phantasms" preoeeupied the mind, onee the entire soulmanaged to situate these images in spaee, and to render themindistinguishable from the soul. Out of this relation betweenthe divine and the human, moral monotheism has aehievedthe eonquest of man by himself, and has subjugated natureto man by enabling the anthropologieal phenomenon ofseienee. Moreover, aeeording to Nietzsehe, after two millenniathis relation has provoked that profound disequilibrium whiehhas resulted in the disarray of nihilism. Henee the alienationof the universe from man, whieh Nietzsehe diseerned in theexploration of the universe by seienee; and henee the loss ofwhat is expressed by this nostalgia for the soul (as eapable ofmetamorphosis): the fundamental eros that makes man, asNietzsehe says, the animalwho reveres.32 What beeomes apparent,then, is that the event of the "death of God" stirs the eros ofthe soul at its root; it awakens the instinet of adoration, thisinstinct that generates gods, whieh in Nietzsehe is both a creativ

11

PIERRE !<LOSSOWSI<I

will and a will to eternalization.33 The "death of God" meansthat a rupture is introduced into this eros, which is then splitinto two contrary tendencies: the will to se!f-creation, which isnever without destruction, and the will to adore, which is neverwilled without willing eternalization. Insofar as the will topoweris simply another term for this set of tendencies andconstitutes the universal capacity for metamorphosis, it findssomething of a compensation, or a kind of healing, in itsidentification with Dionysus, in the sense that, in Nietzsche,this ancient god of polytheism would express and combinewithin hirnself all the dead and resurrected gods.

Zarathustra hirnself accounts for the dissociation ofthese two willings (the will to create and the will to adore)when he demands the creation of new values-and thus newtruths, which man would not know how to either believe orobey, since they would be marked with the seal of distressand destruction. It would be impossible for the will to createnew values to ever appease the need to adore, since this needis implicit in the will to eternalization of oneself. Jf man is ananimal that reveres, he would only know how to revere whatcomes to him from the necessity of being-by virtue of whichhe cannot not will to be. For this reason, he would not knowhow to either obey or believe in the values he deliberatelycreates, were it not a matter of the very simulacra of his needfor eternity. Hence the alternation, in Zarathustra, betweenthe will to create, in the absence of gods, and the contemplationof the dance oj the gods, which explains the universe. It is whenhe announces that all thegods are dead that Zarathustra demandsthat what must now live is the overman, that is, a humanitythat knows how to overcome itself. How is it overcome? Byrewilling that everything that already was be reproduced, andto do this as its own activity. This act is defined as the will tocreate: as Zarathustra declares, "if there were god~ what wouldthere be to create?"34 But what is it that leads man to create ifnot. the law of the eternal return, to which he decides toadhere? To what does he adhere if not a life that he hasforgotten,but which the revelation of the eternal return as law incites

114


hirn to re-will? And what does he re-will if not that which henow does not want to will? Is this to say that the absence ofgods incites him to create new gods? Or does he want toprevent the return of those ages when he adored the gods?In re-willing the gods, does he make man move to a higherlife? But how would this life be a higher life, if it tends towardthat which already was? In other words, how could it be ahigher life if it tends toward astate where it does not want tocreate, but would rather adore the gods? Once again, it wouldthus seem that the doctrine of the eternal return is conceivedas a simulacrum of a doctrine, whose parodic character gives anaccount of hilarity as an attribute of existence-an attributethat becomes sufficient to itself when laughter bursts fromthe ground [jOna] of the whole truth, either because the truthexplodes in the laughter of the gods, or because the godsthemselves die from a mad laughter.

When a god wanted to be the only God, all the othergods were seized by a mad laughter, to the point where theydied laughing.35

For what is the divine, if not the fact that there aremany gods and not a single God?

Laughter is here like the supreme image, the suprememanifestation of the divine reabsorbing the announced gods,and announcing the gods with a new burst of laughter; for ifthe gods are dying from this laughter, it is also from this laughterthat bursts from the ground of the whole truth that the gods arereborn.

