Nietzsche's Other Madness.pdf

Alexander E. Hooke

Villa Julie College

The Most Silent of Men:

Nietzsche’s Other Madness

ABSTRACT

Silence and madness can be likened to irritating cousins. Both

introduce questionable or negative elements to the ideals of dia-

logue and rational communication. Silence can disturb and dis-

rupt the rational pursuit of truth, while madness can noisily provoke

a mocker y of any meaningful or reciprocal exchange of ideas and

thoughts. In the work and life of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche,

silence and madness highlight more positive features.To study and

ar ticulate these features, this paper relies on the central themes

of two prominent thinkers, the archaeological and genealogical

studies from the late Michel Foucault and the revived forces of

phenomenology from American philosopher Alphonso Lingis, to

present the case that Nietzsche embraced a late 19th century

disorder called the fugue. This disorder, what Ian Hacking calls a

transient mental illness, involves nomadic life. Nietzsche exempli-

fied such a life. His writings and experiences comprise a mixture

of travels, ar ts of the self, willful forgetfulness, and a philosophi-

cal play with madness. From conventional perspectives, this play

is viewed as irrelevant or detrimental to Nietzsche’s philosophi-

cal importance. From Nietzsche’s own perspective, however, this

play might be appreciated as a gift from the insights of madness

and the enriching contacts with silence.

Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 34:1

Now you have heard everything, and why I must return to my solitude. I

have kept nothing back from you, my friends.

And you have heard, too, who is the most silent of men - and intends to

remain so! Ah, my friends! I should have something more to tell you, I

should have something more to give you! Why do I not give it? Am I then

mean?

Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra , “The Stillest Hour”

Nietzsche does not sing this song, he tells others to sing it. He says it

laughing beside his madness, laughing at it and a God paralyzed—a silent

laughter turned towards the rejoicing heavens.

Jean-Luc Nancy, “Dei Paralysis Progressive”

Pathology or Existential Possibility?

Silence and madness are cousins. Despite dissimilar backgrounds, they are

related in their capacity to indicate something is amiss. They share a knack

for mocking, eluding or threatening the positive efforts to establish or pur-

sue genuine communication and rational accord, benchmarks for modern

moral or political ideals such as democracy, autonomy, responsibility, and

human integrity.

Keeping silent is often understood to imply neglect, ignorance, or withdrawal.

To solicit a response from another only to have none forthcoming is taken as

a rebuke or lack of interest. Dialogue, the heart of the philosophical encounter

since Socrates and Plato, is disturbed and disrupted by silence. It is as if par-

ticipants in debate or dialogue no longer have anything to say, and, from the

perspective of an interlocutor, the goal towards mutual understanding has

once again failed. Participants retreat, fearfully, into more solitary states or,

feeling restless, look for other participants to drum up at least some idle

conversation.

Madness is threatening in a different way. The mad can make all sorts of

noise and even utter the most astonishing remarks. But they ultimately make

no sense. They lack recognizable or common meaning and the consistency

demanded of ordinary logic; or worse, they strike listeners and observers as

100 • Alexander E. Hooke

fantastic and absurd, having no bearing to a shared reality or set of common

values. If silence poses a breakdown in genuine communication, madness

indicates an absence of or disrespect for any serious aspect of it. 1

Negative values are conferred, in any case. For silence and madness lack any

heuristic power and communicative force that might contribute to a positive

moral and social enterprise. They are phenomena needing diagnosis, expla-

nation, or treatment. In sum, from conventional approaches madness and

silence are cousins insofar as they function as lacuna in human efforts to

establish relations through mutual and rational understanding. The deleteri-

ous effects of these failed efforts can be far reaching. Political downfalls and

upheavals often emerge from those infected with madness or driven to sac-

rifice their bodies without a spoken word. Ethical quandaries and moral dis-

putes seem irresolvable when participants take flight of their senses or cease

contributing to the on-going discussion. And there is a lingering suspicion

that those who are mad or silent suffer from a pathology that calls for a diag-

nosis and treatment.

Yet not every silence is a threat to human discourse or a sign of mental dis-

order. Nor is each form of madness a danger to human sociability. Socrates

quipped that some of his greatest insights came from a divine madness.

Visionaries such as Hildegaard von Bingen or Meister Eckart celebrate the

truths that can arise from silent moments. There have been cultures in which

the mad spoke to and engaged with the rational and sensible citizens.

These are more than antiquated notes. They remind us that humans have

often invited or sought forms of madness and silence to encounter new truths

or values. Out of curiosity or courage, people have periodically dared to test

the boundaries of reason, convention, and discourse. Examples from Ancient

Greece or Medieval mysticism show that these encounters need not be under-

stood retroactively in negative terms of pathology. Positive opportunities for

human thought and experience can be explored. Such opportunities need not

be construed as the work of fate or making the most of ill fortune, for they

can also be seen as something chosen or as an active response to external

conditions. Moments of madness and acts of silence might instead present a

case of existential possibility.

