Pregnancy as a Cipher for Nietzsche’s Project of Self-Overcoming: The Case of Pascal

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the relations among critique, destruction and negation, on the one hand, and creation, affirmation, love, and care on the other, in Nietzsche’s writings from Daybreak to Zarathustra. In doing this, it traces a movement in Nietzsche's thought that can be understood as an integration of critique in the process of affirmation, which consolidates in Nietzsche’s project of self-overcoming. In contrast to readings that use the metaphor of art and the creativity of the artist, this paper presents pregnancy as a cipher to understand Nietzsche’s project as well as the dynamics that are involved. A key issue addressed throughout the entire paper concerns the way in which Zarathustra says that he loves those who want their own downfall (Untergang) and go “zu Grunde” (or perish). To fully grasp the meaning of these rather puzzling utterances, the paper analyzes Nietzsche's engagement with Pascal (as a very particular case of “going under”).

KEYWORDS:

• Nietzsche
• Pascal
• Pregnancy
• critique
• self-overcoming
• love

Introduction: Pregnancy, zu Grunde gehen, and Love

“The human being is something that must be overcome” (Zarathustra, Prologue, Nietzsche 1999, 4.14). Thus Nietzsche has Zarathustra declare, as he re-encounters human civilization after his decade of solitude. Yet how should this grand act of overcoming be understood? And how, according to Nietzsche, ought such a strange activity—our voluntary self-surpassing—be carried out? As a way of responding to these questions, in this paper we present the notion of pregnancy (Schwangerschaft) as a key conception for understanding the project of self-overcoming Nietzsche develops in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Though Nietzsche’s references to pregnancy in Zarathustra are not abundant,¹ we believe that the notion of pregnancy can be used to address a number of questions that arise when considering Zarathustra’s message about the nature of the Übermensch, and the means by which such a figure may eventually emerge.

To be clear, this is not an attempt to make Nietzsche into a feminist philosopher of pregnancy, nor is it strictly speaking intended as an analysis of what Nietzsche says about pregnancy tout court. Instead, our focus on the notion of pregnancy intends to highlight aspects of Nietzsche’s thought that have been overlooked, due, in our view, to an emphasis in the scholarly literature on his notion of creativity and the role of the artist in Nietzsche’s project of overcoming the human being.² While these latter elements are certainly essential to Nietzsche’s project, we believe it is also the case that it is only when the task of overcoming the human being is set within the conceptual frame of pregnancy that its complex nature becomes fully apparent. For this, we also follow what Nietzsche himself says about pregnancy. As he puts it in Daybreak 552, pregnancy is not only the most “consecrated” (weihevolleren) of conditions, it also constitutes the fundamental relationship we have to whatever we bring out of ourselves.³ Here, the concept of pregnancy allows Nietzsche to account for a strange and important feature of his notion of creativity, namely its connection to his view of subjectivity, particularly the changes in our experience of ourselves that we undergo through the process of creation. Those who are pregnant, he claims, feel growing within them that which they know will soon displace their current subjectivity with another, one belonging to the future.⁴ In effect, our claim is that the notion of artistic creativity central for Nietzsche is one that takes its meaning from notions of pregnancy and birth giving (as in The Gay Science 369, for instance).

We introduce our analysis, however, with the following excerpt from the preface of Thus Spoke Zarathustra:

I love the one who works and invents in order to build a house for the Übermenschen and to prepare earth, animals and plants for him: for thus he wants his going under. (Nietzsche 1999, 4.17)

As part of a long series of similar phrases in which Nietzsche-Zarathustra speaks of the value of destruction, this sentence immediately raises questions. What kind of destruction is this? The terms used to describe it are Untergang, as above, and zu Grunde gehen, for example: “I love the one who is ashamed when the dice fall to his fortune and who then asks: am I a cheater ?—For he wants to perish” (4.17). It is striking that in both of these cases, as elsewhere,⁵ the one whom Zarathustra loves wants to go zu Grunde. Zarathustra even states that he loves “those who do not know how to live unless by going under [Untergehende], for they are the ones who cross over [Hinübergehenden]” (4.17). This “crossing over,” is toward the Übermensch: “Mankind is a rope fastened between animal and Übermensch” (4.16). More than being a mere feature of those whom Zarathustra loves, therefore, wanting to go zu Grunde is characteristic of and essential to the lives of those who live in such a way as, presumably, to make more likely the eventual appearance of this figure. Yet how does wanting one’s own destruction accomplish such a thing? And what does it entail exactly? Just what is it in us that “dies” in this process? How literal is this death? And how is this thought compatible with Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity and self-sacrifice and compassion in particular?

Furthermore, not only does embracing destruction make one lovable (“. . . what is lovable about human beings is that they are a crossing over [Übergang] and a going under [Untergang]” (4.17)), but love itself is said to be inseparable from destruction: “Loving and perishing: these have gone together since the beginning of time. Will to love: that means being willing also for death” (Zarathustra, Immaculate Perception, Nietzsche 1999, 4.157). It seems reasonable to assume, then, that it is love that impels the lovable one to want to “cross over” to the Übermensch, and hence to go zu Grunde. But what kind of love is this, and how is it not life-negating? Is there contempt in this love, such that we can embrace our own destruction? What type of contempt?

These are some of the questions that motivate our analysis in this article, and to aid that work we make use of Nietzsche’s engagement with Blaise Pascal, the most important figure of perishing in his entire corpus. In our first section, Parr establishes that Nietzsche discovered in Pascal an “embryo” of the philosopher of the future, though this “spiritual pregnancy” ultimately failed. In our second section he explores the nature of this failure, as Nietzsche understands it, finding in it an odd combination of horrified regret at the sight of Pascal’s destruction, and a certain kind of love, seemingly because he went zu Grunde. This leads us to see that Nietzsche’s views on the relation between critique and affirmation are not straightforward; and hence, to understand the love of the one who goes zu Grunde, we need to trace the way Nietzsche’s thought evolves from Daybreak to Zarathustra. Hay develops this analysis in section 3. In section 4 she shows how the notion of pregnancy can help us better understand a process of change that, in a way, was being gestated already in Daybreak, but culminated in Zarathustra. To conclude, we come back to Pascal to see the extent to which this analysis also helps us understand the shifts in Nietzsche’s attitudes towards him.

Pascal as embryonisch

Der wirkliche Mensch ist weit zurück hinter dem embryonischen, der aus ihm erst in 3 Geschlechtern entsteht.

Nachlass 1881, 13[14], Nietzsche 1999, 9.621

In §7 of the chapter “Why I am so wise,” Nietzsche sets out the four principles of his manner of waging “war” as a philosopher. The third of these principles is: he never makes “personal attacks,” but uses “the person as a strong magnifying glass to make visible a general if surreptitious and elusive crisis” (Nietzsche 1999, 6.274–275). Thus, he says that he attacked Wagner, just as, one might claim, he used, and at length attacked, Pascal. The combination of clinical distance and close examination conveyed by the image of the magnifying glass accords with many of the instances in which Nietzsche uses Pascal, as the human being most suited to Christianity, to reflect on, criticize, and evaluate the faith.⁶ Yet Nietzsche’s engagement with Pascal changes throughout his works.⁷ In early texts, Nietzsche deploys Pascal functionally, such as in the Untimely Meditation on Strauss, which uses Pascal’s notion of divertissement to illustrate Nietzsche’s view of the “scientific man” of his own time (Part I, 8, Nietzsche 1999, 1.203).⁸ By the time of Human, All Too Human, Pascal is named as one of Nietzsche’s principal sources of guidance, judgment, and inspiration (II Assorted Opinions and Maxims, 408, Nietzsche 1999, 2.534), and his Christianity is now a point of explicit critique (II Assorted Opinions and Maxims, 385, Nietzsche 1999, 2.528).⁹ From this point onward, and with a concentration of published references in Daybreak, Nietzsche consistently presents Pascal as an example of the nature and (negative) effect of Christian faith and morality.¹⁰

Nietzsche’s critique of Pascal, in addition, is not always straightforward, in the sense that he seems both to praise and reject him. This tension in Nietzsche’s view of Pascal testifies to the way in which his thinking about Christianity evolves throughout his works. It is part of the task of this article to trace these changes, in order to understand the development of Nietzsche’s conception and exercise of critique, including notions of destruction. Consequently, we believe that paying attention to the different ways in which Nietzsche engages with Pascal can help us to understand these aspects in Nietzsche’s thought.

