"The Joyful Wisdom"
In 1882 Nietzsche wrote and published "The Joyful Wisdom" ("_La Gay
a Scienza_"). Although originally intended as a supplement to "The
Dawn of Day," under which title it was to have been issued in a later
edition of this earlier work, it differs greatly, not only from "The
Dawn of Day," but from everything else Nietzsche ever wrote. The
destructive spirit of "Human, All-Too-Human" is nowhere to be found in
it. The revolutionary doctrines of "The Dawn of Day" are but vaguely
echoed. It is a book which shows Nietzsche in a unique and isolated
mood--a mood which, throughout his whole life did not return to him.
Temperamentally "The Joyful Wisdom" comes nearer being a parallel to
"Thus Spake Zarathustra" than to any of his other writings. But even
this comparison goes to pieces when pushed beyond the most superficial
aspects of the two books. Nietzsche was at Naumburg at the time of
writing this work. A long-standing stomach malady had suddenly shown
signs of leaving him, and the period during which he wrote "The Joyful
Wisdom" was one of the happiest of his life. Heretofore a sombre
seriousness had marked both his thoughts and the expression of them. In
the two volumes of "Human, All-Too-Human" he had attempted a complete
devastation of all codes and ideals. In "The Dawn of Day" he waged a
bitter and serious warfare on modern moral standards and made attempts
at supplanting them with new dogma. In "The Joyful Wisdom" he revealed
an entirely new phase of his character--a lenient, jovial, almost
buoyant attitude toward the world.
Although "The Joyful Wisdom" may be considered in the light of an
interpolation into Nietzsche's philosophical works, the book is
nevertheless among the most interesting of his output--not so much
because it gives us any additions to the sum of his thinking, but
because it throws a light on the philosopher himself. It may be lifted
bodily out of his works without leaving a gap in the development of
his doctrines, but it cannot be set aside without closing up a very
important and significant facet in the man's nature. Unfortunately
Nietzsche is looked upon as a man who was entirely consumed with
rancour and hatred--a man unconscious of the comic side of existence--a
thinker with whom pessimism was chronic. But this is only a half
truth, a conclusion founded on partial evidence. Nietzsche's very
earnestness at times defeated his own ends. "The Joyful Wisdom" is one
of the most fundamentally hilarious books ever written. It deals with
life as a supreme bit of humour. Yet there is little in it to provoke
laughter. Nietzsche's humour is deeper than the externals. One finds
no superficial jesting here, no smartness, no transient buffoonery.
The book is a glorification of that subtle joy which accompanies the
experiencing of knowledge. In order to catch its spirit it is necessary
that one be familiar with the serious and formulating Nietzsche, for
on his most serious doctrines is founded that attitude which makes
"The Joyful Wisdom" hilarious. Once familiar with Nietzsche's earlier
writings one may read the present book with a feeling of exhilaration
unlike that produced by his more manifestly solemn writings.
However, despite the buoyancy of this document, it is, beneath the
surface, as serious as anything Nietzsche has ever written. His
conception of the world and his assumption of the underlying aspects of
existence are founded on deeply conceived formulas. It must be borne
in mind that Nietzsche's thought is in a large measure personal, that
the development of his doctrines is due to very definite biographical
causes and to the flux and reflux of his own emotions. His system is
not a spontaneous and complete conception, the sudden fruit of his
entire research given to the world in a unified body. To the contrary,
it is an amassing of data, a constant building up of ideas. No one book
contains his entire teachings, logically thought out and carefully
organised. Rather is his philosophy an intricate structure which begins
with his earliest essays and does not reach completion until the end
of "The Will to Power." Each book has some specific place in his
thought: each book assumes a position relative to all the rest. Thus in
"The Joyful Wisdom" we have the turning point between the denying and
destructive Nietzsche and the asserting and fashioning Nietzsche. Says
he in the fourth and most important section called "Sanctus Januarius":
_"Amor fati:[1]_ let that henceforth be my love! I do not want to wage
war with the ugly. I do not want to accuse, I do not want even to
accuse the accusers. _Looking aside,_ let that be my sole negation!
And all in all, to sum up: I wish to be at any time hereafter only a
yea-sayer!"
