Table Of ContentCOMIC RELIEF
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COMIC RELIEF
NIETZSCHE'S GAY SCIENCE
Kathleen Marie Higgins
New York Oxford
Oxford University Press
2000
Oxford University Press
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Copyright © 2000 by Kathleen Marie Higgins
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The publishers have given permission to use extended quotations from the following copyrighted
works. From The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kaufman. Copyright © 1974
by Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc. From The Basic Writings of
Friedrich Nietzsche by Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kaufman. Copyright © 1967 by Walter
Kaufman. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc. From The Basic Writings of Friedrich Nietz-
sche by Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kaufman. Copyright © 1966 by Walter Kaufman. Re-
printed by permission of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Higgins, Kathleen Marie.
Comic relief: Nietzsche's Gay science / Kathleen Marie Higgins.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-512691-2
i. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900. Frohliche
Wissenschaft. 2. Philosophy. 3. Religion—Philosophy.
I. Title.
B3313.F743H54 1999
193—dc2i 99-17102
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
FOR THE VISHNEEKEES
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Preface
Reminiscing about Nietzsche in his early thirties, Malwida von Meysenbug
remarked, "How cheerful he could be, how heartily he could laugh."1 Nietz-
sche's scholarly interpreters, even if they notice his frequent paeans to laugh-
ter, tend to hear more contempt than heartiness in his sense of humor.2
Perhaps they recall such accusatory passages as this:
Cramped intestines betray themselves—you can bet on that—no less than
closet air, closet ceilings, closet narrowness.—This was what I felt just now
as I closed a very decent scholarly book—gratefully, very gratefully, but
also with a sense of relief.3
The belittling tone of this passage from The Gay Science (Die Frohliche
Wissenschaft) seems designed to offend those of us who engage in scholarly
writing. And yet, Nietzsche aims to incite an amused reaction even among
members of his own former profession. That his aim is not simply to display
contempt is indicated by his further remarks:
[M]y scholarly friends, I bless you even for your hunched backs. And for
despising, as I do, the "men of letters" and culture parasites. And for not
knowing how to make a business of the spirit. And for having opinions
that cannot be translated into financial values. And for not representing
anything that you are not.4
The scholar's case is but an instance of the general truth that "every craft
makes crooked."5
Why, then, create the unflattering portrait in the first place? Nietzsche, in
a book addressed to those who care about scholarship (the Wissenschaft of
Frohliche Wissenschaft), reminds us, in the words of Monty Python's Flying
Circus, that however admirable our enterprises, "Um ... well,... the whole
thing's a bit silly." Nietzsche may expect the cries of outrage that greet this
remark in the Monty Python sketch, but perhaps he hopes that, on reflection,
his scholarly readers might also conclude, "Silly! I suppose it is, a bit."6
If we do draw this conclusion, what are we to do about it? Nietzsche
denies that education can correct the tendency of any developed discipline
Vlii PREFACE
to cripple. All mastery, while enabling, is also disabling. By practicing certain
moves and skills, one unlearns alternative habits. One cannot undo such
ingrained practices, nor would one want to undercut the expertise that one
has taken so long to master. One can, however, minimize the crippling effects
Nietzsche mentions by maintaining one's flexibility. The Gay Science is Nietz-
sche's attempt to promote mental resilience, not just among scholars, but
among all who find themselves rigidly caught in their well-trained methods.
The book not only encourages but also actually engages its readers in prac-
tices of approaching topics flexibly, often doing so by means of humor.
Nietzsche's The Gay Science has not usually been read as funny. It has
rarely even been treated as a book. Despite their occasional praise for its
form, scholars have tended to treat The Gay Science as a mine for remarks
on various topics, giving little attention to its structure as a whole. Here I
will consider the book as a coherent enterprise, one that employs literary
strategies, particularly parody and other comic techniques, to achieve phil-
osophical and religious ends.