A line of thought that we develop in this paper is that Nietzsche discovered in Pascal an embryo¹¹ of the philosopher of the future, and consequently that the most helpful way to frame Nietzsche’s relation to Pascal is that he saw in him a remarkable, but eventually unsuccessful, spiritual pregnancy. This section outlines what we consider to be the principal elements of the “embryonic” nature of Nietzsche’s Pascal; in other words, we focus on what it was that made Pascal an interesting and indispensable thinker for Nietzsche. Using the marginalia and other evidence found in Nietzsche’s personal copy of Pascal’s works, we argue that these elements are four: (1) the passion of knowledge (in Pascal’s terms: libido sciendi), (2) an appreciation of and enjoyment in the feeling of power, as well as (3) the exercise of a certain kind of laughter, and (4), a conception of subjectivity that, in the absence of Christ as the “solution” to its supposedly pernicious nature, bears a striking family resemblance to Nietzsche’s own view of the self.¹²

First, the passion of knowledge. Nietzsche marked the page in his edition of Pascal that contains pensée S 659:¹³

Ordinary people have the ability not to think about what they do not want to think about: ‘Do not think about the passages concerning the Messiah,’ the Jew says to his son. . . . But there are some who do not have this ability of restraining themselves from thinking, and who think all the more, the more they are forbidden to do so. These people depart from false religions, and even the true one, if they do not find solid arguments. (Pascal 1865, 1, 219)¹⁴

For Pascal, it seems that certain religious individuals will resist attempts to curtail their thinking, yet this thinking is also capable of destroying their adherence to faith in the absence of “solid arguments.”¹⁵ For Nietzsche, this text might also be thought to describe well the risk of the pursuit of knowledge, as well as its compulsive nature. From Nietzsche’s point of view, then, pensée S 659 speaks to the danger of knowing, especially for the religious person, whose convictions rest on error (and consequently the need for a counter to the practice of knowledge, to avoid one’s own destruction).¹⁶ In effect, Nietzsche discovers in Pascal a Leidenschaft of thinking: a compulsion to think and know, even at the expense of the knower.

From Nietzsche’s perspective, ultimately Pascal was unable to cope with the consequences of such passion. Presumably, for Nietzsche, Pascal’s task as a Christian would be to “bury the old [Christian] thoughts deeply and make them bear fruit” (Gay Science 4, Nietzsche 1999, 3.376), not to produce new thoughts contrary or inimical to the faith. Clearly, such new thoughts would amount to some form of sin: when they came to him, they could only be taken as “under all circumstances evil, being that which wants to conquer, to overthrow the old boundary stones and pieties” (3.376).¹⁷ More importantly, however, the presence in Pascal of both the old, Christian thoughts, and whatever else new his impetuous, compulsive intellection led him to, might reasonably be expected to have generated in him an enormous spiritual tension. This tension appears to have been of great importance to Nietzsche: “The ecclesiastical pressure of millennia has created a magnificent tension of the bow, likewise the monarchical: the two attempted slackenings (instead of shooting with the bow) are 1) Jesuitism 2) democracy. Pascal is the glorious sign of that terrible tension: he laughed the Jesuits to death” (Nachlass 1885, 34[163], Nietzsche 1999, 11.475).¹⁸ This interest likely also motivates Nietzsche’s heavy underlining of the Latin text that begins pensée S 460: “All that is in the world is lust of the flesh, or lust of the eyes or pride of life, libido sentiendi, libido sciendi, libido dominandi (1 John 2.16). Woe to the cursed land consumed rather than watered by these three rivers of fire!” (Pascal 1865, 1, 223).¹⁹ The conflict is evident between these lines of anathema against such libidos, and the powerful intellectual drive of S 659. For a man who had always to interpret himself through the lens of faith (Daybreak 86), it is easy to see how Pascal might have experienced his “lust to know” as both his highest pleasure and greatest anxiety. Nietzsche refers to this effect of knowledge in a note: “Science has awakened doubt in the truthfulness of the Christian God: from this doubt Christianity will die (Pascal’s deus absconditus)” (Nachlass 1885, 2[123], Nietzsche 1999, 12.122–123).²⁰

This tension exposes much of the fascination Pascal held for Nietzsche: in particular, it allows us to see how Nietzsche understood the passion of knowledge and our second embryonish element, the feeling of power, to be intimately entwined in Pascal.

Nietzsche highlights several texts of the Pensées that connect power to an elevated, expanded sense of self, such as the end of both pensée S 648 (“Now . . . only mastery and conquest preserve glory; slavery, shame” [Pascal 1865, 1, 187]) and S 560, which conceives of greatness in terms of the capaciousness, dynamism, and elasticity of the soul: “We do not show greatness by being at one extreme, but by touching both [extremes, in this case, of virtue] at the same time, and filling everything in between” (Pascal 1865, 1, 185). Elsewhere, the marking of S 129 (“The more hands one employs, the stronger one is. One’s elegance displays one’s power”) suggests a concern for the beautification that may be a consequence of mastery, as well as the value of tension and restraint. Further, the marginal stroke alongside S 134 includes a defence of objections to maltreatment on the basis of personal pride: “[A] man who receives a slap without being angry is overwhelmed with abuse and scorn.”

As Marco Brusotti (1997, 200–225; 208 and following pages) has noted, the importance of the feeling of power and the cultivation of personal spiritual tension moves to the center of Nietzsche’s thinking during the composition of Daybreak, and never loses this importance thereafter. Power and spiritual tension assume this role as a response to what Nietzsche sees as the waning influence of Christianity, which had previously functioned as a major source of inculcated self-discipline. Nietzsche’s response also explains a significant portion of the importance he finds in Pascal. Christianity was responsible for engendering a tremendously potent spiritual tension in certain human beings, as well as the cultivation of the strength to bear that tension. The end of Christianity means the loss of this potency and strength (Brusotti 1997, 210). We have noted already that for Nietzsche, Pascal is “the glorious sign” of the “magnificent tension of the bow” of the European soul, as a consequence of Christianity (Nachlass 1885, 34[163], Nietzsche 1999, 11.475). This amounts to the discovery in Pascal (who “laughed the Jesuits to death” [11.475]) of a vast libido dominandi, a pleasure in self-mastery, alongside his libido sciendi. The loss of Christianity therefore leaves this triumphant, mocking Pascal as the spiritual high point, so to speak, which Nietzsche’s “new passion” (Daybreak 429), the passion of knowledge, must not only match but surpass.²¹ To put it another way, Nietzsche identifies with Pascal’s passion and strength, which he knows is crucial for his own purposes. This relation underlies Nachlass 1880, 7[262]: “Comparison with Pascal: Do we not have our strength in self-conquest, just like him? He in favour of God, we in favour of honesty? Certainly: an ideal to tear man away from the world and from himself makes for the most unheard-of tensions, it is a permanent self-contradiction down to the depths of existence, a beatific resting over oneself, in the contempt of everything that is called ‘ego’” (Nietzsche 1999, 9.372).²²

The third element of Pascal’s embryonish nature is the mockery with which he “laughed the Jesuits to death” (Nachlass 1885, 34[163], Nietzsche 1999, 11.475). In our view, this mockery amounts to a vocalization of a particular relationship to the problem of existence, whereby the tragedy and comedy of life are held in tension with one another. Such laughter is possible only for those individuals who are strong enough to bear this spiritual tension: “With Pascal we find for the first time in France la raillerie sinistre et tragique—la comédie et la tragédie tout ensemble.’ On the Provinciales” (Nachlass 1884, 26[443], Nietzsche 1999, 11.268).²³ It ought to be noted that it is only the “intact” Pascal of the Provincial Letters who is said to laugh in this manner, and not the later author of the Pensées, in whom mirth is almost absent.²⁴ This presence and absence of laughter fits with Nietzsche’s treatment of, on one hand, a strong Pascal (in whom the tension of the bow remains intact and whose enjoyment of his own power, coupled with his strength in the face of the problem of existence, produced a certain type of laughter in response), and the slack-souled, broken Pascal, on the other (the victim and Missgeburt, ruined by the object of his love).

Fourth and finally, Nietzsche highlights pensée S 567, which conceptualizes and problematizes the self in a manner that, in the absence of Pascal’s Christian solution to it, is remarkably close to Nietzsche’s own view of human subjectivity:

A man stands at a window to {see the people passing by; I pass by; can I say he stood there to see me? No, for he is not thinking of me in particular. But what about a person who loves someone for the sake of her beauty, does he love her? No, for smallpox, which will destroy beauty without destroying the person, will put an end to his love for her. And if someone loves me for my judgement or my memory, do they love me, myself? No, for I could lose these qualities without losing my self. So where is this self [Wo ist also dieses Ich], if it is neither in the body nor the soul? And how can one love the body or the soul except for the sake of such qualities, which are not what makes up the self, since they are perishable? Would we love the substance of a person’s soul, in the abstract, whatever qualities might be in it? That is not possible, and it would be wrong.} Therefore we never love a person, but only their qualities. (Pascal 1865, 1, 190)²⁵

According to William Wood, here Pascal establishes “a negative ontology of the self” (2010, 421). As Wood observes, contrary to the Cartesian view of the self as an autonomous agent separate from both its own body and the wider world, “Pascal takes it for granted that to be a self is to be embedded in a network of relations, a world. . . . Alone, I am ‘I’ but I need others to be ‘me’” (2010, 420). Furthermore, the transient qualities of the person—beauty, judgement, health, memory—must not be identified with the “authentic” self. Crucially however, for Pascal this “authentic” self is constituted not by some abstract “substance” of the individual (as the classical tradition, depending on Aristotle, would have it), but by the active presence of Christ. It is Christ alone who orders and structures the elements of the individual person—that is, of the Christian believer—and who provides the only definitive means by which one may be directed away from the sinfulness and ruinous divertissement of everyday, profane existence. The “negative ontology” of the self set out by Pensée 567 is a picture of the self as it must be construed when Christ is not included as its definitive compositional factor: “We are told that the self is not isolated from the world, not fully autonomous, not exclusively an agent, and not a unitary, imperishable substance” (2010, 421). The self, then, is always embedded within the world of human relations, is not exclusively an “actor” but also sometimes that which is “acted,” and whatever unity it possesses is not grounded in a metaphysical conception of substance, but, in its authentic expression, in the imperishableness of Christ, who is both in and beyond ourselves, who is “both ourselves and not us” (S 471).²⁶

