I have always thought of Friedrich Nietzsche as a problematic thinker. By 'problematic' I do not simply mean that he wrote things that are worrisome (which is certainly true). Rather, I mean that he is someone whose thought is far more complex and nuanced than he is typically given credit for. For instance, I have more than once taught courses where, when we got to Nietzsche, the atheistic students in the class would feel initially emboldened. After all, Nietzsche is the author of the famous 'Parable of the Madman,' containing the proclamation that 'God is dead.' Overlooking the complex Lutheran milieu in which Nietzsche wrote those words, such students often think of Nietzsche as the precursor to the twenty-first century, scientistically minded folks such as Dawkins and Harris. They are typically appalled when they reach the final essay in Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality, where Nietzsche writes, 'These two, science and ascetic ideal, they do, after all, stand on one and the same ground ... on the same overestimation of truth [Vern's note: and before any readers accuse him (or me) of denying truth (for shame!!!!), let me finish this quote] ... on the same belief in the inassessibility, the uncriticizability of truth...' For Nietzsche, the sciences have become the post-Enlightenment religion du jour, and he is every bit as worried (at times appearing even more so) about the value of the sciences, as he is about the erstwhile and lingering centrality of religion in human lives. Students are shocked to learn that the author of The Antichrist, who characterized Christian morality as 'slave morality,' also wrote the following, citing the Christian Gospels: 'The Kingdom of God does not "come" chronologically-historically, on a certain day in the calendar, something that might be here one day but not the day before: it is an "inward change in the individual," something that comes at every moment and at every moment has not yet arrived---' This is what I mean by characterizing Nietzsche as a 'problematic' thinker.
I was recently reminded of this nuance to Nietzsche's thought when I reread his passage on marriage in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Of course, Nietzsche is notorious for having written some of the most appalling remarks on the institutions of family and marriage. But then one comes across a passage such as this: 'Marriage: thus I name the will of two to create the one that is more than those who created it. Reverence for each other, as for those willing with such a will, is what I name marriage. Let this be the meaning and truth of your marriage.' One is unlikely to find this passage in any list of inspirational quotes about marriage or love, and yet it is one of the strongest and most beautiful representations of marriage I have ever read.
Dissecting it a little bit, Nietzsche roots this sort of love and marriage in an act of the will, an ongoing, unwavering commitment of the spirit. This reminds me of his remarks on the concept of the promise in the Genealogy: 'not simply indigestion from a once-pledged word over which one cannot regain control, but rather an active no-longer-wanting-to-get-rid-of, a willing on and on of something one has once willed, a true memory of the will...' Interestingly as well, marriage is a will of two. These are two individuals who actively and ongoingly choose each other. Love and marriage, according to Nietzsche, ought to derive from strength of character and of will, and from a mutual reverence for one another. (It is worth noting that in this passage Nietzsche does not assign traditionally sexed roles to the marriage partners). Love, for Nietzsche, is based upon strength, as opposed to weakness.
This brings us to the next point. The way that we often think of love, particularly in the West, is that it is a weakness, something that happens to us, some place that we fall, etc. Or we think of it in the terms of a cure for a spiritual sickness -- that human beings are born sickly and incomplete, and require the love of another, reciprocally incomplete person, so that together the two may complete each other. Rather than two strong individuals who mutually strengthen each other, two weak and deficient individuals who need each other just to get by. This is a co-dependent view of love, with all the attendant addiction connotations attached. It is this sort of love, I think, that Nietzsche finds paltry. In that same passage in Zarathustra, Nietzsche writes, 'But that which the all-too-many, the superfluous, call marriage---alas, what shall I name that? Alas, this poverty of the soul in pair! Alas, this wretched contentment in pair! Marriage they call this; and they say that their marriages are made in heaven. Well, I do not like it, this heaven of the superfluous.' A little further down, he writes that 'for the most part, two beasts find each other.' As with so many other concepts and critiques in Nietzsche's writings, it seems that it is a certain type of marriage and of love that Nietzsche rejects.
I was recently reminded of this nuance to Nietzsche's thought when I reread his passage on marriage in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Of course, Nietzsche is notorious for having written some of the most appalling remarks on the institutions of family and marriage. But then one comes across a passage such as this: 'Marriage: thus I name the will of two to create the one that is more than those who created it. Reverence for each other, as for those willing with such a will, is what I name marriage. Let this be the meaning and truth of your marriage.' One is unlikely to find this passage in any list of inspirational quotes about marriage or love, and yet it is one of the strongest and most beautiful representations of marriage I have ever read.
Dissecting it a little bit, Nietzsche roots this sort of love and marriage in an act of the will, an ongoing, unwavering commitment of the spirit. This reminds me of his remarks on the concept of the promise in the Genealogy: 'not simply indigestion from a once-pledged word over which one cannot regain control, but rather an active no-longer-wanting-to-get-rid-of, a willing on and on of something one has once willed, a true memory of the will...' Interestingly as well, marriage is a will of two. These are two individuals who actively and ongoingly choose each other. Love and marriage, according to Nietzsche, ought to derive from strength of character and of will, and from a mutual reverence for one another. (It is worth noting that in this passage Nietzsche does not assign traditionally sexed roles to the marriage partners). Love, for Nietzsche, is based upon strength, as opposed to weakness.
This brings us to the next point. The way that we often think of love, particularly in the West, is that it is a weakness, something that happens to us, some place that we fall, etc. Or we think of it in the terms of a cure for a spiritual sickness -- that human beings are born sickly and incomplete, and require the love of another, reciprocally incomplete person, so that together the two may complete each other. Rather than two strong individuals who mutually strengthen each other, two weak and deficient individuals who need each other just to get by. This is a co-dependent view of love, with all the attendant addiction connotations attached. It is this sort of love, I think, that Nietzsche finds paltry. In that same passage in Zarathustra, Nietzsche writes, 'But that which the all-too-many, the superfluous, call marriage---alas, what shall I name that? Alas, this poverty of the soul in pair! Alas, this wretched contentment in pair! Marriage they call this; and they say that their marriages are made in heaven. Well, I do not like it, this heaven of the superfluous.' A little further down, he writes that 'for the most part, two beasts find each other.' As with so many other concepts and critiques in Nietzsche's writings, it seems that it is a certain type of marriage and of love that Nietzsche rejects.
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