Nietzsche and Marx

The bicameral structure of the brain and its use as a metaphor for culture which Nietzsche discussed in Human, All Too Human was a development on his concepts of the Dionysiac and Apolline in The Birth of Tragedy, published six years earlier: ‘If the tragedy of the ancients was diverted from its course by the dialectical impulse towards knowledge and scientific optimism, we might conclude from this that there is a never-ending struggle between the theoretical and the tragic philosophies.’1

Safranski wrote ‘The idea of a bicameral system flashes up again and again in Nietzsche’s work and then vanishes, much to the detriment of his philosophy. If he had held to it, he might well have spared himself some of his mad visions of grand politics and the will to power.’2 Nietzsche not only held to it, but this dichotomous tension between the creative and the scientific, the passionate and the rational and the ramifications of this for him was the engine room of his philosophy, one of extreme romanticism, the bicameral nature of which drew on the writing of earlier German philosophers.3

Nietzsche argued for this ‘double brain, two brain chambers’4 as a safeguard against unconstrained vitalism and nihilistic paralysis. Where illusions, biases and passions - those of metaphysics, religion and art give heat - science, though it cannot provide meaning and is constrained by perspectives, brings calculation and a cooling scepticism, shaping and solidifying ‘the hot flow of belief in ultimate truths’5 into fruitful and balanced form. In a fragment from 1877 Nietzsche wrote ‘Scientific methods relieve the world of a great pathos; they show how pointless it was for man to have worked his way into this height of feeling’.6

It is claimed that what Nietzsche wanted, in the shadow of an increasing realism, was an harmonious synthesis of science with a truly playful culture, a marriage of artistic and scientific perspectives. His writing seems to support this - ‘For wherever the great architecture of culture developed, it was its task to force opposing forces into harmony through an overwhelming aggregation of the remaining, less incompatible powers, yet without suppressing or shackling them.’7 But this is not sustained by an analysis of his philosophy. The emotive and vague ‘higher culture’ he was interested in lay within the individual - the overman - and it was framed by a romanticised reading of a pagan model8 which Marx showed is impossible.9

Nietzsche’s use of the concepts ‘science’ and the closely related ‘truth’ were also from a contradictory and romantic perspective. While appearing to embrace science, he regarded it as an ascetic fiction that should be under police supervision.10 He held that ‘a “scientific” interpretation of the world ... might still be one of the stupidest of all possible interpretations of the world, i.e. one of those most lacking in significance.’11

Similarly with regard to truth. Nothing lay between romantic ‘truth’ - what ‘serves life’ and absolute truth. Nietzsche did not understand (or would not accept) that objective truth - the truth of the scientist - is inseparable from change, the very concept he trumpeted that he embraced. It was once true that the earth is flat, but as knowledge of the world expanded and deepened, it was found not to be true - truth had come to more closely approximate its theoretical absolute. 

Nietzsche had no understanding of that relationship. In rejecting 'living' (deepening, changing) truth, through his overman and ‘higher culture’, he clung to 'truth' as a frozen absolute. Just like the priest who ‘knows only one great danger: that is science - the sound conception of cause and effect’, he invented his overman ‘in opposition to science - in opposition to the detaching of man from the priest ... Man shall not look around him, he shall look down into himself; he shall not look prudently and cautiously into things in order to learn, he shall not look at all: he shall suffer.’12

Nietzsche’s vision of culture was compatible with Marx’s vision of socialism only to the extent of a voluntarist finding a place in a society based on science and objective reason, functioning for the benefit of all. Not only was Nietzsche utterly opposed to socialism, he believed that we cannot progress as a species. Beyond the bluster, what he advocated was found to be compatible with, useful to the ideology of capitalism. The purpose of humanity was for ‘higher individuals’ to focus inwards and perfect themselves - ‘peaks’ rather than the common good he despised. 

What Nietzsche loathed regarding socialism (and what is a key focus of capitalist ideology) - that it meant (for him) the destruction of the individual and their replacement by ‘an expedient organ of the community’13 Marx never wanted. His wish was the opposite - the full development of individuals within their society. And of the specifics of socialism, Marx never attempted to set them out. Whereas Nietzsche’s attitude to ‘science’ was sustained by a bicameral romanticism and to its practice hostile, Marx had the highest regard for it, on a materialist basis.14

He held that both scientific theories and method exist within a social framework. Thus the rise of science is inseparable from that of capitalism, of industry and commerce. Science itself has become an immensely productive force that emerged because it met the material interests of the bourgeoisie.