What is of interest here is that, without its Christological solution, the nature of the Pascalian self is strikingly close to Nietzsche’s own conception: a non-unified multiplicity, wholly of the world, never wholly under our own control, and lacking any kind of metaphysical substance. Nietzsche alludes to Pascal’s fear of this subjectivity—for him, the subjectivity of the damned—at Nachlass 1887, 9[182], Nietzsche 1999, 12.445: “‘Without the Christian faith,’ thought Pascal, ‘you, no less than nature and history, will become un monstre et un chaos.’” This is a reference to pensée S 164, which asserts that in the absence of knowledge of God through Christ, all possibility of understanding ourselves is lost: “What a chimera then is man! What a surprise, what a monster, what chaos. . . . Who will unravel this tangle? . . . Man transcends man.”²⁷

In this section we have argued that Nietzsche discerns a spiritual pregnancy in Pascal, whose libidos sciendi and dominandi, tragi-comic, mocking laughter, and conception of subjectivity, constitute the principal elements of this embryonish nature and anticipate major features of Nietzsche’s conception of the philosopher of the future. That Nietzsche understands Pascal in this manner, and also that, as we noted at the start, this spiritual pregnancy ultimately ends in failure, is shown by his claim that Pascal “died only thirty years too soon to be able to scornfully laugh about Christianity itself from his magnificent bitter-malicious soul, as he had done it about the Jesuits earlier when he was younger” (Nachlass 1885, 34[148], Nietzsche 1999, 11.470).²⁸ In short, something of great importance was gestating in Pascal, and it is a key feature of his value to Nietzsche that the embryo Pascal carried within himself was unable to be brought to term.

However, while this failure is a key feature of Nietzsche's Pascal, it is not obvious how it ought to be understood. For example, the loss of the embryo of the future thinker presumably represents for Nietzsche a negative event, and it is true that he eventually depicts Pascal as a pitiful figure, destroyed by his faith (Anti-Christ 5, Nietzsche 1999, 6.171). Yet, Nietzsche also expresses an apparently sincere gratitude for all that Pascal’s way of going zu Grunde taught him (Nietzsche to Georg Brandes, 20 November 1888, Nr. 1151, Sämtliche Briefe 8.483). Consequently, we must now examine more closely Nietzsche’s attitude toward Pascal’s peculiar kind of perishing.

Pascal: “eine sublime Missgeburt” (Beyond Good and Evil, 5.83)

Kann ein Packesel tragisch sein? – Daß man unter einer Last zu Grunde geht, die man weder tragen, noch abwerfen kann?

Nachlass 1888, 15[118], Nietzsche 1999, 13.479.

In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche provides a brief account of his admiration of and relation to both old and new French writers, such as Montaigne, Molière, Stendhal, and Anatole France. Of Pascal, he writes:

I do not read Pascal, but love him as Christianity’s most instructive victim, slowly assassinated, first physically, then psychologically, the whole logic of this most horrible form of inhuman cruelty . . . . (Ecce Homo, Why I am so clever 3, Nietzsche 1999, 6.285)

If we take Nietzsche’s sustained engagement with Pascal into account, two aspects of this passage from Ecce Homo are notable: the way in which Pascal is presented as a victim of Christianity, and the unequivocal affection Nietzsche expresses towards him. Pascal, then, is not only the most gruesome, but also the most touching example of the destructive “logic” in Christianity. In what follows we wish to focus on understanding the implications of presenting Pascal as the victim of the most gruesome downfall, and the nature of the love Nietzsche expresses toward him. Given its target—a man destroyed—might this love be related to the love Zarathustra feels, when he declares his love for the one who perishes? But also: what is this downfall, and how does it result from the “logic” of Christianity? What is this logic, and what makes it so specifically horrible?²⁹ To begin answering these questions, let us briefly situate this passage from EH within the broader context of Nietzsche’s engagement with Pascal.

As noted, Nietzsche’s tone and attitude toward Pascal changes significantly across his texts, and it is not until Beyond Good and Evil that the thought appears that there is something terrifying, gruesome, outrageous, or simply horrible in the case of Pascal.³⁰ Once this facet appears, however, it remains a consistent feature of Nietzsche’s depiction of him. In §46, for example, Nietzsche says that Pascal exemplifies “in a terrifying way” what he calls “an everlasting suicide of reason” (Nietzsche 1999, 5.66), and he denounces what he considers to be the cruelty underlying the kind of sacrifice this form of faith demands from believers, namely, the “sacrifice of all freedom, of all pride, of all the certainties of the mind [Selbstgewissheit des Geistes].” There is no “love” here, in Nietzsche’s attitude toward Pascal. Further, and significantly, in §229, Nietzsche relates the cruelty of this “Pascalian sacrifizio dell’intelletto” to the pleasure knowers experience via the self-directed cruelty involved in the process of coming to know.³¹ By relating this (specifically Christian) cruelty-towards-oneself with the Redlichkeit and intellektuellen Sauberkeit of the modern scientific conscience (through which Christianity itself would be overcome), Nietzsche is pointing towards the discovery he made in The Genealogy of Morals, namely that his own Redlichkeit, the very seriousness and honesty that led him to develop his particular critique of Christian morality, stems from Christianity itself (II 27).³² In Beyond Good and Evil, however, unlike in Daybreak (where Nietzsche had stressed the similarities between both his and Pascal’s passion and readiness to sacrifice, though with opposite results), Nietzsche instead insists on how this passion and perseverance lead Pascal into a failed birth, or “miscarriage.”³³ This failure seems to be Pascal’s inability to reject his faith, even as it damaged him; it was a burden he could neither carry without such damage, nor throw off.³⁴

Conversely, while Nietzsche’s remarks in Beyond Good and Evil express horror at the sight of Pascal, they do not present him as a victim, and the love or personal closeness evident in Ecce Homo are absent. Arguably, Nietzsche describes the distanced position he views Pascal from when, in Beyond Good and Evil 62, he writes:

Suppose we could contemplate the oddly painful and equally crude and subtle comedy of European Christianity with the mocking and aloof eyes of an Epicurean god, I think our amazement and laughter would never end: doesn’t it seem that a single will dominated Europe for eighteen centuries—to turn man into a sublime miscarriage [sublime Missgeburt]? (Nietzsche 1999, 5.83)

In this text Pascal is the “example” of the shocking consequence, for European humanity en masse, as well as for particular individuals, of centuries spent practicing life according to Christian values. The “sublimity” of the European human being seems strongly connected to its spiritual potency, its “tensed bow” (Nachlass 1885, 34[163], Nietzsche 1999, 11.475), including, for some, an increase in psychological acuity (Nachlass 1887, 10[57], Nietzsche 1999, 12.488); its miscarriage concerns the enfeeblement and ruination of the “non-herd animals” who live under such conditions of life (Nachlass 1886, 7[6], Nietzsche 1999, 12.280). Yet this image of human Missgeburt is still far from the gruesomeness of Ecce Homo, or indeed the disturbing, vampiric figure Nietzsche depicts in Twilight of the Idols.³⁵

When in Ecce Homo Nietzsche states his love for Pascal, in the passage quoted above, both the perspective and tone have changed: from the supposedly impersonal, almost disaffected disappointment of an Epicurean god, to a personal narrative of affection and admiration towards someone who has suffered the effects, through his faith, of an appalling logic of “unmenschlicher Grausamkeit” (Ecce Homo, Why I am so clever 3, Nietzsche 1999, 6.285). And, although it seems undeniable that Nietzsche’s feelings are sincere, there is also something disturbing about why he loves Pascal, for he seems to love him not only as a victim, but because he is a victim, that is, because he failed. But why would such gruesome destruction be the cause of Nietzsche’s love for him? On the face of it, it is unclear how we are to make sense of such a claim.

