- Against the value of that which remains eternally the same […], the values of the briefest and most transient, the seductive flash of gold on the belly of the serpent vita [“life”]---
[The Will to Power, section 577.]
Nietzsche repeatedly expressed this idea. I was reminded of it while reading Heidegger’s commentary on ‘How the “True World” Finally Became a Fable’ (from Twilight; the commentary can be found in Volume I, chapter 24, of Heidegger’s ‘Nietzsche’). I will use Krell’s translation here.
- (Midday; moment of the shortest shadow; end of the longest error; highpoint of humanity; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA.)
I re-turned to Heidegger’s study in the course of my recent study of truthfulness in Nietzsche. In the light of that study, I can now offer the following interpretation of this section from Twilight.
The abolition of the true world---and with it, the apparent one---follows from Platonic/Christian morality’s turning against itself. I like to liken Christianity to a scorpion which has stung itself. A scorpion has eight legs (two of which have claws), a stinger, and a head. These make ten extremities in total. Christianity has ten commandments.
- “Thou shalt not rob! Thou shalt not slay!”---such precepts were once called holy; before them did one bow the knee and the head, and take off one's shoes.
But I ask you: Where have there ever been better robbers and slayers in the world than such holy precepts?
[TSZ, Of Old and New Tables, 10.]
We could identify these two commandments as the claws. It doesn’t really matter, however, which commandment corresponds to which extremity---with one exception. (I would like to hear your suggestions as to what the head might be, though---perhaps “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”?) That exception, incidentally, is the only one of which I’m certain: the stinger is “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour”---the commandment to truthfulness.
Now the stinger has killed the scorpion’s body---the Christian God---, how long will its extremities survive? Without the Christian God to sanction it, Christian morality will perish sooner or later. And this will include the commandment to truthfulness! I contend that midday, the moment (‘Augenblick’, literally “glance of an eye”) of the shortest shadow, is the period in which God is dead but the stinger still lives. This period is, from a Nietzschean perspective, the highpoint of humanity: it is the period of Nietzsche’s mature philosophy (as Heidegger says, part 5 of said section from Twilight describes Nietzsche’s positivistic period). And what happens at that point? INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA, Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra?) begins… And how does Zarathustra begin?
- Incipit tragoedia.---When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and Lake Urmi, and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and his solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it. But at last his heart changed,--- […] Thus began Zarathustra’s down-going.
[Joyful Wisdom, section 342.]
The highpoint of humanity is the wisdom of Zarathustra. But in the course of TSZ, Zarathustra chooses Life over Wisdom. This is already prefigured in the Prologue:
- And if my wisdom should some day forsake me:---alas! it loveth to fly away!---may my pride then fly with my folly!
[Zarathustra’s Prologue, 10.]
And so it does. Indeed, at the end of Part IV, Zarathustra says:
- Just now hath my world become perfect, midnight is also mid-day,---
Pain is also a joy, curse is also a blessing, night is also a sun,---go away! or ye will learn that a sage is also a fool.
[The Drunken Song (a.k.a. The Nightwanderer’s Song), section 10.]
This feeling of perfection, however, is also called “wisdom” by Nietzsche on occasion:
- Philosophy as love of wisdom, up to the sage as the most blessed, most powerful one, who justifies all Becoming and wants to have it again,---not love of men, or of gods, or of truth, but love of a condition, of a spiritual and sensual feeling of perfection: an Affirming and Benedicting out of an overflowing feeling of shaping power. The great distinction.
[Nietzsche, Nachlass, found in Umwertung aller Werte.]
And indeed, the word translated by Common as “wisdom” in section 10 of the Prologue is not ‘Weisheit’ (as in ‘Weiser’, “sage”), but ‘Klugheit’, “cleverness” (compare the first two chapter titles of Ecce Homo). And yet Zarathustra chooses Life over Wisdom (‘Weisheit’):
- And we gazed at each other, and looked at the green meadow o'er which the cool evening was just passing, and we wept together.Then, however, was Life dearer unto me than all my Wisdom had ever been.
[TSZ, The Second Dance Song.]
I think the Wisdom sacrificed by Zarathustra isn’t the condition mentioned above; it’s rather to attain that condition that he sacrifices it. The “wisdom” he sacrifices is truth, which is indeed (a) god.
