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“The Honeymoon of German Philosophy”: Nietzsche and German Idealism

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The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Existentialism

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Abstract

The German-born philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was both strongly influenced by and, eventually, deeply skeptical of the tradition of German Idealism. Despite his initially positive reception of Kantian idealism, Nietzsche determined in his mature writings that Kant’s idealism, like Plato’s before it, was implicated in the perpetuation of a dangerous, décadent “myth” or “fable,” on the strength of which the world of becoming has been deemed inhospitable to the task of sustaining a meaningful human existence.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Hayman 1982, pp. 58–60; Young 2010, pp. 51–53; and Blue 2016, pp. 187–194.

  2. 2.

    Brobjer 2008, pp. 48–50; and Blue 2016, p. 205.

  3. 3.

    Hayman 1982, pp. 60–62; Brobjer 2008, pp. 22, 47; and Blue 2016, p. 216.

  4. 4.

    Hayman 1982, pp. 60–62; Brobjer 2008, pp. 22, 47; and Blue 2016, p. 216.

  5. 5.

    Hayman 1982, pp. 72–73; Brobjer 2008, pp. 28–32; Young 2010, p. 81; and Blue 2016, pp. 216–219.

  6. 6.

    See also Hayman 1982, pp. 72–77; and Blue 2016, pp. 216–221.

  7. 7.

    Hayman 1982, pp. 72–73; Young 2010, pp. 82–83, and Blue 2016, pp. 218–220.

  8. 8.

    See Young 2010, pp. 82–85; Blue 2016, pp. 216–221; and Beiser 2016, pp. 30–35.

  9. 9.

    Hayman 1982, pp. 99–101, 108–109; Young 2010, pp. 76–78, 95; and Blue 2016, pp. 300–301.

  10. 10.

    Hayman 1982, pp. 86–88; Brobjer 2008, pp. 32–36; Young 2010, pp. 89–90; Blue 2016, pp. 236–241.

  11. 11.

    Hayman 1982, pp. 86–88; Young 2010, pp. 89–90; and Blue 2016, pp. 241–242.

  12. 12.

    Stack 1983, pp. 217–223; Hussain 2004, pp. 350–355; Young 2010, pp. 89–90; and Blue 2016, pp. 236–243.

  13. 13.

    See also Hayman 1982, pp. 86–88; and Blue 2016, pp. 237–240. On Lange’s failure to eliminate the thing-in-itself, see Beiser 2014, pp. 379–381.

  14. 14.

    See Brobjer 2008, pp. 37–39, 49–51; Blue 2016, pp. 222–223; and Bailey 2013, pp. 138–141. For instructive treatments of Spir’s influence on Nietzsche, see Green 2002, pp. 46–53; Hussain 2004, pp. 341–350; and Clark and Dudrick 2012, pp. 16–22.

  15. 15.

    See, for example, Stack 1983, pp. 196–197; and Bailey 2013, pp. 136–138.

  16. 16.

    Later in BT, Kant receives credit for exposing the unwarranted “elevat[ion of] the mere phenomenon, the work of maya, to the position of the sole and highest reality” (BT 18).

  17. 17.

    Kant is called (or depicted as) “old” in BGE 11, 188, 210; and GM II:6. The provocative claim that Kant “lures his readers onto dialectical bypaths” is reprised in GM III:26 and A 55.

  18. 18.

    According to Brobjer 2008, “We have no definite evidence of Nietzsche’s firsthand reading of Kant between 1869 and 1887, although his references to him in the early 1870s may suggest such reading” (p. 38).

  19. 19.

    See Hill 2003, pp. 20–21; Brobjer 2008, pp. 36–37; and Blue 2016, p. 222. Bailey (2013, p. 134) remains skeptical.

  20. 20.

    See Hill 2003, pp. 13–20; Brobjer 2008, pp. 36–39; Blue 2016; Young 2010; Bailey 2013; and Loeb 2019, pp. 110–113.

  21. 21.

    Here I follow Houlgate 1986, pp. 24–26; Brobjer 2008, 32–36; Young 2010, pp. 89–91; Blue 2016, pp. 238–243; and Bailey 2013, pp. 135–139.

  22. 22.

    On Schopenhauer’s criticism of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel (among others) as “servants of religion and the state,” see Beiser 2014, pp. 415–418.

  23. 23.

    Hegel, for example, consistently appears in various iterations of Nietzsche’s list of German (and/or European) philosophers of note. With the notable exception of Nietzsche’s tirade against the “Hegelian” school of teleological historiography (Nietzsche 1983, pp. 100–107), we find very little direct engagement with the principles of Hegel’s idealism.

