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.Briefly stated, that intimacy has to do with the complex interaction be-tween a person’s thoughts, plans, emotions, and self-conception and whatone might (problematically) identify with the bald “facts” about a person’sbehavior, accomplishments, comments, and history.I am concerned herewith the familiar distinction in Jean-Paul Sartre between “facticity” and LIVING WITH NIETZSCHE“transcendence” (without getting into the exponential complications of what he calls “being-for-others”).The problem is that how we “read” aperson’s behavior and the narrative of that history depends to a large extenton the person’s intentions, ambitions, and ideals.In Nietzsche’s case, the“events” of his life were so minimal and his intentions, ambitions, and idealswere so grand that it is a mistake, as well as unfair, to interpret eitherwithout continuous reference to the other.In other words, what I am tryingto do is to clear a path between overly ad hominem psychoanalytic reduc-tionism and Arthur Danto’s old “Nietzsche as Philosopher” thesis (whichDanto himself has retracted).The relationship between Nietzsche and Nietzsche raises all sorts of tanta-lizing questions, such as whether good fortune—or good health—is indeed(as Aristotle simply presumed) a presupposition of the virtuous, eudamimonlife or whether (as in Kant) it is ultimately irrelevant.But the question ofvirtue, and the philosopher as example, is first of all to be answered in termsof the writing itself.This is not always easy or comfortable.(Consider thecases of Martin Heidegger and Ezra Pound, both of whom supported theNazi cause.To what extent can we discern their despicable sympathies intheir work? To what extent is the work compromised by their politics?) It isan enormous mistake to think that ad hominem arguments ought to lookat the personal character instead of the writing, an even bigger mistake than its converse, just reading the writing and forgetting about the person whothought it up and produced it.It is the philosopher-in-the-philosophy thatought to be our point of focus.The virtues of the philosopher are those thatare evident in the philosophy.Like many philosophers (Plato, Rousseau, and Marx come to mind),Nietzsche created an ideal world—or in his case an identity—dramaticallydifferent from the world of his experience.That vision becomes, in an im-portant Sartrean sense, an essential part of the identity of the philosopher.Thus there is another interpretation of the view that a philosopher shouldbe an example, with somewhat less dramatic requirements.One need notbe a world-historical figure.One need not be a hero or even happy.Onemust not be a hypocrite, of course, and this alone would eliminate a consid-erable number of would-be philosophers, including not just a few philoso-phy professors.We judge a philosopher—and not only his or her ideas—bywhat he or she says, even ironically (especially ironically).Pleas for “play-fulness” won’t get you off the hook.In writing, in case anyone ever doubtedit, one betrays oneself—pseudonyms, sarcasm, dialogue, scholarly form not-withstanding.Nietzsche’s character, in other words, cannot be detachedfrom his writings.Nietzsche and Nietzsche cannot so easily be distinguished or separated for the purpose of criticism and interpretation.A very different response to Nietzsche, not necessarily to Nietzsche’s ad-vantage, has issued out of the oddly persistent French obsession with thevirtues of madness, which has led some au courant Parisian neo-Nietzsche-ans (e.g., George Bataille) to suggest that Nietzsche was a great philosopherN I E T Z S C H E A D H O M I N E Mbecause he was mad.But I find no evidence that he was mad when he wrote most of his books.Even if it is true, as C.G.Jung argued in his seminars,that the fault lines of Nietzsche’s eventual madness were already present asneurosis throughout his career, I do not think that Nietzsche’s life needs tointerfere with a proper appreciation of his insights. The question is, Can we get this knife to cut one way but not the other? How can we evenbegin to legitimize Nietzsche’s use of ad hominem arguments against otherswithout finding that we have already dismissed him as some sort of a crankwho is not to be taken seriously? In the immortal words of Edward G.Rob-inson’s “Little Caesar,” “He can dish it out, but can he take it?”If the reader detects a certain inconsistency here, it is not one for whichI intend to apologize.To diagnose a motive is not necessarily to dispute thegenius through which it is expressed.To find pathos in the philosopher isnot therefore to dismiss the philosophy.Ad hominem arguments don’t haveto be dismissive.The more we look at the thinker rather than only thethoughts, the more we may find to admire, even through his or her foiblesand frailties.In his several attacks on Socrates, to take the most dramaticexample, Nietzsche’s ultimate admiration and even envy of his ancientAthenian hero’s ironic genius and Socrates’ ability to turn his rather obnox-ious personality into a powerful weapon emerge quite clearly, giving riseto interminable and ultimately pointless disputes about whether Nietzscheultimately “liked” or “didn’t like” Socrates.Nietzsche “saw through” Socra-tes, but in doing so he made his great predecessor’s accomplishments allthe more remarkable.More to the point, Nietzsche’s well-known critique of morality in termsof its underlying motive of ressentiment is in fact far more ambivalent and multifaceted than it is usually thought to be. Far from simply rejecting“slave morality,” Nietzsche finds much to admire in both its origins and itspossibilities
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