Nietzsche's Dawn

Philosophy, Ethics, and the Passion of Knowledge

Keith Ansell-Pearson, Rebecca Bamford

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781118957783
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

The first focused study of Nietzsche's Dawn, offering a close reading of the text by two of the leading scholars on the philosophy of Nietzsche

Published in 1881, Dawn: Thoughts on the Presumptions of Morality represents a significant moment in the development of Nietzsche's philosophy and his break with German philosophic thought. Though groundbreaking in many ways, Dawn remains the least studied of Nietzsche's work. In Nietzsche's Dawn: Philosophy, Ethics, and the Passion of Knowledge, authors Keith Ansell-Pearson and Rebecca Bamford present a thorough treatment of the second of Nietzsche's so-called "free spirit" trilogy.

This unique book explores Nietzsche's philosophy at the time of Dawn's writing and discusses the modern relevance of themes such as fear, superstition, terror, and moral and religious fanaticism. The authors highlight Dawn's links with key areas of philosophical inquiry, such as "the art of living well, " skepticism, and naturalism. The book begins by introducing Dawn and discussing how to read Nietzsche, his literary and philosophical influences, his relation to German philosophy, and his efforts to advance his "free spirit" philosophy. Subsequent discussions address a wide range of topics relevant to Dawn, including presumptions of customary morality, hatred of the self, free-minded thinking, and embracing science and the passion of knowledge. Providing a lively and imaginative engagement with Nietzsche's text, this book:

• Highlights the importance of an often-neglected text from Nietzsche's middle writings
• Examines Nietzsche's campaign against customary morality
• Discusses Nietzsche's responsiveness to key Enlightenment ideas
• Offers insights on Nietzsche's philosophical practice and influences
• Contextualizes a long-overlooked work by Nietzsche within the philosopher's life of writing

Like no other book on the subject, Nietzsche's Dawn: Philosophy, Ethics, and the Passion of Knowledge is a must-read for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, instructors, and scholars in philosophy, as well as general readers with interest in Nietzsche, particularly his middle writings.

1
From Human, All Too Human to Dawn

In this initial chapter, we consider how and why Nietzsche makes the move from his investigations in the three texts that comprise Human, All Too Human: Human, All Too Human, Assorted Opinions and Maxims (in HH II), and The Wanderer and His Shadow (in HH II). The initial publication of Human, All Too Human in 1878 makes it evident that Nietzsche’s thinking undergoes a truly fundamental turn; from this point on in his work he commits himself to science [Wissenschaft] and as part of this, to the promotion of the pathos of the search for truth and knowledge. Nietzsche makes an important distinction between “the pathos of possessing truth,” and the “gentler and less noisy pathos of seeking truth”; he prefers the latter since it focuses on “learning and examining anew” (HH 633).¹ He contends that opinions grow out of passions, then stiffen into convictions through the “inertia of the spirit”; however, he suggests, a person whose “spirit is free and relentlessly alive” could, he thinks, resist such inertia through “continual change” (HH 637).

That Nietzsche’s thinking over the two decades of his productive life underwent considerable and complex intellectual development is something Nietzsche took pride in, and to which he accorded significant value. As with his thinking on the pathos of seeking truth, such development is not only rational but affective. As he tells his readers in Ecce Homo his text of 1878, Human, All Too Human, represents the “monument to a crisis” (EH, “Human, all too Human”). In Dawn, he makes it clear that he prizes certain thinkers over others, such as Spinoza, Pascal, Rousseau, and Goethe over Kant and Schopenhauer, because their work testifies to what he calls “a passionate history of the soul” marked by crises and catastrophes. In the case of Kant, we have a thinker whose work is little more than an involuntary biography not of the soul, but of the head, while in Schopenhauer’s case there is “the description and mirroring of a character”, albeit one characterized by an interesting vehement ugliness (D 481). In neither Kant nor Schopenhauer do we find evidence of “the passion of thinking,” and in Schopenhauer’s case we can discern a distinct lack of “development” and “history” (D 481; see also AOM 271).

