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Friedrich Nietzsche: Earth-Enthusiast Extraordinaire

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Life Scientific Philosophy, Phenomenology of Life and the Sciences of Life

Part of the book series: Analecta Husserliana ((ANHU,volume 59))

Abstract

This essay examines some cardinal reasons why Nietzsche’s philosophy can be regarded as the quintessential advocacy of and apology for earthism (mundialism) insofar as it pre-eminently champions the sovereignty and sanctity of the earth against all its myriad adversaries. Since Nietzsche envisages humans as entirely earth-bred and bound, their self-transcendence, to wit, their self-overcoming, is accomplished only by an immanence that is solely geo-centric. Consequently, he construes the human condition as being one of homelessness until and unless the earth is honored as the exclusive realm for the realization of all physical, mental and spiritual capabilities and aspirations in a manner that enables all earthlings, to invoke his idiom, to become who and what they are. Accordingly, this presentation sketches six interlocking ingredients of Nietzsche’s earthism, namely, his life-philosophy (“Lebensphilosophie”), ecologism, animism, panpsychism, proto-existentialism/anti-essentialism and naturalism. It concludes with his recommendations for the reclamation of the earth as mankind’s one and only homeland.1

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Notes

  1. Please note that the masculine, rather than the feminine or the generic, is the operative gender when considering Nietzsche for reasons which, if they were to be examined here, would exceed the space-constraints of this presentation.

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  2. F. Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans. R. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 157 #314, hereafter D.

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  3. F. Nietzsche, The Will to Power, ed. W. Kaufmann, trans. R. Hollingdale and W. Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1968), p. 253 #461, hereafter WP.

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  4. Ecology did not become a distinct science until around Nietzsche’s death in 1900 (see M. Hallman, “Nietzsche’s Environmental Ethics,” Environmental Ethics 13 [1991], p. 100).

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  5. Ecology, of course, concerns the relationship between organisms and their environments. But if all beings are organisms in some sense, as Nietzsche holds, despite some isolated statements to the contrary, then the environments surrounding them are also living. From this perspective, the separation between organisms and environment vanishes; see note 6.

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  6. F. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1974), pp. 298–299 #354, hereafter GS; see WP, p. 329 #611. Although Nietzsche says that such thinking may take place “in primitive conditions (pre-organic),” the latter should not be construed as entirely passive, inert and lifeless (WP, p. 273 #499).

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  7. F. Nietzsche, “Miscellaneous Maxims and Opinions,” Division I, Human, All Too Human, Part II, trans. P. Cohn, Vol. VII, The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. O. Levy (New York: Russell and Russell, 1964), p. 35 #49, hereafter HH II MO).

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  8. D, p. 181 #423.

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  9. For an analysis of these auditory arts, see J. McGraw, “Nietzsche: The Silence of a Solitary,” Lonergan Review 2 (1993), pp. 1–28.

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  10. F. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Viking Press, 1965), pp. 136–137 #10; see p. 408 #1, hereafter Z.

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  11. In C. Manes, “Nature and Silence,” Environmental Ethics 14 (1992), p. 340.

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  12. Ibid.

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  13. In Manes, op. cit., p. 340.

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  14. F. Nietzsche, “On the Future of our Educational Institutions,” trans. J. Kenndy, Vol. III, The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. O. Levy (New York: Russell and Russell, 1964), fourth lecture, pp. 95–96, henceforth FEI.

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  15. FEI, p. 96.

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  16. F. Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer as Educator,” Untimely Meditations, trans. R. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 136–137, hereafter UM-S; see F. Nietzsche, Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early 1870’s, ed. and trans. D. Breazeale (London: Humanities Press International, 1992), p. 106 #44, hereafter PT.

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  17. UM-S, p. 187.

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  18. UM-S, p. 181.

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  19. F. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1989), p. 13 #6, hereafter BGE.

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  20. UM-S, p. 144 #3 ff.

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  21. GS, pp. 288–289 #347. All italicization in quotes refers to Nietzsche’s own emphases.

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  22. UM-S, p. 194.

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  29. F. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, in The Portable Nietzsche, p. 554, #49, hereafter TI.

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  30. WP, p. 208 #387.

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  31. GS, p. 203 #179.

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  32. WP, p. 243 #440.

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  33. GS, p. 228 #283.

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  34. TI, p. 487 #1.

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  35. WP, p. 329 #611.

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  36. F. Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals,trans. W. Kaufmann and R. Hollingdale, in On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, ed. W. Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1989), p. 113 #9, hereafter GM.

