Mehmet Zafer Demir - Denmark - 2007
Epistemological Violence: Interpretation in Nietzsche’s Thought Mehmet Zafer Demir
Mehmet Zafer Demir - Denmark - 2007
For Любовь Горячева
Mehmet Zafer Demir - Denmark - 2007
Epistemological Violence: Interpretation in Nietzsche’s Thought Oh threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise! One thing at least is certain – This life flies, One thing is certain and the rest is Lies; The Flower that once is blown for ever dies. Omar Khayyam – Rubaiyat, LXVI
Introduction: 1 One exists so long as one interprets and vice versa. If there must have been one and only eternal ‘truth’, it must have been our being eternally tenderfoot in the face of or under the yoke of existence. It is this idiosyncrasy that belongs to all generations of human being. With this misery, despair and predicament called mortality never will human being surpass this insurmountable horizon, a horizon for which the concepts such as 'beyond', 'after' have no meaning at all, a surmountable horizon which we call life.
Mehmet Zafer Demir - Denmark - 2007
2 Despite all rationalizations and domestications, life is itself, let's dare to say, something which is nothing more than an unexplainable and insurmountable chaos. What characterizes our living activity is that we, pleasure-seeking animals, wander on the earth, holding a kaleidoscope in our hands through which we change our convictions, our illusions, - Are not our convictions our illusions as well? - and our cruel passions along with the colors. Should not we let the many-hued kaleidoscopes be free and delight the twilight-like chaos in which we live, suffer and laugh?
3 If Nietzsche is right when he enumerates the consequences of decadence as ' vice--the addiction to vice; sickness, crime-criminality; celibacy-sterility; hystericism, weakness of the will; alcoholism; pessimism; anarchism; libertinism (also of the spirit). The slanderers, underminers, doubters, destroyers'1 and If Nietzsche is right when he claims that decadence belongs to all epochs of mankind2, the first thing that comes to mind, it seems to me, is nothing other than witnessing the aforementioned consequences of decadence in our age too. I would add: hypocrisy and being fraud as a rudimentary condition of belongness to society, sophisticated and excessive drug abuse, lethal licentiousness of global capitalism, all kind of suicidal fundamentalism, pleasure fetishism as only approved desiderata, perversion as wisdom, communication as a total hubbub of self-gratification, neo-imperialism as a bloody and profitable orgy, political discourses as pornographic tirades, the unwillingfulness of will, the hyperactive barbarous chauvinism with a superstitious mysticism of the ' south', neurotic and exhausted hedonism with a descent dose of insanity of the 'north', discombobulating with self-humiliation and immeasurable masochism of the ' East' , self-
Mehmet Zafer Demir - Denmark - 2007
putrefaction with a sweet harshness of the 'West'., the domesticated genius pets - the intellectuals - , the mollycoddling of stupidity and unrefined pseudo talents the artists and so forth. Such symptoms with such a metaphorical language, which is the reason of the strength of Nietzsche's philosophizing too, can easily be extended into a book. But, we sometimes stop. We must stop, sometimes. So, amid these massive, turbulent and misty 'realities', I propose that it is exactly the time to talk about interpretation.
4 It is the quality and the quantum of our interpretation of our existence, of our aesthetical taste , of our positioning with regard to the moral values of our present we live in which distinguishes us from being merely pleasure-seeking animals cum rational violent animals, from being merely narcotized by katzenjammers of conventional, be it religious or else, valuations and valorizations along with an obsessive and vulgar tendentiousness and from being merely a victim of our own victimization, ie, nothingness and meaninglessness or, to use a Nietzchean phraseology, the will to decline, weakness, depravity, decadence, absurdity, putrefaction, and corruption. Which may also be understood as the will to a poisonous purification without antidote.