Concentrating on the book in its first edition, I explore Nietzsche's at-
tempt at lighthearted scholarship and the means he uses to illustrate it. In
chapter i I explain my particular approach and my focus on Nietzsche's
treatment of central themes, or leitmotifs, in The Gay Science, such as per-
spectivism, the theatrical interplay of tragedy and comedy, the death of God,
eternal recurrence, and Zarathustra. In the case of virtually all of these
themes, scholars have underemphasized Nietzsche's parodic play with literary
precedents. I attempt to rectify this situation, resisting the view that is some-
times raised by proponents of deconstruction and postmodernism that Nietz-
sche's goals are primarily those of a demystifier (a matter I consider in in-
terlude 2).
For example, in chapter 2 I read the odd "Prelude in German Rhymes"
which opens the first edition of the book against the farce by Goethe that
shares its title, "Scherz, List und Rache" (Joke, Trick, and Revenge). By
alluding to Goethe's plot, which involves the mistaken identification of med-
icine as poison, Nietzsche suggests that the medicine that he himself offers—
an antidote to the ill effects of traditional moralism—will be seen by some
as poison. Goethe's plot, a farce about power struggles which makes no effort
to moralize, also resembles the "plot" of The Gay Science, which describes
human experience naturalistically, without moralizing platitudes, in terms of
human beings' natural desire for power. (Nietzsche praises the theater gen-
erally for helping us to see human beings extra-morally, as I discuss in in-
terlude 3.)
Similarly, in chapter 6 I draw attention to the literary precedents for the
famous parable of section 341, often seen as the first published statement of
Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal recurrence. Eternal recurrence, described by
a demon in section 341, offers an account of the meaning of life that recalls
the worldviews suggested by demons in the writings of Plato and Descartes.
By use of parody, Nietzsche underscores his intent to pose eternal recurrence
PREFACE IX
as an alternative to the "otherworldly" visions of life's significance provided
by the Western philosophical and religious traditions.
In interlude 4 I also consider the literary source of Nietzsche's adoption
of Pindar's slogan "Become who you are." This formula, which arises in the
context of an ode that employs the image of Ixion's torture on a perpetually
rolling wheel, involves a rereading of what might well be considered a mor-
alistic platitude. Although "Become who you are" can be seen as a caveat to
recognize one's limitations, the context in Pindar indicates that the admo-
nition is to recognize and live up to the full measure of one's power. Through
our doing so, our own eternally rolling wheel, time as it is depicted by the
doctrine of eternal recurrence, becomes a means of self-realization, not eter-
nal punishment.
I also explore Nietzsche's use of humorous strategies to dislodge readers
from their typically somber philosophical habits and to incite their own
imaginative thinking. In chapter 4, for example, I consider the passages on
women that occur early in Book II of The Gay Science, which are often read
as a perverse digression that mars more important discussions. I read them,
instead, as designed to prompt the reader to reconsider commonplace as-
sumptions and to seriously entertain perspectives that are different from their
own. This strategy demonstrates that Nietzsche's thinking about the sexes is
complex, and that (at least in The Gay Science) he should not be pigeonholed
as a misogynist. It also provides an illustration of the impact our perspectives
have on our analyses of our situation, a point that Nietzsche applies to schol-
arship, as I consider in chapter 3.
Nietzsche's name is associated with ideas about power for many individ-
uals in Western culture (along with several associations that I consider in
interlude i). Often, however, the important religious dimension of Nietz-
sche's counsels regarding power are unappreciated. I argue in chapter 5 that
Nietzsche is convinced by Ludwig Feuerbach's argument that human beings
have impoverished themselves by projecting their own power into their con-
ception of God, and that he accordingly sees the death of God (Western
culture's shift to a secularized self-understanding) as an opportunity for hu-
man beings to rediscover "who they are." Human beings are the creators of
value; and the meaning of life is an artistic outcome of human acts of in-
terpreting and cultivating certain possibilities within their experience. The
death of God might occasion a new stage of human development, that of
homo poeta, "man" the artistic interpreter.
Nietzsche sees the rise of the myth of science, however, as a potential
obstacle to this new stage of development. Although science was the precon-
dition for the secular vision of the natural world that has displaced the theo-
centric vision, too many look to science as the source of value. The preva-
lence of anthropomorphic terms applied to nature is, according to Nietzsche,
a symptom of Western humanity's continued habit of projecting its own
power outward. The scientific worldview, if taken to provide values on ob-
jective terms, diminishes our impression of human power at least as much