We must follow Zarathustra to the end of hisadventure in order to see the refutation of this need to createfor and against necessity, which denounces the solidarity betweenthe three forces of eternalization, adoration and creation-thethree cardinal virtues in Nietzsche. In this refutation, we cansee that the death of God and the distress of the fundamentaleros, the distress of the need to revere Ca distress that the willto create turns from in derision as its own failllre), are identical.For if it is the failure of a single instinct, the derision thatcompensates for it is nonetheless inscribed in the necessity

115

PIERRE KLOSSOWSKI

oE the eternal return. Once he has wiiled the eternal returnoE ail things, Zarathustra has chosen in advance to see hisown doctrine turned Erom in derision, as iE laughtet; that infalliblemurderer, were both the best inspirer oE the doctrine as weil asits best denigrator. Thus the eternal return oj all things also wills thereturn oj thegods. What other meaning than trus can be attributedto the extraorclinary parody oE the Communion, in whichGod's murderer is also the person who oEEers the chalice tothe ass: a sacrilegious figure oE the Christian God Erom pagantimes, but more specificaily a sacred animal in the ancientmysteries, the Golden Ass oE the Isiac36 initiation, an anin1alworthy oE its tireless "Ia!"37-its tireless yes lets ail thingsreturn-worthy oE representing the long suEEering oE thedivine, worthy also oE incarnating an ancient clivini~ Dionysus,the god oE the vine, resurrected in general drunkenness. Thus,finaily, as the Wanderer teils Zarathustra: "in the case oj godsJ

death is always a mere prdudice."38

Translated l!J Russell Ford

Notes

All notes are the translator's except where otherwise indicated. Thetranslator gratefully acknowledges the help of the following during thepreparation oE this translation: lan James, Bryan Lueck, Holly Moore,Michael Naas and Allan Stoekl. Special thanks go to Dan Smith whograciously read through the entire essay and made a number of excellentcorrections and suggestions.

1 Klossowski is referring to the work oE Charles Andler, Nietzsehe,sa vie et sa pensee, 3 vols. (paris: Gallimard, 1958).

2 "Let there be truth and let liEe perish." Friedrich Nietzsche,Untime!J Meditations, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (New York: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1983), §4, 78.

3 "What an artist perishes with me." These are the last wordsattributed to the Roman emperor Nero. Nietzsche quotes them in TheGay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1974), Book 1,

116


§36, 105.4 Friedrich Nietzsehe, Ecce Homo, in Basic Writings of Nietzsehe,

ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Modern Library, 1992),"Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None," §5, 759.

5 Friedrich Nietzsehe, Twilight 0/ the Idols, trans. WalterKaufmann, in The Portable Nietzsche (New York: Viking Press, 1954),485486.

6 A portmanteau word, "sous-vient" is coined by Klossowskifrom the preposition "sous," meaning "under" or "beneath" (also usedas aprefix usually translated as "sub-"), and the third person present,indicative form of "venir," meaning "to come." "Sous-vient" also echoesthe word "souvenir," both a noun meaning "memory," and a verb meaning"to remember." Finally, it also echoes, though to a lesser extent, the verb"soutenir," meaning "to bear," or "to sustain." It thus carries a sense ofremembrance as something that is "undergone," or that one succumbsto (an inactivity of consciousness preparatory for the coming forth [advient,in the next sentence] of the past).

7 Friedrich Nietzsehe, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in The PortableNietzsehe (New York: Viking Press, 1954), Second Part, "On Redemption,"253.