We find some clues as to how to think about these questions in a Nachlass note written a few months before Ecce Homo. Here, Nietzsche refers to Pascal as an example of that terrifying form of succumbing—“jene schauerliche Art des Zugrundegehens” (Nachlass 1887, 11[55], Nietzsche 1999, 13.28)—that consists in “perishing from the excesses of self-hatred and self-abuse [an den Ausschweifungen der Selbstverachtung und der Selbstmißhandlung zu Grunde gehn]” (13.28). As in Beyond Good and Evil 229, Nietzsche thematizes here the specific way in which cruelty and pleasure are intertwined in Christianity, where they take the form of a pleasure that comes from inflicting pain upon oneself; the difference in this note, however, is the insight that those who perish from this treatment are not the weak, but precisely the most noble and strong individuals. It is therefore because of this destruction of the finest and highest human types by Christianity that, as Nietzsche puts it:

One should never forgive Christianity for having brought down [zu Grunde gerichtet] such men as Pascal. One should not stop fighting against precisely this about Christianity, namely that it has the will to break [zerbrechen] the strongest and most noble men. One should not be at peace until this one thing has not been destroyed from head to toe [in Grund un Boden]: the ideal of man, erected by Christianity. (Nietzsche 1999, 13.27)³⁶

What becomes clear in this passage is that Nietzsche’s crusade against Christianity is in the name of the most strong and sublime souls, that is, those who constitute the “more desiring, evil, defiant, exuberant and therefore also a hundred times more endangered type of human” (13.27). Yet, more importantly, it is just as evident that, far from eschewing Christianity as the inimical practice of life it supposedly is, these strong human types have passionately embraced, incorporated, and enacted the Christian faith, and thereby succumbed to the destructive effect of its values—values imposed on them by those who think they themselves represent “the ideal, the goal, the measure, and highest desired goal for humanity as such,” but in reality represent “the small, humble misbegotten born soul, the virtuous average-and-herd man” (13.28). The strong are drawn to Christianity’s engagement, in principle, with the problem of existence, yet they thereby incorporate values that were formulated by, and can only benefit, the weak.

It is this form of going zu Grunde that we must understand, but it is strange. For one, here Nietzsche speaks of Christianity as an active, malevolent force (possessing a “will to break” the strong). While this characterization does not contradict the position he develops in The Genealogy of Morals (which sees Christianity as the result of weak individuals’ attempts to take revenge on the strong), it does represent a change in perspective (from Christianity as an expression of impotence, to the use of Christianity by the weak to break others). In any case, the later Nietzsche is concerned with the ruinous effect of Christianity on the strong. Consequently, toward the end of the Nachlass note in question, Nietzsche writes:

What is it we combat in Christianity? That it wants to break the strong, that it wants to discourage their courage, exploit their bad hours and their occasional weariness, convert their proud assurance into unease and distress of conscience, that it knows how to poison and sicken the noble instincts until their strength, their will to power turns backward, against itself—until the strong perish from the excesses of self-hatred and self-abuse: that gruesome way of perishing [jene schauerliche Art des Zugrundegehens] of which Pascal provides the most illustrious example. (Nietzsche 1999, 13.28)

These claims lead to the second strange aspect of the supposedly ruinous nature of the Christian faith. As Parr has explored elsewhere (2022), while Nietzsche regarded him as a victim of Christianity, Pascal did not think of himself as such (notwithstanding the fact that Pascal understood his afflictions to be an expression of divine will that had a clear penal component (Parr 2022, 112–114)). On the contrary, Pascal effusively praises God for all that he believed He had given him, including his disabilities.³⁷ Yet in an important way, Nietzsche also did not understand Pascal in this manner, because it becomes clear that, from the point of view of Ecce Homo and his late Nachlass, Nietzsche cannot, and does not, regard Pascal’s downfall as a wholly negative event. Indeed, the very notion of a schauerliche Art des Zugrundegehens suggests that Nietzsche distinguishes between different ways of zu-Grunde-gehen.³⁸ The question, then, is whether Nietzsche gives us any hints as to what the “right” way of perishing might be. After all, it does seem clear that he regards some forms of zu Grunde gehen as not only inevitable, but necessary, such as the destruction of all “great things” according to “the law of necessary ‘self-overcoming [Selbstüberwindung]’ in the nature of life” (Genealogy of Morals III 27, Nietzsche 1999, 5.410).

In the following two sections, we address this question by reinscribing it into our initial enquiry concerning the puzzling thought that Zarathustra loves those who want their own downfall, and the meaning of this thought for Nietzsche’s projected transvaluation of values. In order to understand how to think of this kind of love, and the role (or roles) it plays in that process of transvaluation, we pay attention to the relation between what appear to be opposite moments in Nietzsche’s thought: namely destruction, critique, and going zu Grunde, on the one hand, and, construction, creation, love and care, on the other.

Life(-affirmation), zu Grunde gehen and Critique from Daybreak to Zarathustra

The passages discussed earlier from the late Nachlass and Ecce Homo show us a somewhat unusually “protective” and “loving” Nietzsche. Pascal is presented as a noble soul succumbing to the deadly powers of Christianity. In this sense, it is not his weakness, or even “weakness” in general that is problematized or criticized.³⁹ Instead, the message is that it is “our” task to defend such potential targets, as Pascal was, from the dangers of Christianity: “one should never forgive Christianity for having destroyed [zu Grunde gerichtet] such men as Pascal . . . . ” We interpret this moment of dedicated care within the overall dynamic economy of critique, however, not as a rarity, but as an essential element in Nietzsche’s thought: an indispensable moment in the process of critique and transvaluation of values—even if it is not always explicit in the same ways throughout Nietzsche’s works, and even if critique does not always come across as a caring and protective enterprise, and often seems to take the form of an inexorable war:⁴⁰ “One should not be at peace until this one thing has not been destroyed from head to toe [in Grund un Boden]: the ideal of man, erected by Christianity” (Nietzsche 1999, 13.27).

For sure, Nietzsche is known for being the philosopher of conflict, a provocateur, who always seems to rhyme peace and tranquillity with weakness, decay, and stagnation. For Nietzsche, a life worth living is a life of struggle, dangers and risks, and a good deal of larger or smaller zu Grunde gehens, too.⁴¹ At the same time, though, it would be wrong to think of Nietzsche as a philosopher of danger for the sake of danger. Nietzsche is not an advocate of recklessness.⁴² Thus, while we agree with readings that stress the open-ended and antidogmatic character of Nietzsche’s project, the entire process of transvaluation, especially the critical, destructive, aspect of it, cannot be conceived of as being without direction altogether. Nietzsche may not be willing to spell out what the outcome should look like, but he does give us some ideas as to how it should not be (as we have seen in the case of Pascal, for instance). Or to put it differently, and this is our contention: in order to make sense of the relation between what seem to be discrete and opposite moments in Nietzsche’s project (critique, destruction, rejection on the one hand; creation, construction, affirmation, dedication, care, on the other) it must be already in the former that we will have to find the latter.

However, the relation and tensions between the two moments are not the same throughout Nietzsche’s works. Nietzsche’s thought changes. And it is in this sense too, that the case of Pascal proves to be of particular interest, precisely because of the shift we have seen (from Daybreak and Beyond Good and Evil to Ecce Homo and the late Nachlass, Nietzsche 1999, 13) in Nietzsche’s response to Pascal’s “downfall” or zu Grunde gehen. We claim that this shift reveals the instantiation of a form of love that is very close to the one Zarathustra expresses when he says that he loves those who (want to) perish.⁴³ It is this love, we believe, that infuses and, in a way, guides the reassessment or reinterpretation of Pascal’s “downfall”—which cannot be regarded any longer as a wholly negative event, as we saw earlier. In order to understand the significance of this gesture and the different layers that are at play, we believe it is helpful to consider the ways in which those two opposed moments (of critique, negation, destruction, on the one hand, and construction, transformation, affirmation and care on the other) interrelate in Nietzsche’s texts; and how Nietzsche’s thought becomes more complex as both moments become ever more entwined with one another. For this, in the following two sections, we shall focus on passages from Daybreak, Gay Science, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

There is, for certain, something quite straightforward in the idea that the construction or creation of something new necessarily involves destruction of some sort; and we see this thought taking different forms throughout Nietzsche’s texts. It is at the very core of his critique of metaphysics and his conception of life as becoming. Life is change, and change involves, at the very least, letting go of what has become useless to make space for the new. The snake must discard its old skin to continue living. But Nietzsche never stays at this, let us say, purely biological or zoological level.⁴⁴ Thus, when, towards the end of Daybreak, he uses the image of the snake, what he really is talking about is how important it is that one changes their mind:

Sloughing one’s skin. – The snake that cannot slough its skin, perishes [geht zu Grunde]. Likewise spirits who are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be spirits. (573, Nietzsche 1999, 3.330)

Nietzsche connects here the notion of life (as becoming and incorporating change) with the notion of “Geister,” that is, spiritual, thinking beings. In doing so, Nietzsche invites us to imagine a form of (human) life that is closer to death than to life to the extent that it is unable to incorporate change on a spiritual level, that is, to change its opinions (Meinungen). The snake dies if it does not change its skin, but (thus goes the simile) we stop being thinking beings if we remain fixed in the same opinions. (What we thereby become—lifeless spirits? herdlike creatures? —is left for us to consider.) In any case, what begins as a merely descriptive account of the fundamental becoming or changing character of all forms of life, becomes something else. For, the second part of this short aphorism cannot be read as a mere descriptive account of what happens if we don’t change. And it also seems clear that this change will not just happen to us, like it “happens” to the snake.⁴⁵ There is a strong normative dimension at play, and Nietzsche’s point seems to be that, to the extent that we want to live as thinking beings (and it is assumed that we do), we have to engage in processes of change: not only at a biological level, but more importantly, we have to be prepared to (repeatedly) change the way in which, and what we think. The simile with the snake’s skin, moreover, also suggests that while embracing this change might seem to us daunting or unpleasant, it is necessary for us to continue being (or perhaps, to become for the first time) self-affirming, thinking beings. This ability to change is, for sure, something that Nietzsche found lacking in Pascal.⁴⁶