To properly appreciate the nature of Nietzsche’s turn, we need to take into account two changes with respect to the commitments he displays in his early writings (1872–76). First, in an unpublished note of 1877 Nietzsche states that he had abandoned “the metaphysical‐artistic views” of his early writings (KSA 8, 23 [159]). In particular, he wants to overcome what he calls his “deliberate holding on to illusion” as the foundation of culture (KSA 10, 16 [23]).² Nietzsche is seeking to overcome what he calls “Jesuitism,” a form of casuistry that he located in his predecessors in German philosophy and himself. In the words of one commentator, this means not allowing the uncovering of the limits of human knowledge to be conducted in such a way that the task also gives free rein to metaphysics and the metaphysical need.³ Second, an important move that now takes place in Nietzsche’s thinking concerns the antique philosophers and their discovery of “possibilities of life.” He had advanced this appreciation of the original pre‐Platonic philosophers in Philosophy in the Tragic of the Greeks (PTAG Preface), and he returns to the theme in Human, All Too Human in an aphorism entitled “The tyrants of the spirit” (HH 261). Nietzsche now proclaims that the time of these tyrants of the spirit is over. What remains is the need for some form of mastery [Herrschaft], but this is now to take place in the hands of oligarchs of the spirit. There is a need for free spirits appropriate to the requirements of the modern age and these spirits aim to discover new possibilities of life.

In Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche is concerned with the fate of humanity as it endeavors to transform itself into a knowing and wise animal, stating firmly that there is no pre‐established harmony between the furtherance of truth and the welfare of humanity (HH 517), and willing to acknowledge that the “tree of knowledge” is not one with the “tree of life” and so there is only, and echoing Byron’s Manfred, the sorrow of knowledge (HH 109). Here Nietzsche accepts modern free spirits cannot seriously entertain any romantic return to the past, and an accommodation with any form of Christianity has to be completely ruled out. For the time being, then, we may well have to endure a condition of melancholy. This is a somewhat different position with respect to the cause of knowledge that Nietzsche will come to evince in Dawn with its conception of “the passion of knowledge” and that then provides the impetus for a joyful science. In Human, All Too Human Nietzsche is most keen to aid humanity as it now charts a new course in its historical becoming, coming to terms with the insights of the new evolutionary naturalisms of the nineteenth century and appreciating the need for the small, unpretentious findings of science over the “bold insanities” of metaphysics (GS Preface). Nietzsche pins his hope for the future on these developments in culture without reliance on metaphysics and the errors of religion, as well as forsaking the harshness and violence that have hitherto been the means for binding one person or one people powerfully to another. It is the task of a new humanity to “take in hand the earthly governance of all humanity,” and its “‘omniscience’ must watch over the future destiny of culture with a sharp eye” (HH 245). This requires at the same time that we do justice to the past and tradition, for example, by recognizing that the activity of the fiercest forces were “necessary so that a milder cultural dispensation could later establish itself.” This means recognizing that those fearsome energies we now call “evil” have been in history “the cyclopean architects and builders of humanity” (HH 246).

Of course, we can acknowledge that the whole of humanity is merely a developmental phase of a certain species of animal of quite limited duration. If human beings descended from apes, as the new science of evolution teaches us, it is quite possible that we will becomes apes again without anybody taking an interest in this comic ending. This is to say that the decline of universal world culture might one day lead to a heightened repulsiveness and bestialization of humanity — but it is “because we can envision this perspective” that “we are perhaps in a position to prevent the future from reaching such an end” (HH 247). Nietzsche insists that it is impossible to go backward, to “go back to the old,” since “we have burned our boats; all that remains is to be bold, regardless of what may result” (HH 248). It may appear that the world is becoming more chaotic every passing day or year, with the old being lost and the new seeming feebler, but we have no option but to “step forward” and move on (HH 248). Nietzsche even admits that, “Every better future that we wish upon humanity is also in many respects necessarily a worse future” (HH 239). This is because we can no longer draw on on the forces that united previous cultures, forces of consolation provided by religion and metaphysics: “What grew out of religion and in proximity to it cannot grow again if religion has been destroyed” (HH 239).