8Nietzsehe, Gay Science, Book 3, §112, 172.9 Nietzsehe, Gcry Science, Book 3, §111, 171-172.10 Nietzsehe, Gcry Science, Book 3, §110, 169-171.11 Nietzsehe, Gcry Science, Book 3, §110, 171, emphasis added.12 Nietzsehe, Gay Science, Book 3, §110, 169-171, translation

modified.13 Ephesians 5:13.14 Ephesians 5:11.15 John 1:5.16 Nietzsehe, Gcry Science, Book 5, §354, 297-300.17Ibid.18 "Depense" means, literally, "expenditure," or "waste;" the

verb "depenser" can also mean "to consume." Klossowski uses it toexpress the non-goal-oriented expenditure of unconscious impulses;incommunicable pathos. The contrast between this exertion and that ofthinking can be seen in the components of the word itself: "de," apreposition that can have the sense of negation (as in "demonter," "todis-mount"), and "pense," the imperative form of the verb "penser,""to trunk." The word thus also carries a sense of "to un-think."

19 Friedrich Nietzsehe, The Will to Power, ed. Walter Kaufmann,trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books,1967), Book 3, Seetion 4, §493 [1885], 272.

20 Nietzsehe, Gcry Science, Preface to the Second Edition, §1, 33,

117

PIERRE KLOSSOWSKI

translation modified.21 Nietzsche, Gqy Science, §1, 74-76.22 Ibid.23 See Nietzsche, Will to Power, Book 3, Section I~ §853, "Art in

The Birth of Tragedy," 451.24 Zarathustra first encounters The Last Pope in Thus Spoke

Zarathustra, Fourth Part, §6, "Retired," 370-375.25 Nietzsche, Gqy Science, Book 5, §361, 316-317.26 Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, "Why I Am ADestiny," §9, in Basic

Writings of Nietzsehe, 791.27 Klossowski is referring to Kar! Löwith, Nietzsehe } Philosop!?J

of the Eternal Return of the Same, Trans. J. Harvey Lomax (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1997).

28 Nietzsche, Letter to Jacob Burckhardt, datedJanuary 6,1889,in The Portable Nietzsehe, 686.

29 Ibid, 685.30 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Third Part, "On Old and

N ew Tablets," §2, 309, translation modified.31 What is glimpsed here is not the return of a demonology

(obscure forces as demons) but a theogony (psycruc dispositions as divinities;antagonistic and conciliatory dispositions as divinities given to quarrelingand coupling). The demonology of Neoplatonic origin was alreadytending toward a psychology, a kind of figurative psychology. Pantheology, on the other hand, presupposes a notion of space where the innerlife of the soul and the life of the cosmos form a single space, in whichthe event-which, for us, is "psychological"-is situated as a spatialfact. Trus is why the pan-theology ofmyth-with itsgenealogies of divinities,its amorous adventures of gods and goddesses-creates an equilibriumbetween man and his own forces, for the latter find their physiognomiesin the eternal figure of the gods. The practical consequences of such anequilibrium are the exact opposite of those that follow from a purelypsychological conception-that is, conscience and the will, and hencethe morality of behavior. In a theogony, what reigns is simply an exchangeor comn1erce between the favor and disfavor of being: the physiognomyof some god who attracts or repulses the physiognomy of some goddess,according to the rule of the law of the chase, of erotic attraction.However, this is not what we have been led to call a pure transposition ofhuman experience, but rather a process that belongs to the verymanifestations of being: the commerce of the sexes in the form ofdivinities is simply an explication of being in its modes of appearing anddisappearing, whereas in its human form trus same exchange is simply theexperience of living and dying. What we call theogony is nothing otherthan a necessary participation in the explications of being in divine

118


physiognomies. AUTHOR.32 Nietzsehe, Gay Science, Book 5, §346, 285-287.33Nietzsche, Gay Science, Book 5, §370, 327-331.34 Nietzsehe, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Second Part, "Upon the

Blessed Isles," 199, translation modified.35 Nietzsehe, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Third Part, "On Apostates,"

§2,294.36 Of or relating to the pagan Isis cults.37 "Ita est!'-AUTHOR. "Ita est" is the refrain of the ass during

the '~ss Festival" in the Fourth Part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 425-436.It is a Latin phrase meaning, literally, "it is indeed." Kaufmann translatesit as "Yea-Yuh"; Hollingdale as ''Ye-a.''

38 Nietzsehe, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Fourth Part, "The AssFestival," §1, 426, translation modified.

119

polytheism e

Documents