We would like to use this short aphorism to highlight two aspects that we consider to be characteristic of the way Nietzsche approaches and uses the notion of zu Grunde gehen in Daybreak, as well as how he presents the relation between critique/negation/death and creation/affirmation/life. On the one hand, Daybreak is infused by an unequivocal and uncompromising commitment to life and life-affirmation.⁴⁷ It is in the name of life and through the lens of life that Nietzsche—quite vehemently—carries out his analysis and equally uncompromising critique and rejection of Christian values. This perspective, even if not always explicit, is surely an important guiding force for the analysis that translates values into the language of drives, and evaluates the latter according to their capacity to strengthen or weaken “us” (or perhaps rather life itself in us).⁴⁸ Those that weaken us, such as pity, must be rejected—lest we should perish through them.⁴⁹ But this critique, negation and rejection of Christian values and beliefs is what enables us to imagine or anticipate other values,⁵⁰ as is implied in the following dialogue: “B: You have just stopped being a sceptic! For you negate! —A: And thus I have learnt again to say yes.” (Daybreak 477, Nietzsche 1999, 3.284). However, even if what motivates the critique is (life)affirmation—and not just blind negation—the critique itself remains separate from the moment of affirmation and construction of new life-affirming values. Negation and creation are part of the same process, but they are conceived as distinctively separate and opposite moments.

On the other hand, as argued earlier, what is truly at stake for Nietzsche, is not bare life, but life to the extent that it cultivates, incorporates, and is able to increase knowledge; because knowledge, and self-knowledge specifically (that is, a knowledge that is born from digging deep into what had always remained obscure⁵¹), is the very means through which critique is carried out in the first place. Knowledge has a transformative power, and hence, just as the values that weakened us were rejected, those thoughts, ideas, beliefs that prove to be based on false beliefs and superstitions will be almost ipso facto abandoned too.⁵² From this point of view, knowledge acquires a very particular position, because although it is committed to life and life-affirmation, it is, necessarily and above all committed to itself. As Nietzsche puts it in Daybreak 429, we now realize that (this new) knowledge “fears nothing but its own extinction” (Nietzsche 1999, 3.264). Knowledge, as we saw in the sections above, is (or has now become) a “passion” [Leidenschaft] for us (3.264). And for Nietzsche this means, in the first instance, that we cannot, as knowers, rid ourselves from this drive, we cannot put it aside or unlearn and unsee what we have seen, go backwards. And, secondly, it also means that we, as knowers, are in effect prepared to sacrifice everything for it. As becomes clear in Daybreak 429, “perhaps mankind will even perish [zu Grunde geht] of this passion for knowledge!” (Nietzsche 1999, 3.265).

In Daybreak 429, Nietzsche provocatively plays with the Christian notion of sacrifice. However, the idea is not that the seeker of knowledge must or will perish for the sake of knowledge, but rather that they must be prepared to do so. It is a heroic, passionate pathos of risks and adventure that is being invoked here. As was the case in the passage we commented on earlier, the idea is not that the “Geister” sacrifice themselves and perish, but that they change their opinions and grow—that they flourish as Geister. We can see in a Nachlass note from the period of Daybreak, that what is rejected and abandoned, what must die, are specific thoughts, ideas, values, opinions.⁵³ Conversely, the dangers and the risks that Nietzsche alludes to are the risks of thinking differently, abandoning known and safe places (and values), and to fully living this new passion with all its consequences (precisely the risk Pascal was unable to take).⁵⁴

From this point of view, one could ask to what extent failure and sacrifice really are the traits of this “new passion” embodied by the seeker of knowledge we find in Daybreak?⁵⁵ Because it is one thing to want and to be prepared to risk everything and go through some (more or less fundamental) changes; another quite different thing is to want to perish and actually go zu Grunde. Put differently: if we compare the way Nietzsche portrays the figure of the heroic knower in Daybreak with the figure and attitude that is invoked by Zarathustra, we find important differences; for Zarathustra does not say that he loves the one who risks everything and abandons safe shores, but rather that he loves the one who “wants his downfall” and “does not want to preserve himself [will sich nicht bewahren]” and in this way “perishes” (Zarathustra, Prologue, Nietzsche 1999, 4.17).

Before we move to Zarathustra, however, we would like to look at an aphorism in Gay Science, where Nietzsche already adopts a different perspective from the one developed in Daybreak; and one that prepares the ground for Zarathustra’s love. It is in Gay Science 307: In favour of criticism [Zu Gunsten der Kritik]:

—Now, something that you formerly loved as a truth or a probability appears to you as an error: you cast it off and believe your reason has made a victory. But maybe that error was as necessary for you then, when you were still another person—you are always another person—as all your present “truths” are now. Like a skin that concealed and covered many things you did not dare to see yet. It is your new life that has killed that opinion for you, not your reason: you don't need it anymore, and now it collapses and unreason crawls out of it into the light like a worm. When we criticize, we are not doing something arbitrary and impersonal; it is, at least very often, proof that there are living, active forces within us shedding skin. We negate and have to negate because something in us wants to live and affirm itself, something we might not yet know or see! —This in favour of criticism (Gay Science 307, Nietzsche 1999, 3.544–545).

There are indeed strong parallels, but also important differences between this aphorism and the passages seen earlier in Daybreak. By linking the need to change old opinions (Meinungen) that are no longer useful with the need to discard old skin, this aphorism almost reads as a direct commentary, a self-critique, of Daybreak 573. If in Daybreak Nietzsche seemed to be proposing that we should engage in processes of change—so as not to perish qua thinking beings—in Gay Science, in contrast, the thought is rather that thinking itself is a product (a symptom) of life.⁵⁶ (And not just of “life” in general, as an impersonal, abstract concept, but of a particular unity or conglomerate of forces with their very specific, concrete needs and desires to live.) Every “opinion,” every “truth” reflects the needs we have at a specific moment of our life. From this new perspective, thus, it is not (merely) about embracing change, but rather about learning to think of “reason” (with its “truths” and “errors”) as a function and a result of life—which in turn is understood as crystallizing in living unities of a plurality of forces.

The idea that reason may be “reduced” to, or reinterpreted in the language of “living, active forces [lebendige treibende Kräfte]” is akin to Nietzsche’s use of the notion of drives in Daybreak, and more concretely, to the insight that knowledge is a passion. And yet, it is as if these insights only now acquired their full meaning, namely: that the products of knowledge (“truths,” “opinions” and so on) are the response to the specific needs of “something in us that wants to live”—and not the result of some “impersonal,” independent argumentative process whereby “errors” are identified and eliminated according to reason. It is not reason that shapes life, but the other way round: “It is your new life that has killed that opinion for you, not your reason,” writes Nietzsche. But this means, then, that “errors” only become such, can only be identified as such, once the need that had invoked them in the first place changes or disappears altogether, as a new life with other needs is emerging.

To be clear: our claim is not that the approach that thinks of the relation between reason and errors in terms of vital “needs” and our responses to them is inexistent in Daybreak or previous texts.⁵⁷ But in Gay Science the consequences of this insight are taken on more seriously, and they become essential for Nietzsche’s way of (re)thinking and (re-)formulating the complex relation between knowledge and life. In effect, with this move, it is as if Nietzsche had removed the ground beneath our feet once again. For, if reason is now interpreted in this way (that is, as a mere response to the needs of a particular form of life), the inevitable question seems to be: what space is there then left for knowledge, truth, reason? Where to locate this very insight, and what kind of knowledge is still possible? Addressing these questions would go beyond the scope of this paper;⁵⁸ of interest for us now, however, is to see how this new critical approach directly affects the way in which we relate to “errors” or “mistakes” from the past. And in this way, it opens up new ways of understanding change, transformation, negation, and critique. Indeed, while mere “erroneous” opinions (Meinungen) can be negated, rejected, and corrected, or derided with contempt with relative ease,⁵⁹ previous needs of the very living being that we once were can no longer be rejected in the same way—lest we totally negate ourselves.⁶⁰ Or, we could say: lest we go zu Grunde. For these mistakes were necessary for us at a given moment (and from that perspective “true”⁶¹). In the context of the project of life-affirmation, the language or the perspective of needs demands that we take a different, more affirmative, and arguably also reconciliatory approach to ourselves, that is, to our erroneous reasons, values, and beliefs. Moreover, it requires us to develop an awareness of the “heritage” of our past views and actions and an understanding of ourselves as being both fated to our “errors” as to our “correct” insights. This is indeed a problematic that Nietzsche thematizes from a more existential point of view (and not so much perhaps from the point of view of the knower-scientist-philosopher) in Zarathustra, in chapters such as “The Grave Song,” “On Redemption,” or “On Self-Overcoming,” as we will later see.