The complex relations between reason and the emotions is a most important issue. Both are powerhouses in the most advanced organisation of matter yet known to us - our brains. Independently of our willing, reason and emotions function inseparably. It is true that there has been a one-sided worship of linguistic reason at the expense of the emotions - and therefore at the expense of humanity - through Western culture and that Greek philosophers, including Socrates and particularly Plato, played a major role in causing that damage, but Nietzsche’s recognition of this was distorted by and absorbed into his extreme and reactionary romanticism. Having seen the problem and forcefully set it out in The Birth of Tragedy and in other writing (in however distorted a manner), Nietzsche, in effect, argued for its continuation with his bicameral model. 

Marx’s view is without doubt the more plausible - it is based on objective reality and looks to the future, where Nietzsche’s view is deeply subjective, reactionary and looks to a pagan past. But just as there is an implicit teleology in Marx’s theorising which denies the most fundamental elements of dialectical materialism - contradiction, contingency and the absolute of change - so the ‘scientific’ austerity and rigour of his writing is tested by the human, all too human writing of Nietzsche.

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Notes

1 F. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music, trans. Shaun Whiteside, Penguin, 1993, p. 82.

2 Rudiger Safranski, Nietzsche, A Philosophical Biography, trans. Shelley Frisch, Granata Books, London, 2002, p. 200.

3 Kant: ‘...the feeling of the sublime involves as its characteristic feature a mental movement combined with the estimate of the object, whereas taste in respect of the beautiful presupposes that the mind is in restful contemplation and preserves it in this state.’ I. Kant, Critique of Judgement,  Bk. II, Analytic of the Sublime, 24. trans. J. Creed Meredith, Clarendon Press, 1952, p. 94; Schopenhauer’s distinction between the methods of science and experience and ‘the method of genius’ which is valid and of use only in art: ‘The first is like the mighty storm that rushes along without beginning and without end, bending, agitating, and carrying away everything before it; the second is like the ray of sun that calmly pierces the storm and is not deflected by it. The first is like the innumerable, violently agitated drops of the waterfall, constantly changing, never for an instant at rest; the second is like the rainbow, silently resting on this raging torrent.’ A. Schopenhauer, The World As Will And Idea. Book III, 36. (abridged in one volume) 1819. trans. J. Berman. London: Everyman,1995, p. 109. This dichotomy is encapsulated in the title of Nietzsche’s The Gay Science.

4 F. Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. Marion Faber and Stephen Lehmann, Penguin, 2004, p. 154, ‘aphorism’ 251.

5 Ibid., p. 150, ‘aphorism’ 244.

6 Quoted in Safranski op. cit., p. 202.

7 Human, All Too Human op. cit., p. 168, ‘aphorism’ 276.

8 ‘Man makes the best discoveries about culture within himself when he finds two heterogeneous powers governing there. Given that a man loved the plastic arts or music as much as he was moved by the spirit of science, and that he deemed it impossible to end this contradiction by destroying the one and completely unleashing the other power; then, the only thing remaining to him is to make such a large edifice of culture out of himself that both powers can live there’ Ibid., p. 168, ‘aphorism’ 276.

9 ‘It is ... recognised that certain forms of art, e.g the epic, can no longer be produced in their world epoch-making, classical stature as soon as the production of art, as such, begins; that is, that certain significant forms within the realm of the arts are possible only at an undeveloped stage of artistic development. ... The difficulty consists only in the general formulation of these contradictions. As soon as they have been specified, they are already clarified.  ... Is the view of nature and of social relations on which the Greek imagination and hence Greek mythology is based possible with self-acting mule spindles and railways and locomotives and electrical telegraphs?’ K. Marx, Grundrisse (1857-1861), trans. Martin Nicolaus, Penguin, 1973, p. 110.

10 F. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans, Josefine Nauckhoff, Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 200, ‘aphorism’ 344.

11 Ibid., p, 238 ‘aphorism’ 373.

12 F. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (or How to Philosophise with a Hammer) and The Anti-Christ, trans. R.J.Hollingdale, Penguin, 2003, p. 177, ‘aphorism’ 49.

13 Human, All Too Human op. cit., p. 226, ‘aphorism’ 473.

14 Marx’s relationship with science was the core of Engels’ eulogy at his funeral.