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  37. F. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, in The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner, trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1967), p. 109 #17, hereafter BT.

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  38. See Z, pp. 146–147; see WP, pp. 347–348 #659.

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  39. GS, p. 305 #357.

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  40. TI, pp. 558–559 #2.

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  41. Nietzsche: A Self-Portrait from His Letters, ed. and trans. P. Fuss and H. Shapiro (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 94 #114, hereafter SP.

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  42. GS, p. 304, #357.

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  44. BGE, p. 11 #3.

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  47. See WP, p. 9 #3; p. 10 #5.

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  48. GS, p. 283 #344.

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  53. WP p. 13 #12 B.

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  56. The second primary source of world-defamation is religion and particularly Christianity, the latter being defined as “the denial of the will to life become religion!” (F. Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. W. Kaufmann, in On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, ed. W. Kaufmann [New York: Random House, 1989], p. 320 #2, hereafter EH). Christianity’s God, as the supreme concept of being, was “invented as a counter-concept of life.” God is the notional thesis, the “gruesome unity” of “everything harmful, poisonous, slanderous, the whole hostility… against life” (ibid., p. 334 #8). God is simply “the declaration of war against life, against nature, against the will to live! God — the formula for every slander against `this world’” and “for every lie about the `beyond’!” (F. Nietzsche, The AntiChrist, in The Portable Nietzsche, pp. 585–586 #18, hereafter AC). In other words, “Life has come to an end where the `kingdom of God’ begins” (TI, p. 490 #4). As well, God symbolizes the nemesis of the “natural”; thus, whatever is natural has become synonymous with the “reprehensible!” (AC, p. 582 #15). Furthermore, Christianity identifies sin and evil with the worldly and natural but innocence and goodness with the otherworldly and supernatural (WP, p. 193 #351). Correspondingly, it schemes to “infect the innocence of becoming by means of ‘punishment’ and `guilt”’ and, therefore, it can be classified as “the metaphysics of the hangman” (TI, p. 500 #7). Likewise, the Christian God is the deification of “the spirit of gravity,” the enemy of the joy and naturalness of Dionysian becoming; it is the implacable foe of “the innocence of becoming” and the playfulness of nature (WP, p. 299 #552). In addition, Nietzsche supposes that sin was invented “to make every elevation and nobility of man impossible” (AC, pp. 630–631 #49). However, now that “God is dead,” the only sins are transgressions and treasons “against the earth” (Z, p. 125). Nietzsche also indicts Christianity for its disparagement of the body, its instincts and inclinations (GS, p. 236 #294). Correlatively, he chastises Christianity for teaching that only humans have souls or, at least, “divine” and “immortal” souls (“soul monads”), positions which he considers inimical to life as well as lunatic pretence and unabated hubris (WP, p. 401 #765). Thus, Christianity raises man above the earth, thereby judging it unbefitting his dignity with the result that he pays it “only a passing visit,” like the proverbial Augustinian pilgrim whose heart is restless until it rests in God (D, p. 182 #425). Nietzsche, therefore, faults Christianity for declaring that its home is not the terrestrial; the latter is, as it was for Plato, simply a vehicle to the otherworldly celestial. He likewise avers that Christianity, while it fervently defends rationalism within the philosophical order, crazily canonizes anti-rationality by means of its “intoxicated” faith within the religious and theological realms (D, p. 52 #89). In the end, Nietzsche confesses that his wars with the “anemic Christian ideal” are designed not to eliminate it but to stop its “tyranny” and to make way for “new ideals, for more robust ideals,” that is, for earthly, natural ideals (WP, p. 197 #361).

