German Philosophy and the Rebirth of Antiquity
A Prelude to Nietzsche
The (Re)Birth of Tragedy
In my first post, I argued that beneath BAP’s activity and output lay a consistent philosophy; a doctrine of phusis. I endeavored to show that there was a genuine connection between this philosophy and the ancient Greeks whom BAP explicitly connects himself to. Throughout the essay I quoted from Nietzsche to emphasize the connections between BAP, Nietzsche, and this ancient spirit. In this next series I would like to stray away from the subject of BAP specifically and elaborate more on this idea of phusis and how it relates to Nietzsche.
It is no secret that Nietzsche is tremendously influential on much of the modern right. What I would like to do now is tell the story which led to Nietzsche, the philosophical preconditions which allowed such a great conduit of the tragic spirit of the Greeks to arise. Why, in Germany of all places, did that throwback emerge? In Jonathan Bowden’s speech on Martin Heidegger, he repeats an anecdote in which the elderly Heidegger was asked why he committed the unforgiveable sin which leftist academia has struggled with ever since, his fervent support for the Nazis. The old philosopher, sequestered away in his cabin deep in the Black Forest Mountains, replied that the Nazis alone had a tragic conception of life. Why did the tragic spirit of the ancient Greeks find such fertile soil besides the Rhine? It is my goal to at least partially answer this question.
This story will take the form of a series of posts, philosophical profiles, each one focused on a different figure in the history of German philosophy. Beginning with Benedict Spinoza and ending with Arthur Schopenhauer, it will trace the development of a particular current in European thought which I believe represents the reintroduction of “pagan” thought to Western philosophy after the reign of Scholasticism. I would like the series to fulfill several roles. First, each individual post will act as an accessible introduction to the philosopher who is its subject; if you are interested in Spinoza, Jacobi, Kant, Schelling, or Schopenhauer, but don’t want to spend a large portion of time reading their autistic writings, then the posts will allow you to dip your toe in without doing the heavy lifting yourself. Second, it will tell a story; there is a continual set of subjects and ideas which reappear and repeat in each of these philosophers. This is the context in which the problems of nihilism, fatalism, atheism, and etc., which are so characteristic of modern philosophy and discourse, first made their explicit appearance. Third, I would like this series to act as an introduction to reading Schopenhauer, and a prelude to reading Nietzsche.
Schopenhauer is a terminus of this tradition, and much of his thought is either borrowed from prior figures in our story or in explicit reaction against them. You will understand Schopenhauer best if you understand what happened to German philosophy with the introduction of Spinoza. Strauss once rightly called Schopenhauer the first right wing atheist; this will therefore be an account of how a strain of right wing thought distinct from the traditional model of throne and altar arose in Germany. And since Nietzsche emerged as a Schopenhauerian and matured as a passionate anti-Schopenhauerian, he will be best understood as an outcome of this story.
Overview of the series
“Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be or be conceived without God.” - Spinoza, Proposition 15 of the Ethics
“The orthodox concepts of the Divinity are no longer for me; I cannot stomach them. Hen kai pan (All is One)! I know of nothing else.” Lessing to Jacobi, Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza
“It is certainly nothing other than the ancient a nihilo nihil fit that Spinoza made an issue of, (…) in place of an emanating En-Soph he only posited an immanent one, an indwelling cause of the universe eternally unalterable within itself, One and the same with all its consequences…” Jacobi to Lessing, Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza
“Accordingly, that which exhibits itself in a million forms of endless variety and diversity, and thus performs the most variegated and grotesque play without beginning and end, is this one essence. It is so closely concealed behind all these masks that it does not recognize itself again, and thus often treats itself harshly. Therefore the great doctrine of the Hen kai pan (One and All) appeared early in the East as well as in the West; and in spite of every contradiction it has asserted itself, or has been constantly renewed.” Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation Volume II
My ‘thesis’ is that a set of ancient metaphysical ideas widely present in Hellenic thought but diminished with the rise of Christianity, were reintroduced to Western philosophy through the introduction of Spinozism to Germany. These ancient ideas are I. Nothing comes from Nothing (“ex nihilo nihil fit”) II. All is One (“Hen Kai Pan”), and III. The Immanence of the Divine in Nature (“Deus sive Natura”). Taken together they form the foundation of the philosophy of phusis which I briefly touched on in my exegesis of BAP; a view of the world as an eternal uncreated unity, an endlessly churning nature beneath all phenomena. These ideas played different roles for different philosophers; Plato’s One, Spinoza’s Substance, and Schopenhauer’s Will all shared these essential monistic tenets, with manifestly different results.
