Pippin, Robert B.: Nietzsche, Psychology, & First Philosophy.

Platt, Michael

PIPPIN, Robert B. Nietzsche, Psychology, & First Philosophy (originally published in French by Odille Jacob in 2006). Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2010. ix + 139 pp. Cloth, $29.00.--That the soul relates to eternity, eros to wisdom, nous in us to nous housing, and man to the Creator, unites the line from Socrates to Aquinas, and sets Nietzsche against them by his indignant criticism of all "true worlds." But what then is the soul bereft of its old loves? Shrunk to the puny self? If there is only the self, howsoever creative, and nothing else, what could self-knowledge be? What would a science of self, a psychology, be, if there is no logos and no psyche? In claiming to be the only such psychologist, Nietzsche claimed to know something.

That in these lectures Prof. Robert Pippin sets himself to find out what Nietzsche meant, is laudable, and also distinguished, when many books with titles like Nietzsche and X do not indicate an interest in Nietzsche. Pippin is aware that the task is not easy, especially for current philosophers. Things that might seem to be doctrines, positions, theses, such as der Wille zur Macht and die ewige Wiederkunft des Gleichen, get fixed upon (even by Heidegger), though Nietzsche does not devote treatises, discourses, or even articles to them, but instead sows them in books of witty aphorisms, dark thoughts, and frolicsome appreciations, and then, surprise, they bloom in a lyrical epic, Zarathustra.

Since Nietzsche is so colorful, so sportive, so diverse and ondoyant, Pippin proposes that Nietzsche might be read like Montaigne. Helpful as that might be, but only if more philosophers studied Montaigne like Ann Hartle, it must fall short. The final sentence of Nietzsche's affectionate praise of Montaigne (Schoepenhauer als Erzieher) is to be weighed with jeweler's scruples: "Mit ihm wurde ich es halten, wenn die Aufgabe gestellt ware, es sich auf der Erde heimisch zu machen." Fond as Nietzsche is, he knew his task would not be as pleasant as Montaigne's, who did not suffer the "death of God," never responded with anything like the joyous yet enigmatic Zarathustra; exalted himself in an Ecce Homo; or called himself a psychologist.

The heart of Pippin's book is a close attention to the language of Nietzsche, especially to several favorite metaphors: life as a woman, wisdom as a woman, pregnancy, virtue as a mother's love of the child, and fathering a child; also the taught bow, the arrow of longing, sickness and convalescence, and the death of God, (but not the wave, tight rope walker, bridge, and abyss). Also, like those he addresses, Prof. Pippin is interested in the nature of human agency, self-deception, and self-overcoming, which he finds chiefly in On the Genealogy of Morals, where Nietzsche may well be a psychologist, but the images point to Zarathustra, where Nietzsche never presents himself or his heroic prophet as a psychologist.

Pippin's most interesting discovery, lying between the metaphors and his concerns, is the observation that for Nietzsche, nihilism is lack of desire. Such a characterization would unite both the complacent passivity of the Last Man and the militant despair of he who holds that the world as it is should not exist, and the world that should exist, that it does not. The one has no desire, no eyes for splendor, while the other has desire, finds nothing to satisfy it, and in savage disappointment will destroy the world. Both seem consequences of the soul having lost all connection to eternity. How can you desire yourself, or love yourself, unless there is a standard of what is lovable, which must be outside yourself, and not created by you? If you, the self, is all there is, then you cannot have desire. Yet, Zarathustra, at the end of Part III, threads the way out of this dark labyrinth, speaks of the soul (Seele), not the self (Selbst), and sings the love of eternity.

It is admirable that throughout these lectures Prof. Pippin ranges through all the books of Nietzsche, but his inquiry is impeded from reaching its desired goal by slighting order and degree. (1) No one since Plato has written so much about reading, and no one since Rousseau so much about how to read himself. Because Nietzsche claims to have written splendid books, well arranged ones whose sequences teach, and since he maintains that a philosopher has no right to isolated insights, then no passage, section, or part can be understood without all the others and within the designed whole. (2) In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche gives an account of the order of his books, with those before Zarathustra leading to it, especially Die Frohliche Wissenschaft, and those after written to help others up to Zarathustra, especially Jenseits von Gut und Bose. Most of Pippin's concerns are treated in Zur Genealogie der Moral, whose "Zur" is to be understood as "toward," for the book, designated a polemic (a lower thing to Nietzsche), points above itself, one of its three parts being an exposition of a single passage in Zarathustra. Meanwhile, the metaphors that attract Pippin find their rich fruition in Zarathustra. Accordingly, questions such as: can an agent do anything? how can someone deceive himself?, and how can someone overcome himself? appear on the plains both insoluble and psychologically interesting, but obvious and irrelevant in the mountains where Nietzsche knows souls do act, readily accuses "the good and the just" of lying to themselves, and exhorts the noble to overcome themselves. (3) Since Nietzsche twines questions about what something truly is or would be with attention to the highest examples, to find out what he thinks psychology is, one needs to ask who he thinks the great psychologists are. Other than himself, and probably Stendhal, and possibly just one of the contemporary French cynics, I believe Nietzsche singles out only one as great: Dostoevsky, "the only psychologist ... from whom I had something to learn." (Would Nietzsche consider Freud much of a psychologist, especially when he lied about how much Nietzsche he studied? Kafka is another matter.)

That the one person Nietzsche definitely calls a fellow psychologist is a Christian surely surprises, and might provoke inquiry. If Nietzsche is ready to learn from Dostoevsky, then maybe all Nietzsche's criticism of first philosophy, ancient and modern, all his cursing Christianity, and all his reinterpreting Christ are not as convincing to himself as his loud iteration makes them seem. As that great psychologist Queen Gertrude might say, "Methinks the man doth thump too much."

(4) Moreover, being a psychologist, even a rare one, may not merit Nietzsche's highest esteem, or correspond to his fullest self-understanding. Surely the psychologist is sublated into the philosopher of the future (Jenseits von Gut und Bose), and that in turn sublated into the prophet Zarathustra overcoming himself?

No one could be more patient than Robert Pippin in trying to coax philosophers to pay attention to Nietzsche as Nietzsche wishes, but would Nietzsche share that wish? Especially if it requires no embrace of Nietzsche's high-hearted view of philosophy, such that one feels that life is better for him having lived and reading him one notices one has grown wings and ears.--Michael Platt, George Wythe University.