Nietzsche holds that all the important truths of science need to gradually become everyday, ordinary, things. However, because it lacks the intense pleasure of what has been conquered — for example, the pleasures afforded by religion and metaphysics — and has taken away the consolations they offered, there arises the need in a higher culture for the dual brain. Nietzsche envisages a higher culture in which human beings have a dual brain made up of two compartments, one with which to experience science and one to experience non‐science (HH 251). He stipulates this as a requirement of health in which the realm of science and the realm of metaphysics, religion, and art will be closed off from one another with one unable to confuse the other. One region will be the source of power [Kraft] and of pleasure, the other will serve as a regulator. One will allow for illusions, partiality, and the passions that stimulate heat in us, while the other will avert the dangers of overheating stemming from these operations. In short, there is need of a culture that can do justice to our liking of illusion, error, and fantasy — because it gives us so much pleasure and a confidence in life — and the need for the true (this is now a new need in us that demands satisfaction). This is not to say that there is no pleasure to be had from knowing [Erkennen], only that it is of a peculiar and more refined kind. In knowing we become conscious of our own strength, we become victors over older conceptions and their advocates, and we feel we are distinguishing ourselves from everyone else.

Nietzsche is not oblivious to the fact that there are dangers facing the development of the human intellect and spirit under modern conditions of life. Ours is an age of quickness that is fast becoming an enemy of slowness. A tremendous acceleration of life is taking place in which people more and more resemble the traveler who gets to know a land and its people only from looking out of the train window. This means we will more and more deprecate an independent and careful attitude toward knowledge [Erkenntniss]. Nietzsche thinks that the discrediting of the free spirit — the genuinely independent thinker — is already taking place with the rise of the scholar (HH 282). If the requirements of higher culture are not met, then, Nietzsche thinks, a reversal to barbarism can be predicted: the free unleashing of fantasy and a deliberate dwelling in illusion and error. It is simply a fact that truth and science cannot compete with art and religion on the plane of pleasure. Nietzsche will wrestle with this problem in the texts and notebooks of the free‐spirit period. It is not that the acquisition of knowledge is completely devoid of pleasure, but compared to that offered by religion and metaphysics it is of a much soberer kind. As we shall see, to fully carry out the requirements of knowledge and make it an abiding passion, Nietzsche will appeal in Dawn to the need for courage and excessive magnanimity on the part of the free‐spirited thinker.

In the volumes of Human, All Too Human, then, Nietzsche is negotiating a new modest pathway for humanity and its future development. He is prudent, cautious, wise, and impressed by the new evolutionary naturalisms that serve to radically decenter the human animal from what it has taken to be its privileged position in the cosmos. We see this especially in evidence in aphorism 14 of The Wanderer and His Shadow. Here Nietzsche looks at humanity’s insignificance when viewed from the new perspectives of modern evolutionary theory and modern cosmology, with “the music of the spheres around the earth” assuming the form of a “mocking laughter of all other creatures at humans” (WS 14). Furthermore, Nietzsche notes, according to our modern astronomers, and who adopt a field of vision detached from planet earth, “the drop of life in the world ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgments
• Editions of Nietzsche’s Writings Used with Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 From Human, All Too Human to Dawn
• 2 Nietzsche’s Campaign Against Morality
• 3 Nietzsche on Religion and Christianity
• 4 Nietzsche, Mitleid, and Moral Imagination
• 5 The German Enlightenment, Knowledge, and the Passion of Knowledge1
• 6 Nietzsche on Subjectivity
• 7 Nietzsche on Fanaticism, and the Care of the Self1
• 8 Nietzsche on Epicurus and Death
• 9 Dawn and the Political
• 10 Aeronauts of the Spirit
• Appendix: Nietzsche’s Letters of 1881 — Concerning Dawn
• Index
• End User License Agreement