5 I shall argue that the Nietzschean interpretation is itself epistemological violence and is employed through or in the form of epistemological violence and that it is in concordant with his entire philosophizing. Yet, the fact that Nietzsche's distrust toward all systematization and systematizers is
Mehmet Zafer Demir - Denmark - 2007
not avoided. For Nietzsche the will to a system is a sign of dishonesty. 3 Thus the assortments that I shall proffer are nothing other than provisional categorizations. Nietzsche's aversion to any kind of compartmentalization is as obvious and sharp as his rejection of the Kantian ' categorical imperatives'. Needless to say that these categorizations are by no means acute and isolated but imbricated and interconnected. So, the sub-titles that will be the burden of my discussion in this paper are: 1. Interpretation as epistemological violence 2. Interpretation and existence 3. Interpretation art and text
Interpretation as epistemological violence: 6 Before discussing what the possible implications of the concept of interpretation as epistemological violence are, first we ought to clarify what epistemological violence is. The 'epistemological' by which I mean nothing more than 'concerning knowledge'. But availing 'epistemological' with 'violence' depends upon what we understand by 'knowledge'. At this point I assert knowledge as a 'tool of power' that is bound to increasing and decreasing of power in accordance with the formula suggested by Nietzsche.4 So, if this is true, then only can the process of acquiring, employing and
Mehmet Zafer Demir - Denmark - 2007
exchanging of knowledge be possible through a violent process, which is 'the will to power' in Nietzsche's vocabulary. By this reasoning, we may define epistemological violence as 'the implementation of knowledge, be they textual, verbal, aesthetical, so as to accomplish certain outcomes'. What is to be accentuated with regard to knowledge as such here is to state another assertion of Nietzsche: 'The only knowledge we have knowledge from a perspective' 5. Which renders the implementation of interpretation qua epistemological violence possible.
7 In order to buttress the assertion of interpretation qua epistemological violence, herein we may refer to Ecce Homo, How One Becomes What One Is in which Nietzsche reinterprets his own writings and clarifies what strategies he employs in his texts. As a 'warrior', who instinctually tends to 'attacking' and whose 'war tactics' as follows: 'First I attack only things that are triumphant – if necessary I wait until they become triumphant. Secondly, I attack only those things against which I find no allies, against which i stand alone – against which compromise nobody but myself ... I have not taken one single step before the public eye, which did not compromise me: that is my criterion of a proper mode of action. Thirdly, I never make personal attacks – I use a personality merely as magnifying glass, by means of which I render a general, but elusive and scarcely noticeable evil, more apparent. In this way I attacked Davis Strauss, or rather the success given to a senile book by the cultured classes of Germany – by this means I caught German culture red-handed. In this way I attacked Wagner, or rather the falsity or mongrel instincts of our 'culture' which confounds the super-refined with the strong, and the effete with the great. Fourthly I attack only those things from which all personal differences are excluded, in which any such thing as a background of disagreeable is lacking. On the contrary, attacking is to me a proof of good will and, in certain circumstances, of gratitude 6.'
By opting and accentuating deliberately a vocabulary such as 'warrior 'war tactics', and 'attacking', Nietzsche seems to have understood the 'interpreter' as an agent who only attacks conventional and
Mehmet Zafer Demir - Denmark - 2007
dominant paradigms, so to speak, who does not need any affirmation from other agents and from public opinions, who does not target the personalities which the interpreter criticizes but what they represent, and who regards 'attacking' as a sign of 'good will’. Which is to say that implementing epistemological violence through these criterions is not a violence that squanders its energy for the very act of attack's own sakes as such but it is violence which itself aims to pass beyond the conventional interpretations. This is in concordant with the way Nietzsche proffers as a criterion for interpretation in the face of 'beliefs': 'We "knowledgeable people" are positively suspicious of all forms of belief. Our suspicion has gradually cultivated the habit in us of concluding the reverse of what people previously concluded: that is, wherever the strength of a faith steps decisively into the foreground, we infer a certain weakness in its ability to demonstrate its truth, even the improbability of what it believes. We do not deny that the belief "makes blessed." But for that very reason we deny that the belief proves anything. A strong belief which confers blessedness creates doubts about what it has faith in. It does not ground "truth." It grounds a certain probability—delusion'.7