I. Drunk on God: Spinoza and Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit
Our story will begin with the philosophy of Benedict Spinoza. Spinoza, a Portuguese-Jewish émigré to Netherlands who was expelled from the Jewish community of Amsterdam for heresy, reintroduced each of these three ideas to Western philosophy in his attempt to make the philosophy of Descartes consistent. He identified God with an infinitely extended and eternal nature, of which human beings were mere ephemeral accidents born of the infinite with no self-subsisting reality of their own. Spinoza is the philosophical analogue of Bach; we find in him that autistic obsession with order and measure so characteristic of the Baroque. His is a clockwork God, rationalism taken to its most intense conclusion, a world both endless in scale and purposelessness governed by blind causality. Spinoza’s Ethics, published after his death, catalogues his philosophy from metaphysics to the titular ethics, all while imitating Euclid’s geometric model of presentation like a true sperg. The Ethics transformed Spinoza into the boogeyman of Christian and Jewish Rationalist philosophers, who recognized how irreconcilable his system was with free will, immortal souls, and a God prior to creation. Though he would initially be publicly reviled, Spinoza eventually attained a wide influence, returning these three ancient ideas to the Western philosophical discourse and imagination.
II. Reason’s Folly: Jacobi, the Pantheismusstreit, and Nihilism
In Germany, Spinoza’s uber-rationalism eventually triumphed over the half-hearted reason worship of his pious detractors, the Aufklärung (German Enlightenment). This triumph occurs with the next chapter of our story, that of Friedrich Jacobi and the Pantheismusstreit. Jacobi is not a well known name in the English-speaking world, but his influence on later German philosophy cannot be understated. A precursor to Kierkegaard who advocated the necessity of faith, he recognized the fatalism inherent to the enlightenment worship of Reason, and argued that it’s only consistent disciple was Spinoza. He ignited the Pantheismusstreit (Panthiesm Controversy) when he revealed to the educated German public that the recently deceased darling child of the German enlightenment, Lessing, had privately confessed to him that he was a Spinozist. This battle pitted him against Moses Mendelssohn, the Jewish rationalist who had famously advocated for Jewish acceptance in Germany, and had become the greatest figure of the Aufklärung following the death of Lessing, his close friend.
The public scandal embroiled all the greatest thinkers of the era, and brought the contradictions of philosophy, religion, morality, and common sense to the fore. The modern preoccupation with issues such as fatalism, atheism, nihilism, and etc. that continued with Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and the Existentialists, and still occupies much of philosophy to this day, began in earnest here. While Jacobi had intended to use Spinoza to discredit Rationalism, instead the Pantheism controversy ended with Mendelssohn dead, allegedly from the stress of dealing with Jacobi, and the introduction of Spinoza to a new generation of Germans. From Goethe to Fichte to Schopenhauer, Spinoza’s influence could be found in some form among many of the greatest intellectuals of the Goethezeit. The German soul was caught between the fatalism of Reason on the one hand, and the irrationality of Faith on the other. It was in this moment that the most important European philosopher since Plato emerged.
III. The All-Crushing: Kant and the end of Scholasticism
Kant burst out onto the scene of German philosophy presented to the intellectual public by Karl Leonhard Reinhold as an answer to the fatalism which seemed to be the necessary conclusion of philosophy, and in particular Spinoza. By firmly dividing the sensible world from the true world and proclaiming Space and Time mere subjective forms of human cognition rather than conditions of things as they truly are, Kant’s Kritik assigned limits to Reason and whisked away God, Free will, and the Immortal Soul to the realm of practical faith, impossible to either assail or prove through theoretical philosophy alone. His transcendental philosophy preserved reason against a blind return to faith, while critiquing its ability and assigning boundaries to philosophical thought. Spinozism could now be rejected as philosophizing beyond the limits of our cognitive capacities, a castle in the sky founded on the hubris that the world really is constituted the way we must think of it. It is impossible to do justice to the impact Kant had on German philosophy; the publication of the Kritik clearly initiates a new epoch in German intellectual life. The next generation of German thinkers grew up reading Kant and Spinoza, producing a peculiar mix of critical idealism and ambitious metaphysics.
