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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'
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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

Klossowski's Nietzsche « Previous | |Next »
October 17, 2004

In this post I want to try and finish chapter two of Klossowski's Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle, entitled, 'The Origin of the Semiotic of Impulses'. I find the chapter hard going for little gain in understanding Nietzsche. I do not see what all the fuss is over. Maybe Trevor's friends can illuminate us. In the meantime this article by Trevor may help us.

As we have seen, in chapter 2, Klossowski is interpreting Bk 3 of Nietzsche's The Will to Power text, called 'Principles of a New Evaluation.' The emphasis is on Part 2, entitled 'The Will to Power in Nature.'

I argued that we need to think in terms of 'Klossowski's Nietzsche', due to Klossowki's idiosyncratic interpretation of Nietzsche's text (eg., his stuff about the soul, which Nietzsche rejects (para 491) in favour of the body; the excision of Nietzsche's emphasis on the process of valuation of preservation and growth (para 507), value judgements permeating sense perception (para 505) and our bodily responses in the world. Klossowski has no conception that Nietzsche ' idea of will to power involves a rejection of the mechanistic interpretation of being in favour of an organic one.

This reverses the standard overestimation of consciousness in modern philosophy arising from Descartes in favour of the body.

What then is the core of Klossowski's Nietzsche? What is offered is an organic metaphysics of a human being as an organic being.The emphasis of this metaphysics is on a chaotic series of bodily impulses (will to power) acting in league with each other, and sometimes opposed to each other in a perpetual combat (Freud's Eros and Thantos?) Subjectivity is a primarily a multiplicity of unconscious bodily impulses or desires.

The becoming of bodily impulses (desire?) is counterposed to the fixity of the signs of language, which provide the basis for culture and morality. Klossowski says:


"Every living being interprets according to a code of signs, responding to variations in excited or excitable states. Whence come images: representations of what has taken place or what could have taken place --thus a phantasm.

Commentators see this as breaking new ground. How come?

It is seen as a key term in Klossowski's interpretation. It refers to an obsessional image produced by the bodily impulses seeking an expression of their intensities. I presume that a key phantasm in Klossowski's Nietzsche is the image of eternal return or recurrence.

My reaction to this is, so what? Is this not a commonplace in psychoanalysis? It does clear up some ambiguity in Nietzsche ( para 506) about how images arise. I can grant that it is significant in terms of works of art, since it makes the art work a site for the artist's particular obsession or phantasm that then needs to be actualized by a repoduction through writing, drawing, or painting (a simulacrum).

But it doesn't add much to our understanding of Nietzsche. Or does it?

Klossowski's Nietzsche is one in which there is a perpetual conflict between unconscious impluses and consciousness or the everyday code of signs; a conflict premised on the code of signs attributing or designating an erroneous continuity, unity, cohesion etc to the individual as an organic being. Hence we talk about bodily feelings as the passions of the subject.

The perpetual conflict is within the individual arises from the impulses or forces of desire being subordinated to the the fallacious 'unity' of the 'subject ' and these impluses or forces constantly modifying it and making it fragile. Consciousness seek to repulse any movement in the flow of the fluctuating bodily impulses that seek to undermine its unity.

Again, what is the big deal here? Is this not pretty much a standard psychoanalytic view of the conflict between the unconscious drives and the ego. Maybe. However, it transgresses the individualism of psychoanalysis as we stand on the threshold of an ontology of conflicting forces and impulses. Klossowsk's Nietzsche says the unity of the agent (as a substance) is the conflict or the combat of the warring impulses or desires.

Nietzsche's metaphysics is one of becoming as a struggle of forces. However, Nietzsche's conception of organic being is structured around the valuations of preservation, growth and enhancement of the feeling of power of the individual (to a stronger type).

For Nietzsche there is a struggle between different kinds of life: between a sickly despairing life that cleaves to a beyond and a more healthy, richer less degenerate life. Hence the importance of ranking different kinds of life. (para 592).

Klossowski's Nietzsche is concerned with recover, and reconstruct a living being in conformity with the chaotic bodily impulses, thereby restoring a more implusive spontaneity to it. Hence freedom and the liberatory sentiment. This implies a shift from the categories of the conscious semiotic to a semiotic of impulses.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:05 AM | | Comments (0)
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