8 We may complete this section by remarking the very nature of interpretation and meaning. For Nietzsche, ' violating, emending, abbreviating, letting go, filling in the cracks, composing, forging, and the other actions which belong to the nature of all interpretation' 8. Herein, opted vocabulary ought to be crucial: i.e, not conforming but violating, not accepting as it is but emending, not pursuing the further details but abbreviating, not insisting but letting go, not finding readily a flat surface but filling in the cracks, not acquiring a whole but composing, not having a completed thing but forging. The other actions would be abusing, censoring, simplifying, discombobulating, befogging and so on. What, then, the characteristic of the question of 'what is that?' with which the act of interpretation is to be begun? It is an 'imposition of meaning from some other viewpoint'9. For
Mehmet Zafer Demir - Denmark - 2007
example, suppose one asks: 'what is God?' One answers: He is the symbol of beauty, goodness - the one in one side of well-known illusion of ' good and evil' - and forgiveness (Of course the list virtually no end). All these aesthetic and moral concepts are nothing other than an 'imposition of a meaning from some other viewpoint’. Yet, as has been supposed, one, too, may fain impose meanings such as ugliness, evilness and cruelty (Needless to say this list virtually no end either) from another viewpoint. Nietzsche, of course, would have preferred the latter if had not he declared the death of God and if had there ever been a problem in his philosophizing that of either existence or non-existence of God. This interpretable otherwise characteristic of knowledge leads to 'countless meanings' which Nietzsche calls 'Perspectivism'.10 And the relationships between these countless meanings, perspectives can only be possible as 'conflicts of meanings' and 'perspectives' which force, or at least allow us to regard epistemological implementations as epistemological violence.
Interpretation and existence: 9 'That the value of the world lies in our interpretation (--that other interpretations than merely human ones are perhaps somewhere possible--); that previous interpretations have been perspective valuations by virtue of which we can survive in life, i.e., in the will to power, for the growth of power; that every elevation of man brings with it the overcoming of narrower interpretations; that every strengthening and increase of power opens up new perspectives and means believing in new horizons--this idea permeates my writings. The world with which we are concerned is false, i.e., is not a fact but a fable and approximation on the basis of a meager sum of observations; it is "in flux," as something in a state of becoming, as a falsehood always changing but never getting near the truth: for--there is no "truth." 11
Mehmet Zafer Demir - Denmark - 2007
The world we somehow deal with is valueless without our interpretation about which never can we be sure whether it is the only one. If there were no previous interpretations, we would have never existed at all in the magnetic field of the pendulum of existence that swings as to the restlessness of the will to power. It is this restlessness that puts into currency new interpretations and nullifies less powerful interpretations. The restlessness of the pendulum of existence does not allow possessing any truth. Never can we see stable the pendulum as long as it swings. If it does not swing, then it is no longer a pendulum at all. The pendulum becomes 'Damocles’ sword'. Believing truths is to swallow up 'Damocles’ sword'. This, however, does not mean that it is impossible to interpret our existence without truths. Of course, we can; but not without taking into consideration all the possibilities: 'Our new "infinite". How far the perspective character of existence extends or indeed whether existence has any other character than this; whether existence without interpretation, without "sense," does not become "nonsense"; whether, on the other hand, all existence is not essentially actively engaged in interpretation—that cannot be decided even by the most industrious and most scrupulously conscientious analysis and self-examination of the intellect; for in the course of this analysis the human intellect cannot avoid seeing itself in its own perspectives, and only in these. We cannot look around our own corner: it is a hopeless curiosity that wants to know what other kinds of intellects and perspectives there might be; for example, whether some beings might be able to experience time backward, or alternately forward and backward (which would involve another direction of life and another concept of cause and effect). But I should think that today we are at least far from the ridiculous immodesty that would be involved in decreeing from our corner that perspectives are permitted only from this corner. Rather has the world become "infinite" for us all over again, inasmuch as we cannot reject the possibility that it may include infinite interpretations. Once more we are seized by a great shudder; but who would feel inclined immediately to deify again after the old manner this monster of an unknown world? And to worship the unknown henceforth as "the Unknown One"? Alas, too many ungodly possibilities of interpretation are included in the unknown, too much devilry, stupidity, and foolishness of interpretation—even our own human, all too human folly, which we know.'
