Trevor your post is a good springboard for discussion. However, it is a bit dense for me to engage with without having the Salome book on Nietzsche to work from. We need to get the Salome text up online (into our virtual library) so that it is accessible to our readers. They will need access to the text if they are to follow or contribute to the discussion. And contributions from others is what we would like to see happen here.

In the meantime let me unpack or try to open up your post. I will do so by putting some issues you raise to one side, and then putting an interpretation of Nietzsche's concerns on the table for you to consider. This strategy is designed to take us into the Salome text.

What I would like to put to one side is the historical metaphysics stuff. It is more background material on the philosophical tradition. I will make two comments in passing.

If Kant stands for a critical metaphysics as you rightly suggest, then that metaphysics was a part of modern natural physical sciences ie., mathematical physics. Hegel's take on this is that it is philosophy's task to critically evaluate the metaphysics of science to see if it does the job. Hegel evaluates this through a criticism of an empiricist account of science, and he finds the mechanism and atomism of the metaphysics of science to be deeply flawed. He argues for a more organic metaphysics of nature. I am sympathetic to that approach in relation to the mechanistic scientific metaphysics currently defended by the materialist analytic philosophers.

The second comment in passing is my interpretation of Nietzsche in relation to the philosophical tradition. Nietzsche shifts philosophy's concerns away from natural science to art and everyday life. He does that by linking philosophy to art, but without reducing philosophy to aesthetics. He looks at the world through the eyes of an art and not as a scientist. That is a big shift in terms of the philosophical tradition.

I then read Nietzsche as an ethical philosopher who is concerned with how we should live our lives. Philosophy should help to affirm life not negate it. Hence we have a conception of philosophy as a way of life.. This is quite different from a philosophy that is content to tweak the axioms. Philosophy as way of life is what I understand Bataille to be working within in his book on Nietzsche.

I would like to put that history of metaphysics aside to concentrate on the importance of Nietszche for us now. Hence, contra Salome, Nietzsche does not need to turn to science to justify his philosophy. I would prefer to read Salome's text from the perspective of an ethical philosophy that is concerned to diagnose our sickness caused by the devaluation of life (eg., the ascetic ideal); and which evaluates the remedies in terms of affirming life. This is value philosophy that promotes what is life preserving and life affirming.

What I got from Greg's very useful talk on Celine at the philosophy jammm last night is that Celine returned literature to expressing the dark side of our everyday existence. And he invented a new literary form in the process. In doing so, Celine turned the novel into an old literary form; a form that has become increasingly irrelevant to expressing what is generally repressed or denied in our lives.

On my interpretation Nietzsche did the same for philosophy. Nietzsche created a cultural form in which philosophy was able to express the horrors of our life. He also had the literary skills to write in a new way and be understood by people without philosophical training in the canonic texts of the tradition.

What then does Nietzsche see?

Nihilism, everywhere.

The quickest way to get to the heart of this concern is through section 125 in BK 3 of the The Gay Science. Here is the well-known section. From Heidegger's perspective this section discloses or opens up a clearing or a new way of understanding the world.

The Madman.

'Have you ever heard of the madman who on a bright morning lighted a lantern and ran to the market-place calling out unceasingly: "I seek God! I seek God!" As there were many people standing about who did not believe in God, he caused a great deal of amusement. Why? is he lost? said one. Has he strayed away like a child? said another. Or does he keep himself hidden? Is he afraid of us? Has he taken a sea voyage? Has he emigrated? - the people cried out laughingly, all in a hubbub.
The insane man jumped into their midst and transfixed them with his glances. "Where is God gone?" he called out. "I mean to tell you! We have killed him, you and I! We are all his murderers!'

I take this to mean that Christianity (what Hegel called the metaphysics of the people) and Nietzsche the ascetic ideal) has collapsed. It is falling into ruins. We no longer believe Christianity to be true. Christianity no longer comforts us. The structure of meaning that we once used to make sense of our existence collapsed. Christianity saved us from a suicidal nihilism, as it provided us with a way to affirm our lives and to understand that our lives were worth living.

With its collapse our future is one of standing naked in the cosmos facing the chaos of existence.

Nietzsche expresses this poetically by asking a lot of rhetorical questions:

"But how have we done it? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? Whither does it now move? Whither do we move? Away from all suns? Do we not dash on unceasingly? Backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an above and below? Do we not stray, as through infinite nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? Has it not become colder? Does not night come on continually, darker and darker? Shall we not have to light lanterns in the morning? Do we not hear the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we not smell the divine putrefaction? - for even Gods putrefy! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! "

We shiver at confronting the chaos of existence without any comforts, clothes or props. It is living in nothingness. It is too raw for us. Christianity did the comfort job for almost two centuries, but now it no longer does so. So where do we go? What do we do now? Most of us cannot live in nothingness and without meaning.

Nietzsche addresses this consoling ourselves in terms of us experiencing world the decay of Christianity in terms of it being a world historical event:

"How shall we console ourselves, the most murderous of all murderers? The holiest and the mightiest that the world has hitherto possessed, has bled to death under our knife - who will wipe the blood from us? With what water could we cleanse ourselves? What lustrums, what sacred games shall we have to devise? Is not the magnitude of this deed too great for us? Shall we not ourselves have to become Gods, merely to seem worthy of it? There never was a greater event - and on account of it, all who are born after us belong to a higher history than any history hitherto!"

Nietzsche says that the madman then realized that he had come to early. His time was not yet. The event of nihilism (the decay of our highest values) was still on its way. It had not yet reached us that the churches were now the tombs and monuments of God. We realize that now. The madman spoke the truth. We late moderns live nihilism.

That is the section. It is the philosophical core of Nietzsche. Philosophy addresses the issue of how we are going to live in a nihilistic world. The negative criticism mentioned by Salome is directed at dismantling the old props and idols associated with Christianity. And the free spirits respond to the destructive impact of nihilism in a pro-active creative way. Only free spirits have the character and virtues to creatively respond to a world historical event. They do so through a revaluation of all values.

I reckon that's a good entry point as any into reading the Salome text.

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Posted by: Linda Lee | October 25, 2005 10:40 AM