The Most Silent of Men: Nietzsche’s Other Madness • 101

Nietzsche’s Case

This possibility seems particularly apt in the work and life of philosopher

Friedrich Nietzsche. Born in 1844, his intellectual development and personal

life were atypical. Unlike most renowned philosophers, his brief tenure as a

university professor and, more noticeably, subsequent life were reflective of

a migratory life. Due to bad health, he retired early from his position at Basel

in 1878. His most influential works were then written and published while

he was constantly on the move and without any conventional and stable

forms of shared communication. Vastly more nomadic than the Peripatetics

of ancient times or visiting professors of today, Nietzsche directed no acad-

emy and held no institutional post during this time. His books were neither

widely read nor discussed. Frequently remembered as a solitary and quiet

individual, his productivity ranged from Human, All Too Human to Ecce Homo ,

a span of twelve years that ended in 1889 when he had a final and complete

breakdown in Turin. It was in a marketplace in this Italian town where he

embraced a horse that was being severely whipped by its master; he then

collapsed and returned to Germany, cared for by his sister and mother. He

was bed-ridden and under supervision until he died in 1900.

Why Nietzsche? He was mostly a silent figure among academic or intellec-

tual circles. Without any formal or public opportunity to present his ideas

and writings before specific and established audiences, the sense of com-

munication exalted in many of his passages hardly embraces conventional

core values such as reciprocity and mutual accord that guide discussions at

civic meetings, committee groups, collegial or professional gatherings. He

did strive to communicate, but in terms that emphasize giving without expect-

ing or requiring something in return, such as fruition, gratitude, or even pay-

ment. Rather than a communication that enriches or extends an on-going

dialogue, Nietzsche’s was closer to dissemination and interrogation, modes

that can be dramatically effective through silence.

Equally important, but more widely known, is Nietzsche’s own madness. Its

source and nature present an especially difficult puzzle for his many com-

mentators and biographers. The possible relation between his madness and

his philosophical production raises a host of questions: Is it mostly a med-

ical phenomenon, inherited from his father or incurred by a syphilitic encounter,

102 • Alexander E. Hooke

which has no bearing on his writings? Was Nietzsche a degenerate or hys-

tero-epileptic who, according to the speculations of composer Richard Wagner

and physician Otto Eiser, may have damaged his mind through onanism?

Can his numerous headaches partly account for his aphoristic style and inabil-

ity to sustain lengthy arguments? Or can one discern specific passages and

books that demonstrate the work of a reasonable thinker while identifying

which of his writings are more readily dismissed as the ramblings of mad-

ness? Were his flirtations with madness part of the nineteenth century’s fash-

ionable attraction to individual geniuses?

For many commentators, answers to these questions have enduring signifi-

cance. Not only might they tell us something about Nietzsche, but also they

can open up new forms of experience in which madness—and silence—entice

individuals of any generation who attempt to test the boundaries of con-

vention without violence or cruelty. To present this another way, engaging

the possibility of madness could signal not so much a disorder or dysfunc-

tional ego but a practice or art of the self.

Commentators generally downplay any positive elements to Nietzsche’s mad-

ness. Recently Kyle Arnold and George Atwood speculate that his insanity

can be attributed to “a series of radical shifts between dominance of the father

and submergence of the child and dominance of the child and submergence

of the father” (2000, p. 694). Alert to the dangers of psychologizing Nietzsche’s

work, they nevertheless point out that this approach to studying Nietzsche’s

madness helps shed light on his many and influential passages on power,

struggle, and the Dionysian triumph. Sonia Sikka views these issues more as

brief moments of intoxication in which Nietzsche, through the voice of

Zarathustra, plays and experiments with different forms of personal identity,

thus rendering “problematic the very idea of a true self” (2000, p. 40). For

Gregory Moore, however, intoxication is a prelude to or symptom of Nietzsche’s

degeneracy. This view can be drawn from Nietzsche’s own writings, “If we

adopt a Nietzschean standpoint,” claims Moore, “that is—one that seeks to

reveal the pathophysiology underlying cultural forms,” then the grand rhetoric

exemplified in Ecce Homo , for example, amounts to narcissism, vanity, and

mendacity. Nietzsche’s voices, here, are not experiments and plays on per-

sonal identity, but “merely the symptom of hysterical capriciousness” (2001,

pp. 265-266). And some observers, such as Joachim Kohler, construe his

The Most Silent of Men: Nietzsche’s Other Madness • 103

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