12
Mehmet Zafer Demir - Denmark - 2007
10 There will always be a crack between interpretation and existence. It always seems to be two alternatives: either to be narcotized by a 'truth' and letting oneself to be swung with the pendulum of existence or avoiding all the paths that go to 'truths' and acknowledging the infinity of interpretations. However, acknowledging the infinity of interpretation is not supposed to be an unconditional affirmation. If it were so, there would be no meaning of philosophizing and of existence. (By this, I do not mean that there is a meaning of them). That is to say that assuming the infinity of interpretations as an unconditional affirmation means not to interpret. Or, at least it is a 'false' interpretation' But is it possible not to interpret? Is it possible not to exist while we question our very existence? Is it possible to question our very existence?
11 At this point, it seems necessary to have an epistemological starting point. But it is not supposed to be in the foundational sense. For Nietzsche the epistemological starting point is 'profound aversion to reposing once and for all in any one total view of the world. Fascination of the opposing point of view: refusal to be deprived of the stimulus of the enigmatic' 13. Only such a starting point can possess a tool which can acquire 'perspectival interpretation'. But, is it adequate to possess a profound aversion toward any one total view of the world? Is fascination of opposing viewpoint adequate for perspectival interpretation? Is it adequate to be sensitive to the stimulus of the enigmatic? A further step is required: 'The ascertaining of "truth" and "untruth," the ascertaining of facts in general, is fundamentally different from creative positing, from forming, shaping, overcoming, willing, such as is of the essence of philosophy. To introduce a meaning--
Mehmet Zafer Demir - Denmark - 2007
this task still remains to be done, assuming there is no meaning yet. Thus it is with sounds, but also with the fate of peoples: they are capable of the most different interpretations and direction toward different goals. On a yet higher level is to posit a goal and mold facts according to it; that is, active interpretation and not merely conceptual translation.' 14
This means that playing 'truth' and 'untruth' game, which is as simple as a child's game, or pampering our curiosity with a host of theories is something; creation, which has nothing to do with the old story of the creation of universe -the fable of six days but a 'worldly' and 'human all too human' creation - , formation, giving a shape, overcoming, willing another. Considered within Nietzsche's philosophy, all these 'actions' are imbricated and correspond to the backbone of Nietzsche's entire philosophizing – If one can be able to claim that there is a backbone for his philosophy -. All these can be summarized through his 'revelation-ary-' - or one may call it 'revolutionary' - 'holy' book with two 'verses': 'No longer willing, and no longer valuing, and no longer creating! Ah, that that great debility may ever be far from me!'.15 'O my friend, man is something that hath to be surpassed'.16
So, if there were an 'essence' of philosophy, it must be 'creating', 'forming', 'shaping', overcoming, and willing, i.e., 'the will to power' itself
17
Yet, none of these 'actions' or 'the will to power' is
adequate for introducing a meaning. This 'task' will always remain incomplete; as if there is a curtain that gets itself away in its own chaotic pace from us so long as we get closer toward it. Despite this permanent predicament, or to use a Nietzschean conception 'the eternal recurrence' – the absolute and eternal repetition of all things in periodical cycles 18 -, people will have been 'thrown' into altogether different directions with countless interpretations. So, it is this state of precariousness where a higher level is necessary. A further step in which one posits a goal through creating', 'forming', 'shaping', 'overcoming’, and 'willing' is inevitable. This further step opens a new
Mehmet Zafer Demir - Denmark - 2007
horizon where one postulates a goal according to which one interprets. And lo and behold, this is an 'active' interpretation not a 'passive' one. It seems that that 'active' is intimately associated with the 'active' that appears in 'active nihilism'. For Nietzsche there are essentially two nihilisms i.e., active and passive.19 While active nihilism is a 'sign of increased power of the spirit', passive nihilism is a 'decline and recession of the power of the spirit'. Thus active interpretation surpasses and in turn requires the nullification of conceptual translation. For merely conceptual translation appears to be a desideratum which only suits for the mob, the herd, the rabble, the priest and so on. In other words, it is a desideratum as such which is for those who are caught up in the steel spider web of selfunawareness. It is this which is the very self-unawareness of existence, or the very interpretative non-existence, or passive nihilism.