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  57. Nietzsche’s third major source of earth-denigration and its accompanying postulation and exaltation of otherworldliness are non-naturalistic types of morality. In essence, every “naturalism in morality — that is, every healthy morality — is dominated by an instinct of life.” Whereas, he charges, every anti-natural morality vilifies the instinct of life (TI, pp. 489–490 #4). Nietzsche singles out Christian morality as being especially anti-natural since it opposes, first, “the enjoyment of life [and] gratitude towards life”; secondly, “the beautifying, ennobling of life”; thirdly, “the knowledge of life”; and, fourthly, “the development of life, insofar as it sought to set the highest phenomena of life at variance with itself’ (WP, p. 152 #266). Alas, Nietzsche declares that the battle of Christian morality ”with the basic instincts of life is itself the greatest piece of immorality that has yet existed on earth“ (WP, p. 156 #274). In its transvaluation of the legitimate values of nature and natural morality, Christianity’s supernaturalism miraculously elevates the ”misfits,“ the ”misbegotten“ and other ”low-lifes“ to the levels of health and holiness while it gleefully censures the natural aristocrat against whom rage, revenge and ”ressentiment“ are delivered by the aforesaid collection of ”zeroes“ (see GM, pp. 120–129 #13–16). It is doctrines such as these that Nietzsche deems so disastrous to earthism and which induce him to lambaste Christian morality as the corrupter of humanity and ”the most malignant form of the will to lie.“ But what he finds even more ”utterly gruesome“ about Christianity is that, as the archetype of ”anti-nature,“ it has garnered for itself ”the highest honors as morality“ so much so that it ”was fixed over humanity as law and categorical imperative“ (EH, p. 332 #7).

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  63. GS, p. 333 #372; regarding the instincts and philosophizing, see BGE, p. 11 #3.

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  64. WP, pp. 267–269 #483–485; see p. 338 #635.

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  68. In anticipating Freud, Nietzsche depicts consciousness as a “surface,” one both quantitatively and qualitatively inferior to the unconscious (EH, p. 254 #9). In fact, Nietzsche proclaims that one must “seek perfect life where it has become least conscious (that is, least aware of its logic, reasons, its means and intention, its utility)…. The demand for a virtue that reasons is not reasonable” (WP, p. 242 #439).

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  69. “What does your conscience say? — `You shall become the person you are”’(GS, p. 219 #270).

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  70. GS, pp. 335–336 #373.

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  71. F. Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, Part I, trans. M. Faber (Lincoln: The University of Nebraska Press, 1984), p. 27 #19, hereafter HH I.

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  74. See Z, pp. 225–228.

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  75. “The Wanderer and his Shadow,” Division II, HH II, pp. 356–357 #327, hereafter HH II WS.

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  76. F. Nietzsche, “Homer’s Contest,” an 1872 fragment in The Portable Nietzsche,p. 32.

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  77. GS, pp. 286–287 #346.

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  78. WP, pp. 359–360 #678. However, it must be underlined that for Nietzsche, the individual “is a hundred times more than merely a unit in the chain of its members; it is this chain itself, entirely; and the species is a mere abstraction from the multiplicity of these chains and their partial similarity” (WP, p. 361 #682).

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  81. WP, p. 548 #1066. It must be understood that Nietzsche regards “the total character of the world” as a complete “chaos” rather than a cosmos since it lacks “order, arrangement, form, beauty, wisdom” and all other names we assign it by “our aesthetic anthropomorphisms” (GS, p. 168 #109).

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  97. Ecologists Karen Warren and Jim Cheney present a position akin to Nietzsche’s when they state that each being struggles to “organize itself into discrete and relatively disconnected or autonomous holons and hierarchical levels of organization” (“Ecosystem, Ecology and Metaphysical Ecology: A Case Study,” Environmental Ethics 15 [1993], p. 112).

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  98. GS, p. 167 #109.

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  99. Caldicott, op. cit., p. 313. As Alistair Moles reports, Nietzsche held both “a primitive quantum theory of force” as well as a kind of relativity of space and time as early as the 1880s (Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Nature and Cosmology [New York: Peter Lang, 1990], p.14).

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  104. UM-S, pp. 160–161. Nietzsche reasons that not only are the philosopher, artist and saint indispensable for the community of nature as a whole but their production and cultivation ought to be the chief individual and communal human objective (ibid.).

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  105. WP, p. 329 #614. This position, however, does not contravene Nietzsche’s division of morality into master and slave; rather, it assumes this classification.

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  106. WP, p. 73 #120; see GS, p. 169 #109.

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  107. TI, p. 552 #48. One’s true nature lies “immeasurably high” above oneself (UM-S, p. 129).

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  168. Z, pp. 388–389. Nietzsche writes: “We must be as near to flowers, grasses and butterflies as a child…. He who would have a share in all good things must understand at times how to be small” (HH II WS, p. 224 #51).

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  1. Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

    John G. McGraw

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  1. The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning, Belmont, Massachusetts, USA

    Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

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McGraw, J.G. (1999). Friedrich Nietzsche: Earth-Enthusiast Extraordinaire. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) Life Scientific Philosophy, Phenomenology of Life and the Sciences of Life. Analecta Husserliana, vol 59. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2079-3_18

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