Interlude. Nature’s Poet: Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe and Germany during the Goethezeit
This post will act as a break from all the dense philosophy, and focus more on the historical context of these philosophical transformation. It will do so through the lens of the most important individual of the period: Goethe. Goethe is rightly considered the father of modern German culture and one of the greatest authors and individuals in Western history. He will be mentioned throughout our story because he is in a way the man pulling the strings. An early fan of Spinoza and friend of Jacobi, it will be his poem Prometheus, a controversial romantic piece raging against the Gods, which will provide the opportunity for Lessing to confess his Spinozism to Jacobi. He would later on become greatly influential on the philosophical landscape of Germany through his role in the academy of Jena. Both Fichte and Schelling will receive their professorships through his intervention. He is connected to practically every figure excepting Spinoza in our story. He was a friend of Schopenhauer’s mother and an early collaborator with the young man, who saw in him a sort of Father figure and idol whom he wished to impress and command. He will correspond with Kant, dine with Hegel, and leave his own commentaries on all the philosophies we will encounter from the perspective of his own personal pantheistic worldview intimately focused on activity and nature. It is not without good cause that this period in Germany would come to be known as the Goethezeit; the Age of Goethe.
IV. Grasping the Infinite: The German Idealists and Platonism
The fourth in this series of posts will concern the German Idealists. Rather than do a separate post for each of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, I think it is best to tell their story together. They took the philosophy of Kant and the inspiration of Spinoza, and attempted to return to exactly the type of ambitious metaphysics which Kant had hoped to banish from philosophy. In their union of Spinozism with Kantian Idealism, they created a unique fusion of elements which I will argue has a distinct resemblance to ancient Platonism. It was in this climate that the term “nihilism” was first used in German philosophy, by Jacobi who recognized in the Idealists a tendency to dissolve all finitude and determinacy in the churning acid of the infinite Absolute. This tradition culminates in Hegel, who following in Spinoza’s footsteps identified Being with Thought, and placed at the top of his philosophy the concept as the ground of all reality. He bequeathed his love of obtuse language and dense theory to modern leftism. While lecturing at Berlin Hegel had finally become intensely popular, after having been previously in the shadow of his roommate Schelling. It was at this time that a young barely known philosopher, out of his hatred of Hegel and personal pride, chose to lecture at the same times of day in Berlin. Alas, no students chose to attend his lectures over Hegel’s. Yet the young man would still lecture to the empty rooms in his wrathful determination. It would take decades, not until the publication of his collection of essays, before Schopenhauer would be noticed by the German public, and could finally triumphantly declare; legor et legar (I am read, and will be read).
V. The Heights of Tragedy: Schopenhauer as Synthesizer
Schopenhauer lived through all these transformations and is best understood through them. While the German Idealists whom he reviled met wide acclaim and state support, Schopenhauer passed most of his life ignored in favor of charlatans. It was artists, not philosophers, who lifted him up into immortal fame, recognizing in his vision of a tragic world redeemed through renunciation and aesthetic experience a source of immense artistic inspiration. On the advice of his Professor Gottlob Schulze, an early critic of Kant, he very early on focused on studying Kant and Plato, who became his greatest influences. His philosophy combines the insights of these two western giants with those of Spinoza, producing a vision of the world as a unity, Will, appearing to itself as a variegated, endless, blind universe of suffering. Schopenhauer perceived the will-to-live behind all phenomena, driving their endless manifestations according to pseudo-platonic forms, and renounced it. It is at this point that our story will end after Schopenhauer’s death, with a young German philologist purchasing a copy of The World as Will and Representation from an antiquarian shop. He will become one of Schopenhauer’s most ardent disciples, before considering a different response to the will-to-live, or as he will label it, the will-to-power; if every philosophy thus far has been one of renunciation, what would a philosophy of the affirmation of the will-to-power look like?