Interpretation, art and text: 12 As I have pointed out earlier, (See part 5) the categorizations I have employed, i.e., Interpretation cum epistemological violence, interpretation and existence, interpretation, art and text, are neither acute nor isolated but imbricated and interconnected. Here is the very place where this interconnectedness can be seen by dint of a quick gaze on The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music (1872) The essential thesis of the book seems to have been appeared in this statement 'Existence can only be justified as an aesthetic phenomenon', which is repeated several times throughout the book and has been done so in the Attempt at a Self-Criticism(1886) where Nietzsche reinterprets and accentuates some of his arguments and expresses his remorse due to his usage of
Mehmet Zafer Demir - Denmark - 2007
Kantian and Schopenhauerian formulas. The justification, which is an over-convinced form of interpretation as such, of existence merely as an aesthetical phenomenon is based on the fact that art is 'truly metaphysical activity of man', not morality – a polemic that has been posed against Wagner.20 'In truth', Nietzsche says, 'Nothing could be more opposed to the purely aesthetic interpretation and justification of the world which are taught in this book than the Christian teaching, which is, and wants to be, only moral and which relegates art, every art, to the realm of lies; with its absolute standards, beginning with the truthfulness of God, it negates, judges, and damns art.' 21
And it is the music itself which is only the source of what has to be understood by ' the justification of the world as an aesthetic phenomenon'. The Dionysian is the origin of music and tragic myth as a joyful experience even in a painful mood.22
13 Art evolves through the Apollonian- Dionysian duality that is shaped as to their 'constant conflicts', albeit there exists their 'periodic acts of reconciliation’. As separate entities, while Dionysian appears to be in the art realm of dream, Apollonian is in the art realm of intoxication.23 Through this duality we may grasp the main characteristic of Nietzschean interpretation with regard to art. These both opposite -but their very existence depends upon each other- forms of art are presented in a comparative interpretation. But, none of them are negated and excluded at any moment of the process of interpretation, though Nietzsche extols the Dionysian as an 'eternal joy of existence' 24 and as 'the eternal and original artistic power'.25 'Dionysus', writes Nietzsche, 'speaks the language of Apollo; and Apollo, finally the language of Dionysus and so the highest goal of tragedy and of all art is attained'26. And although Nietzsche baptizes Dionysian as 'Antichrist' in 'Attempts at Self-
Mehmet Zafer Demir - Denmark - 2007
Criticism, he does not adjust what he had implied as an invitation to sacrifice in the temple of the both deities.27
14 We know now what kind of 'interpretive art' Nietzsche posits with regard to the DionysianApollonian duality through The Birth of Tragedy. To recapitulate metaphorically: Keeping two substances in a turbulence, then hammering them on an anvil cautiously, then forging a new substance; glorifying one of them by giving its color without denying the other's role in the process. We may now speak of text. Nietzsche writes: 'Pneumatic explanation of nature. Metaphysics explains nature's scriptures as if pneumatically, the way the church and its scholars used to explain the Bible. It takes a lot of intelligence to apply to nature the same kind of strict interpretive art that philologists today have created for all books: with the intention simply to understand what the scripture wants to say, but not to sniff out, or even presume, a double meaning. Just as we have by no means overcome bad interpretive art in regard to books, and one still comes upon vestiges of allegorical and mystical interpretation in the best educated society, so it stands too in regard to nature--in fact much worse.'28
First of all, this means that texts have a double meaning that ought to be scented out and assumed. Why? Precisely because, there is a risk to be trapped by being unconditionally consent by means of what has been imposed by text. What is supposed to mean to accept text as it is? By the very act of accepting text as it is , interpretive art turns out to be a 'strict' and a 'bad' one. What makes a 'strict' and a' bad' interpretive art problematic? First they cause to be caught in an allegorical and mystical interpretation. Second, bearing in mind the first, a 'strict' and 'bad' interpretive art or allowing oneself to be engaged in mystical and allegorical interpretations is to interpret pneumatically, that is
Mehmet Zafer Demir - Denmark - 2007