  24. 24.

    For a detailed reconstruction and analysis of Nietzsche’s critique of “Hegelianism,” see Jensen 2016, pp. 127–135. On Hartmann’s understanding of his relationship to the tradition of German Idealism, see Beiser 2016, 122–129.

  25. 25.

    I am indebted here to Jensen 2016, pp. 135–143. According to Brobjer, Nietzsche read Eduard von Hartmann intensively in 1869–1870 (Brobjer 2008, p. 52).

  26. 26.

    In his review of his “good books” in Ecce Homo, he says of The Birth of Tragedy that it now “smells offensively Hegelian” to him, inasmuch as “the antithesis of the Dionysian and the Apollonian…is sublated [aufgehoben] into a unity” (Nietzsche 1989b, pp. 270–271). This particular criticism is nowhere to be found in “Attempt at a Self-Criticism,” which he added as a Preface to the 1886 edition of The Birth of Tragedy.

  27. 27.

    See Hill 2003, pp. 20–24.

  28. 28.

    Here I follow Lampert 2001, pp. 38–40.

  29. 29.

    That Kant was aware of the role of modern science in eroding the basis of human pride is explained at Nietzsche 1989b, pp. 155–156. That Kant addressed this erosion by adopting the “priestly” approach described in BGE 11, enrolling the “younger” generation in a pride-swelling search for humanity-redeeming “faculties,” is Nietzsche’s own contribution.

  30. 30.

    See Lampert 2001, pp. 39–40; and Clark and Dudrick 2012, pp. 73–80.

  31. 31.

    Here I follow Stack 1983, pp. 208–218.

  32. 32.

    For a characterization of Nietzsche as a kind of idealist, see Guyer and Horstmann 2018.

  33. 33.

    Here I follow Stack 1983, pp. 203–206; Green 2002, pp. 95–99; Hussain 2004, pp. 345–350; and Clark and Dudrick 2012, pp. 80–85.

  34. 34.

    See Conway 2017, pp. 46–51.

  35. 35.

    In the context of his attempt to account for “the problem of Socrates,” Nietzsche remarks that the “means” chosen by “philosophers and moralists” to “extricat[e] themselves from décadence…is but another expression of décadence” (Nietzsche 1982b, p. 478).

  36. 36.

    See Ridley 1998, pp. 44–50; and Conway 2008, pp. 112–122.

  37. 37.

    I am indebted here to Loeb 2019, pp. 98–103.

  38. 38.

    See Ridley 1998, pp. 54–57; and Conway 2008, pp. 128–134.

  39. 39.

    See Conway 2012, pp. 294–299.

  40. 40.

    On the question of Nietzsche’s “philanthropy” toward the weak and infirm, see Reginster 2006, pp. 260–263.

  41. 41.

    See Loeb 2019, pp. 110–113.

  42. 42.

    Clark and Dudrick forward the intriguing suggestion that Nietzsche aims in BGE 11 “to establish himself—as opposed to both the naturalizers of Kant and the idealists who invented more ‘faculties’—as Kant’s true heir” (Clark and Dudrick 2012, p. 85). See also Guyer and Horstmann 2018.

  43. 43.

    Here I follow Hussain 2004, pp. 340–344; and Bailey 2013, pp. 138–141.

  44. 44.

    Here we recall that Nietzsche came to see Kant as “an underhanded Christian” (Nietzsche 1982b, p. 484), a sentiment confirmed by the stage of the progression under consideration.

  45. 45.

    See, for example, BGE 48, where Nietzsche also invokes the image of the “pale sun of the north” (Nietzsche 1989a, pp. 62–63).

  46. 46.

    I am indebted here to Bourdeau 2018 and Large (in Nietzsche 1998, pp. 91, 101). See also Hussain 2004, pp. 340–345.

  47. 47.

    This reference to positivism also could be meant to target Eugen Dühring, who was influenced by Comte (among others). On this point, see Brobjer 2008, pp. 66–70.

  48. 48.

    See also Nietzsche 1989a, pp. 62–63.

  49. 49.

    I am indebted here to Bailey 2013, pp. 138–141.

  50. 50.

    See also Reginster 2006, pp. 242–250.

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  1. Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    Daniel Conway

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  1. Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Jon Stewart

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Conway, D. (2020). “The Honeymoon of German Philosophy”: Nietzsche and German Idealism. In: Stewart, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Existentialism. Palgrave Handbooks in German Idealism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44571-3_10

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