This “new” perspective or critical approach we are describing, however, is not presented as one and the same, but instead emerges intermittently throughout the book as a bunch of slightly different perspectives (for example, the perspective of the preservation of the species, the perspective of the organism, and so forth). We interpret these discontinuous perspectives as different attempts at articulating or envisioning total affirmation, but without blurring or undermining the overall critical project, that is, without losing the moments of negation and critique.⁶² Thus, these intermittent “broad” perspectives enable us to retrospectively embrace (past) mistakes for the sake of them being the expression or result of “true” life-enabling demands. But, because these demands are never abstract but are interwoven with other more concrete perspectives (of this concrete form of life), we are forced to confront the lack of an absolute standpoint from which to make such judgments after all. Knowledge itself, unlike in Daybreak 429, cannot offer us the standpoint of evaluation, because its stability or “neutrality” has been dismantled (“when we criticize, we are not doing something arbitrary and impersonal,” Gay Science 307, Nietzsche 1999, 3.545). But “life” itself also fails to provide us with such a standpoint, because we are never really dealing with “life itself,” but rather with specific forms or forces of life, with their specific needs—and, hence, what is life-enhancing and/or life-threatening cannot be thought of in absolute terms.⁶³

Now, the result of this is that the critical task can no longer be to identify (in order to reject) “errors” in our beliefs, nor even to identify whether the values we are attached to are “in themselves” life-enhancing and or life-weakening. Instead, we contend, the critical re-evaluation (to the extent that it remains immanent and yet appeals to an external standpoint) can only take the form of an inquiry into the past and a questioning or anticipating of the future.⁶⁴ In other words, the task GS leaves us with is to engage in the experiment that demands that we analyze the kind of life-forms that “created”—that is, that must have needed—the values, beliefs, truths we adhere to, by asking: what is the nature of these needs, where are they coming from, lack or abundance?⁶⁵ But this retrospective, genealogical (descriptive) analysis is at the same time re-directed to the future, as it makes us reflect on the fact that we must also, or perhaps even already are, without knowing, anticipating our response to the needs of future life forms. Hence the penultimate sentence: “We negate and have to negate because something in us wants to live and affirm itself, something we might not yet know or see!” (Gay Science 307, Nietzsche 1999, 3.545).

In sum, contrasting The Gay Science with Daybreak, we can thus appreciate how in The Gay Science Nietzsche is invested in understanding and performing critique as a process that is wholly intrinsic to life. This entails a new way of dealing with error, mistakes, and even disasters—which now become part of one’s past, and hence, in a way demand that we develop a new form of love.⁶⁶ It also means that the process of critique (negation, rejection, and so forth) is interwoven with and cannot be separated from creation and affirmation, although it is perhaps unclear what the result of this affirmation may look like. In the first instance, it seems safe to assume that affirmation takes the form of a new form of knowledge: a gay science. And although we cannot do justice to the complexities of understanding what this new science actually is or promises, we can say that it involves an affirmation of taking risks and adventure⁶⁷ —though not as a consequence of our passion for knowledge (as in Daybreak 429), but in a certain way, more radically, out of a passion for life and a desire to gain further insights into it. Or as Nietzsche articulates it in book V,⁶⁸ “as the expression of an overflowing energy pregnant with the future” (Gay Science 370, Nietzsche 1999, 3.621). Thus, critique and affirmation become intertwined in the form of an experiment, as life becomes an experiment for the knower (Gay Science 324: In media vita). From this optic, errors are not just errors for the knower to reject and feel ashamed of, but something to learn from, because they always tell us something new about life. It is because of this also that this new form of understanding the relation between life and knowledge is liberating, affirmative, and ultimately inspires a new form of living: “‘Life as a means to knowledge’—with this principle in one’s heart one can not only live bravely but also live gaily and laugh gaily!” (Gay Science 325, Nietzsche 1999, 3.553). And yet, the result of this movement is that it becomes ever more tricky to distinguish the descriptive from the normative. The task left for us is indeed rather unclear: is it merely that we understand that we are part of that necessary process and embrace it (amor fati), or that we take control and monitor or style it (Gay Science 290)? And if the latter, following what criteria?

In our nextsection we show how the movement that we have traced between Daybreak and The Gay Science is accelerated, and how the problems we have highlighted are intensified in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where the question of negation and affirmation, critique and creation takes the form of a critique of values and a demand that we create new ones. It is also in this final section that we introduce pregnancy as a cipher necessary to understand the way in which Nietzsche thinks, ever more clearly, about the relation between critique and creativity.

Transvaluation, Self-Overcoming, and Critique in Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Although the notion of a “transvaluation of all values” (Umwertung aller Werte) does not appear literally in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, the thought that critique should culminate in a creative process that changes our values and truths is surely one of the main teachings of the book. More or less playfully, more or less joyfully, Zarathustra is constantly calling his readers to overcome ourselves, to become creators of new (life affirming) values.⁶⁹ Sometimes it feels as if it really is very simple—almost too simple, a child’s uncomplicated play—such as when Zarathustra cries: “Willing liberates: for to will is to create. Thus I teach you. And you should just learn to create!” (Zarathustra, Tables, Nietzsche 1999, 4.258). But, in the end, it is not as straightforward as it seems: not even for Zarathustra, who also doubts, breaks down and gets it wrong: “A seer, a willer, a creator, a future himself and a bridge to the future—and alas, also a cripple at this bridge: all that is Zarathustra” (Zarathustra, Redemption, Nietzsche 1999, 4.179).

We began our paper by highlighting that one of the main difficulties of how Nietzsche-Zarathustra imagines the processes of transvaluation and self-overcoming of the human lies in the way in which Zarathustra seems to be encouraging us to self-sacrifice and die for the Übermensch (as in: “I love those who do not know how to live unless by going under [als Untergehende], for they are the ones who cross over”; or: “I love the one who works and invents in order to build a house for the Übermensch . . . for thus he wants his going under [Untergang],” Zarathustra, Prologue 4, Nietzsche 1999, 4.17; or: “I love the one who wants to create over and above himself and thereby perishes [und so zu Grunde geht]” (Zarathustra, Creator, Nietzsche 1999, 4.83, our emphasis). Indeed, if we consider how Nietzsche’s thought is directed towards an increasingly stronger commitment to life, life-affirmation, and life-enhancement, as we have seen, this repetitive mantra in the form of a love declaration to those who go under and want their downfall remains ever more puzzling. This tension or contradiction lies not only between Zarathustra and Nietzsche’s earlier texts, but is arguably even stronger in Zarathustra itself.⁷⁰

In the chapter “On the despisers of the body,” for instance, Nietzsche-Zarathustra construes his critique of the despisers of the body (Leib) using a very similar terminology, but here, far from embracing their (hidden or unconscious) desire to go under (untergehen) and to die (sterben),⁷¹ he sees it as an indication that they are “unable to create beyond themselves [nicht mehr vermögt ihr über euch hinaus zu schaffen]” (Zarathustra, Despisers, Nietzsche 1999, 4. 41). Zarathustra then concludes: “I will not go your way, you despisers of the body! You are not my bridges to the overman [Ihr seid mir keine Brücken zum Übermenschen]!” – (4.41). To be clear, there are many elements in this chapter that can help us establish and distinguish what Nietzsche criticizes and rejects about the will to go under, characteristic of the despisers of the body. For, as he analyzes what is taking place beneath the surface of their contempt, and as he figures out why they have become such “despisers,” what Zarathustra discovers is envy,⁷² and their inability to follow their (or rather: their self’s) will: “no longer is it [the self] capable to do what it most wants: to create beyond itself” (Nietzsche 1999, 4.40).⁷³ It is because of this felt inability, and only because of it, [darum, writes Nietzsche] that their shattered self wants to die, and hence, they hate and despise the body, despise the self (that is, themselves), in other words, they despise life (“and turn away from it,” Nietzsche 1999, 4.40). Surely, it is here that we can locate the main difference between Zarathustra’s love (which includes a form of hatred and contempt),⁷⁴ and the hatred and contempt that he is cautiously distancing himself from (and rejecting). Ultimately, one could argue, it is a question of whether the process of negation and critique comes from a certain weakness or tiredness that culminates in hatred and revenge against life, or if it comes from affirming, accepting and saying “yes” to life.⁷⁵ (As we have said earlier, it is not the case that Nietzsche’s critique is indiscriminate.) And still, it remains puzzling that Nietzsche chooses to use the exact same wording to express what he hates and what he loves. Or to put it differently, what is perhaps most startling is how relatively easily one might get confused. How easily one might slide from the “right” to the “wrong” path, so to say.⁷⁶ Indeed, what remains bewildering is the idea that there could be something like a striving to go zu Grunde out of strength, and that it is not just a part of oneself, or other individuals that must be sacrificed and perish, but the very one who is actively involved in the process of transvaluation.