In "The Joyful Wisdom" begins Nietzsche's almost fanatical joy in
life. Here, too, we encounter for the first time the symbol of the
dance. Nietzsche constantly makes use of this figure in his later
writings. Especially in "Thus Spake Zarathustra" does he exhort his
readers to indulge themselves in dancing. The blasphemies and hatreds
characteristic of the philosopher in his more solemn moods are
nowhere discernible in this new book. It is therefore of considerable
importance to the student in forming a just estimate of Nietzsche. Here
the hater has departed; the idol-smasher has laid down his weapons;
the analyst has become the satyr; the logician has turned poet; the
blasphemer has become the child. Only occasionally does the pendulum
swing toward the sombre Apollonian pole: the Dionysian ideal of joy is
dominant. The month of January inspired the book, and Nietzsche says
in his _Ecce Homo_ that it was the most wonderful month of January he
had ever spent. This spirit of gaiety was to remain with him in some
degree throughout the remainder of his life. He realised that his
preparatory work was completed. He saw his way clear to forge ahead
as his doctrines led him; and his exuberance no doubt grew out of the
satisfaction he took in this prospect.
Although the contents of "The Joyful Wisdom" are not inherently a
part of Nietzsche's philosophy, but only detached applications of his
theories--ideas which floated to the surface of his doctrines--the
material encountered here is of wide and varied interest. There are
criticisms of German and Southern culture; valuations of modern
authors; views on the developments of art; theories of music; analyses
of Schopenhauer and an explanation of his vogue; judgments of the
ancient and the modern theatre; excursions into philological fields;
arraignments of contemporary classicism; doctrines of creative
artistry; personal paragraphs on mental culture, politics and commerce.
... The book is, in fact, more critical than philosophical.
Nietzsche never entirely dissevered himself from his time and
from the habits, both of thought and action, which characterised
his contemporaries. From his first academic essays to his last
transvaluation of values, he remained the patient and analytical
observer of the life about him. For this reason it has been argued
among disciples of "pure" thinking that he was not, in the strictest
sense of the word, a "philosopher," but rather a critically
intellectual force. This diagnosis might carry weight had not
Nietzsche avowedly built his philosophical structure on a repudiation
of abstract thinking. This misunderstanding of him arose from the
adherents of rational thinking overlooking the fact that, where the
older philosophers had detached themselves from reality because of the
instability of natural hypotheses, Nietzsche re-established human bases
on which he founded his syllogisms. Therefore one should not attempt
to divorce the purely critical from the purely philosophical in his
writings. Even in a book so frankly critical as "The Joyful Wisdom"
there is a directing force of theoretical unity.
This is especially true of the third section. This division is made up
almost entirely of comments on men and affairs, short analyses of human
attitudes, desultory excursions into the sociological, brief remarks on
man's emotional nature, apothegms dealing with human attributes, bits
of racy philosophical gossip, religious and scientific maxims, and the
like. Sometimes these observations are cynical, sometimes gracious,
sometimes bitter, sometimes buoyant, sometimes merely witty. But all
of them are welded together by a profound conception of humanity.
The most stimulating division of the book is the fourth, in which
Nietzsche's good humour is at its height. This section is a
glorification of victory and of all those hardy qualities which go
into the perfecting of the individual. Nietzsche reverses Schiller's
famous doctrine expressed in "_Die Braut von Messina_": "Life is not of
all good the highest." He sees no good over and beyond that of human
relationships. The normal instincts to him are the ones which affirm
life; the abnormal instincts are those which deny it. The former are
summed up in the ethics of Greece under the sway of Dionysus; the
latter are epitomised in the Christian religion.
The fifth book, called "We Fearless Ones," and the appendix of "Songs
of Prince Free-as-a-Bird" were written four years later than the other
material and added with an introduction in a later edition of the book.
These addenda, while less specific and of a more dialectic nature than
the preceding parts, are in spirit manifestly the same as the rest of
the book.
In "The Joyful Wisdom" we have again an aphoristic style of writing,
although it has become keener and more sure of itself since "Human,
All-Too-Human" and "The Dawn of Day." In making selections from this
book I have chosen those passages which are more general in tone. The
connection between the various aphorisms is here even slighter than
is Nietzsche's wont, and for that reason no attempt has been made to
present a continuous perception of the work. However, the excerpts
which follow, though of a less popular nature, are more intimately
related to his thoughts than the ones omitted, and consequently are of
more interest to the student.
[Footnote 1: Love of (one's) destiny.]