to say, weakly in turn passively. So, 'active' interpretation is evaporated. What, then, is the remedy as not to be ensnared in this evaporation? Nietzsche writes: '--Another characteristic of the theologian is his _unfitness for philology_. What I here mean by philology is, in a general sense, the art of reading with profit--the capacity for absorbing facts _without_ interpreting them falsely, and _without_ losing caution, patience and subtlety in the effort to understand them. Philology as _ephexis_ in interpretation: whether one be dealing with books, with newspaper reports, with the most fateful events or with weather statistics--not to mention the "salvation of the soul."... The way in which a theologian, whether in Berlin or in Rome, is ready to explain, say, a "passage of Scripture," or an experience, or a victory by the national army, by turning upon it the high illumination of the Psalms of David, is always so _daring_ that it is enough to make a philologian run up a wall.' 29
Herein, philology appears to have been at the service of the 'art of reading with profit', ie., active interpretation, to absorb facts so as to avoid false -strict, bad- interpretations for the sake of understanding facts. During this process philology is at work as skepticism in interpretation. If philology as skepticism has a crucial role to this extent in interpretation, then it requires to be detailed: 'But, after all, why must we proclaim so loudly and with such intensity what we are, what we want, and what we do not want? Let us look at this more calmly and wisely; from a higher and more distant point of view. Let us proclaim it, as if among ourselves, in so low a tone that all the world fails to hear it and us! Above all, however, let us say it slowly. . . This preface comes late, but not too late: what, after all, do five or six years matter? Such a book, and such a problem, are in no hurry; besides, we are friends of the lento, I and my book. I have not been a philologist in vain -- perhaps I am one yet: a teacher of slow reading. I even come to write slowly. At present it is not only my habit, but even my taste -- a perverted taste, maybe -- to write nothing but what will drive to despair everyone who is "in a hurry." For philology is that venerable art which exacts from its followers one thing above all -- to step to one side, to leave themselves spare moments, to grow silent, to become slow -- the leisurely art of the goldsmith applied to language: an art which must carry out slow, fine work, and attains nothing if not lento. For this very reason philology is now more desirable than ever before; for this very reason it is the highest attraction and incitement in an age of "work": that is to say, of haste, of unseemly and immoderate hurry-skurry, which is intent upon "getting things done "at once, even every book, whether old or new. Philology itself, perhaps, will not "get things done" so hurriedly: it teaches how to read well: i.e. slowly, profoundly, attentively, prudently, with inner thoughts, with the mental doors ajar, with delicate fingers and eyes . . . my patient friends, this book appeals only to perfect readers and philologists: learn to read me well!'30
Mehmet Zafer Demir - Denmark - 2007
Interpretation embellished by an 'active' fragrance along with the service of philology as skepticism requires a specific pace which is qualified by being slow. Philology is itself this 'art' of possessing this velocity. It is this 'art' that opens a new horizon where interpretation is extolled as the 'will to power', as epistemological violence in the realm of the metaphysics of the 'eternal recurrence'.
Conclusion: 15 By this short essay, I have argued that interpretation is epistemological violence and that that assertion is consistent with that of Nietzschean interpretation. It is this 'interpretive art' which rejects being narcotized by any truth and being crippled by any morality. It is this 'active' interpretation which affirms existence by a 'Yea Saying' through creativity. And of course, it is this 'interpretation' as such which can only be justified by its own premises.
Mehmet Zafer Demir - Denmark - 2007
REFERENCES 1WP, 42 2WP,339 3TI, 26 4WP 5GM, 3, 12 6Ecce Homo, 'Why I am so Wise' 7GM,3, 24 My emphasis. 8Ibid. 9WP, 556 10WP, 481 11WP, 616 12GS, 374 13WP, 470 14WP. 605 15Thus Spake Zarathustra, 24, 'In the happy isles' 16Z, 17See, p. 5, 8 18EH, 'Why I Write Such Excellent Books', 3 19WP, 22 20The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music, 'Attempts at a Self-Criticism', 5 21Ibid. 22BT, 24
Mehmet Zafer Demir - Denmark - 2007
23BT, 1 24BT, 17 25BT, 25 26BT, 21 27BT, 25 28Human All Too Human, 5 29The Antichrist, 52. Trans. H.L. Mencken., www.gutenberg.com 30 The Dawn, a.k.a The Daybreak, Preface