Our claim, as we have announced above, is that this love and such a strong affirmation of the need to go zu Grunde is best understood as the result of a process that runs across Nietzsche’s texts; a process through which Nietzsche’s own understanding of critique and its relation to life become more and more entwined. In the Prologue, section 4, where Zarathustra says how he loves those who prepare the path for the Übermensch, we interpret Nietzsche to reflect on the process through which he resumes and transforms elements from previous writings:

I love the one who lives in order to know, and who wants to know so that one day the Übermensch may live. And thus wants his downfall [Untergang]. (Nietzsche 1999, 4.17, our italics)

In these two lines, we argue, Nietzsche both echoes and goes beyond the image created in Gay Science 324, In media vita, where he presented the liberating thought that life for him would now be “a means to knowledge,” a source of dangers and experimentation, for the sake of a richer life and a richer knowledge. For in Zarathustra, Nietzsche-Zarathustra adds the thought that to truly dedicate oneself to such form of life/knowledge involves in certain ways an anticipation and preparation for future forms of (human) life, and because of this, is already dying.⁷⁷ Similarly, in Zarathustra we see how the line of thought developed in GS 307 is taken a step further: for in Zarathustra it is not just about realizing that what we now reject and criticize through the different processes of change that we undergo was at some point necessary for us, and likewise, that the reasons for which we reject something are not dictated by some impersonal “reason,” but are a response to our “new” vital needs. In addition to this, in Zarathustra, it is about realizing and fully embracing the fact that change, self-overcoming, involves death and pain, and hence, that to love and affirm life, necessarily involves to love and affirm that we must go zu Grunde (although: not out of hatred and weariness, but out of love for life); and not just partially, but totally, radically, fundamentally. Interestingly, this radical affirmation is also expressed towards the errors of the past. In effect, when it comes, in Zarathustra, to understanding and dealing with the past and the way in which we cannot undo what has already been done, Nietzsche-Zarathustra’s response is to engage in a retroactive re-affirmation and of re-possession the past in the form of “thus I willed it” (Zarathustra, Redemption, Nietzsche 1999, 4.179). Further deepening a movement of reinterpretation and incorporation of past “errors,” from Daybreak to Gay Science, in the chapter “On Redemption,” the point is not merely to integrate past errors and mistakes into the logic of life, so to say. Instead, Zarathustra shows how these “errors” must be re-affirmed and embraced, so as not to become resentful against life—and he gives us a sense of what this inner struggle actually feels like.

But the process through which zu Grunde gehen becomes identified as an essential moment of affirmative transvaluation, self-overcoming, or self-transformation is not in any way void of tensions and paradoxes. Two chapters enable us to show how Nietzsche addresses the issues from different perspectives: “On the way of the creator,” and “On self-overcoming.” In the chapter, “On the way of the creator” (which is composed in an unusual way, as a series of direct questions and remarks addressed to the reader, using the singular form, Du—whom he also calls his brother⁷⁸), Nietzsche-Zarathustra gives us an indication of what the path of the creator entails. Two main elements mark the character of this path: solitude and struggle. The path of the creator is solitary because it is the path which you alone must tread, in order to find (create) “your evil and your good” (Zarathustra, Creator, Nietzsche 1999, 4.81, our italics). It is a path that necessarily sets you (as a unique life form) aside from others and against their values. At the same time, though, the others, the community, and their values still live in you. Or as Zarathustra puts it: “The voice of the herd will still continue resonating in you” (Nietzsche 1999, 4.80); which is why this new path is also extremely difficult and painful. “It is terrible,” Zarathustra says, “to be alone with the judge and avenger of one’s own law” (Nietzsche 1999, 4.81). Gradually through the chapter, it becomes clear that the path of the creator is inevitably a path of struggle and death. To create our own laws⁷⁹ and values means to resist, negate and overcome the old voices, the inertial values and fears that tell us not to embark on such solitary paths. But the problem, of course, is that those other values that we now must negate have not always been alien to us, for they are the values we already had, the ones we inherited and interiorized, the values that have made us be what we are now. It is not surprising that what we discover at the end of this chapter is that the path of the creator is a path of death: “With my tears go into your isolation, my brother. I love him who wants to create over and beyond himself and thereby perishes” (Nietzsche 1999, 4.83).

If we compare the creative process described here with the process of critique described in Gay Science 307, we could say that, although the processes themselves may not be so different, for they are both engaging in understanding what is involved in self-critique and self-overcoming, the perspective or the “place” from which this is explained has changed—even if both texts are arguably aiming to speak from the perspective of life. Interestingly, both passages begin addressing the reader directly in the present using the rather uncommon second person singular, Du; but unlike the chapter from Zarathustra that consistently addresses the reader in the same way, in Gay Science 307 Nietzsche suddenly switches to the more general and neutral “wir,” when he comes to explain how the process of critique has been so far misunderstood and so forth. In doing so, it becomes clear that he was always addressing that imagined “Du” from a third, external position. In effect, the insights presented in The Gay Science are insights that can only have been gained retroactively, which is why Nietzsche seems to be talking above and beyond the concrete present. (In fact, one might argue, he is situating himself above and beyond life, as if life were neutral, even though the claim is that it is not, as we have seen above.) Also, in Gay Science, Nietzsche seems to be describing a process that we cannot really be aware of, a process that we generally misunderstand—so that speaker and agent are fundamentally disconnected. In the chapter “On the way of the creator,” in contrast, Nietzsche-Zarathustra addresses the one going through the process of self-transformation, but he does so from the perspective of one who is going through that same process (or is in any case very close to it), and hence is aware of what it entails and what it means from a more existential point of view. He addresses the entire process of change and creation of new values and what is involved therein as a lived, suffered experience. Addressee and speaker are in this sense on the same level, and there is therefore no disconnection between the experience addressed and the insights given, which explains perhaps the pathos (or empathy) as well as the emphasis on the pain that comes from this process of change and self-overcoming. Indeed, what Zarathustra describes here is not only change, but also the mourning that comes from realizing how one must die, how one actually does die through change. What is more: Zarathustra does not only thematize and acknowledge the pain; in a way, he also feels it, as we see towards the end: “with my tears, go into your solitude [Vereinsamung], my brother” (Nietzsche 1999, 4.83, our italics).

In other words, zu Grunde gehen is addressed from a totally new perspective, and as a result, it is wholly integrated into the process of change and self-overcoming itself (not eliminated, discarded, or belittled, like the skin or the “truths” the serpent no longer needs). In this new light, it makes sense that Zarathustra would say that he loves those who want to go zu Grunde, because it shows that they are in effect undergoing a process of self-transformation that goes hand in hand with not being able to live with values that have become inadequate and therefore life-negating.⁸⁰ To the extent that their wanting their downfall and perishing comes from the experience and acceptance of this (and not out of hatred and revenge, as we saw earlier with the despisers of the body), they are already on the way toward the Übermensch. Our claim, furthermore, is that the love that Zarathustra professes needs to be understood, at least in part, as an acknowledgment of the pain and mourning involved in that very process. It is in this sense also that we reiterate the thought we brought forth earlier, namely that love and care are essential moments in Nietzsche’s project of critique and transvaluation of all values.⁸¹ And it is in Zarathustra that this appears most strongly. This change in the way in which the other is addressed (from a less to more personal and intimate relation), is a point we emphasized for understanding the different ways Nietzsche addresses and assesses Pascal, that is, in order to understand Nietzsche’s love for him.⁸²

And yet, this is not the only perspective that Nietzsche adopts in Zarathustra. On the contrary, there are many instances in which the perspective is arguably much closer to what we encounter in Gay Science 307, namely the perspective that comes from observing life from a distance, neutrally so to say. In Zarathustra, this sometimes results in Zarathustra being scorned at by life itself, precisely for taking his sorrows and sadness too seriously.⁸³ But other times, it is Zarathustra himself who takes on this more detached perspective. In the chapter “On self-overcoming,” for instance, Nietzsche-Zarathustra addresses the wisest (Weisesten) by sharing insights about the nature of life that he has achieved after carefully observing the living with the distance of the knower.⁸⁴ The core of these insights is that life is will to power, that is, that life is always engaging in processes of self-overcoming, and hence, that underlying the will to truth (so cherished by the wisest) and underlying all our valuations,⁸⁵ as well as our commanding and obeying, lies the will to power.⁸⁶ Creating further distances, a bit like Plato in his dialogues, Nietzsche then makes Zarathustra reveal the secrets that life spoke to him: “And this secret life itself spoke to me: ‘Behold,’ it said, ‘I am that which must always overcome itself’” (Zarathustra, Self-Overcoming, Nietzsche 1999, 4.148). What is interesting about this new twist that comes from making life speak in the first person is that it enables Nietzsche to give to life a livelihood or inner complexity that we do not find in GS. For, in Gay Science (as in Daybreak) life’s necessity to overcome itself or change is just an essential part, an indissoluble aspect of life, whereas here, life seems to be expressing this necessity as an inevitable fate it must endure: “Only where life is, is there also will; but not will to life, instead—thus I teach you—will to power!” (Zarathustra, Nietzsche 1999, 4. 149). In this way, as life itself explains what it feels like to be driven by the will to power, the distance between us and (the perspective of) life is both maintained and diminished, and an unexpected, renewed intimacy between life and reader is established, for now it is plain that both share the same fate. Indeed, after saying that it cannot but overcome itself, life explains what this means from a more “personal” point of view, when it later says: “whatever I create, and however much I may love it, —soon I have to oppose it and my love: thus my will wills it” (4.149).

This sentence echoes the pain and struggle that was addressed in the chapter “On the way of the creator,” thereby creating something like a bridge between what are in effect opposite standpoints. But, at the same time, it raises anew a number of questions concerning our agency in the process of self-overcoming and the creation of new values that comes with it. If self-overcoming is an inevitable process that all living beings undergo (even life itself must obey its will), how are we to understand our role as creators of new values? How to understand Zarathustra’s suggestion that we “will with all the will” [mit allem Willen wollen] (Zarathustra, Nietzsche 1999, 4.157)? How to align this call that seems to appeal to our capability and freedom to produce change, that encourages us to engage in a critique and transformation of old (Christian, Western) values, how to align that with this other thought, namely that change takes place on its own, as it were, and that the will to power works beneath and behind the surface, that values and whatever it is that “life” creates and loves will end up undermining itself? Is it our will that wills through us, or is it us who will? In effect, it seems that Nietzsche-Zarathustra is moving between two irreconcilable positions; one that talks about an inevitable necessity taking place, and one that urges us to do something. And although these questions are not new,⁸⁷ what is new is the way in which they become central to Zarathustra, appearing again and again, embedded in the notions of love, pain, failure, perishing, self-overcoming, and will to power.

One could think of this paradox as merely mirroring the complexity of the situation that Nietzsche is denouncing, namely the nihilism that comes from living with values that are already dying, values that suffocate us and make us turn against ourselves, on the one hand, and the difficulty of the task to overcome or modify this impasse, on the other. But this interpretation remains somewhat unsatisfying. One could also take Nietzsche’s position to be one that exhorts us to engage differently in our endeavors, perhaps more lightly, like a playing child,⁸⁸ or with a renewed awareness and a certain detachment. This detachment would come from integrating the insight that everything is ultimately driven by the will to power, that everything that we now love will have to be negated, and so on. But these interpretations, apart from reading into Nietzsche a relativism that deflates his entire critical project, do not enable us to make sense of all the passages where Zarathustra directly thematizes and acknowledges the pain that comes from the process of self-overcoming and going zu Grunde. They also do not enable us to make sense of the fierce critique that is also part of his project, as we saw above, for instance, when Zarathustra rejects the despisers of the body with no reservation or ambiguity.⁸⁹ It would be wrong, we believe, to think that Nietzsche-Zarathustra is suggesting that we take a more relaxed or distanced attitude to our values in the knowledge that they will be overcome anyway. Nietzsche’s philosophy is not supposed to work as a balm.⁹⁰ As we see in the chapter “On the passions of pleasure and pain,” the point is precisely the opposite. Here Zarathustra says that we should love our virtues, because we will perish by them:

Oh my brother, have you never seen a virtue slander and stab itself? The human is something that must be overcome: and therefore you should love your virtues—for you will perish [zu Grunde gehen] through them—. (Zarathustra, Passions, Nietzsche 1999, 4.44)

In other words, the knowledge that life ends up always “opposing” what it loves, the eternally reiterating process of self-overcoming we are part of, should not be a reason for us to love less, or be less committed to what we value, but instead for us to take seriously the question regarding what values and virtues we do (want to) love.⁹¹ It is in this light also that we read the passage from the prologue, where Zarathustra says he loves the one “who makes of his virtue his addiction [Hang] and his doom [Verhängniss]: thus for the sake of his virtue he wants to live on and to live no more” (Zarathustra, Prologue, Nietzsche 1999, 4.17). Indeed, in Zarathustra, love is one of the means by which life lives itself out as an eternal process of self-overcoming, and hence, what one loves becomes of central importance, even if we know it will be ultimately overcome, and hence the reason for our going under.

And this also means that the insight into the secrets of life, namely that life is will to power, and hence always engaged in processes of self-overcoming, does not lead Nietzsche’s Zarathustra to defend some kind of Romantic, anonymous, impersonal dissolution with life.⁹² It is never about surrendering to life’s dynamics by letting go of the concrete individual; but about being able to affirm both. The paradox or the tensions between freedom and necessity, agency and passivity or serenity [Gelassenheit], initiative and receptiveness or attentiveness, the singular and the general (which are in many ways already present in Daybreak and Gay Science) are not dissolved nor weakened in Zarathustra; they are intensified. The task Zarathustra sets out for us appears thus to be an impossible task, since he asks that we simultaneously take on what seem to be irreconcilable perspectives: one that makes us focus on our most particular and unique needs in order to create our own good and evil, another that makes us conceive of ourselves as bridges to the future Übermensch, and still another that sees everything as a process that goes on by itself, so to say—to mention the most obvious ones. The question is then, how best to understand these tensions and paradoxes, and how they relate to the general project of transvaluation of all values and self-overcoming of the human?

Our claim is, in the first place, that in order to understand Nietzsche’s project in Zarathustra we must avoid the inclination to resolve, dissolve, or minimize the tensions and paradoxes, and instead acknowledge the possibility that they are to remain as such. Secondly, we suggest reading these tensions as being constitutive of the very process that Nietzsche is proposing, namely the possibility of the self-overcoming of the human as a specific relation between critique, destruction, death on the one hand, and affirmation, creativity, and love on the other. Thirdly, as we have announced from the beginning, we claim that pregnancy is the cipher necessary to understand the kind of processes that Nietzsche is describing in Zarathustra. These processes, however, must also be seen as his way of taking on further (if not resolving) questions raised in both Daybreak and The Gay Science. We believe that the notion of pregnancy enables us to better comprehend the complex role that the process of zu Grunde gehen plays in Nietzsche’s project; moreover, that pregnancy also enables us to understand how the tensions or paradoxes (between agency and passivity, freedom and necessity, and so on) could be constitutive of the very specific process of transformation that Nietzsche has in mind. Finally, the notion of pregnancy enables us to address the question regarding the criteria or lack thereof in Nietzsche’s project of transvaluation and self-transformation.

We have seen the extent to which the process of zu Grunde gehen is integrated into the project of self-overcoming and transvaluation of all values in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra;⁹³ we have seen how it can be interpreted as representing the impact in the individual of the downfall of old values and old beliefs, which is necessary for the transformation and creation of new ones. It now makes sense, we said, that Zarathustra loves those who want to go zu Grunde, because it shows the extent to which they are in effect undergoing this very disturbing and painful process of self-transformation. We have also seen how Nietzsche-Zarathustra introduces a criterion for distinguishing between different ways of going zu Grunde, one that emerges from life-negation, weariness, and envy, which is rejected and one that emerges from life-affirmation. And yet, there are still questions remaining, which have to do with understanding the precise relation between going zu Grunde, self-overcoming, or becoming the bridge to the Übermensch: If it is those engaging in processes of self-transformation and self-overcoming who are supposed to succumb, to perish, to fail, who is then doing the overcoming? How much of the self dies, and how much prevails? Indeed, is self-overcoming even possible?

It is here that the notion of pregnancy can be helpful. For, there is unquestionably something that dies in pregnancy, that goes zu Grunde, that is put aside, left behind, or pushed to the background, as the pregnant body responds to the needs of a new life growing within itself. But this death does not mean that she disappears, but instead seems to point towards a shift in the way in which she relates to herself and her actions. Pregnancy enables us to think of a process of change and transformation through which the protagonism shifts from the subject of creation to the object of creation itself. We are no longer the protagonists of our lives, and at the same time we are so, in a very strong sense, because the “object” of our creation is not an object in any way, nor a work of art, but our future selves and future others.⁹⁴ Pregnancy enables us to understand a process of change and transformation that without negating or eliminating individuality, the particular, at the same time overcomes conceptions of subjectivity centered on autonomy and identity. In this way, through the metaphor of pregnancy we can see that what dies, what must die, is the subject itself, or more precisely: a certain way of understanding agency and subjectivity. To put it differently: the process of zu Grunde gehen needs to be understood in the light of Nietzsche’s critique of the metaphysics, and in particular his critique of modern concepts of the subject, and his attempt to reconceptualize subjectivity and agency. In this way, it also becomes clear, that the problem with the questions raised above is that they presuppose the idea of a subject/agent, more or less identical to itself, who will go through the complex process of zu Grunde gehen and so on, but still remains in some way. Yet, as we can see, the process of change that Nietzsche-Zarathustra envisions includes the transformation of the very notion of such subject.

Moreover, the notion of pregnancy also enables us to understand a process of change that undermines the dichotomies between freedom/necessity, autonomy/heteronomy, agency/receptivity we alluded to earlier. For the shifts that take place during pregnancy defy all these conventional distinctions, as is apparent for instance from the debates concerning the controversial phenomenon of “nesting.”⁹⁵ The idea of pregnancy enables us to think of a form of agency that must attend to needs that are still unknown, namely the particular needs of a future form of life. It is because she is able to attend and respond, to surrender, to these needs, that she will succeed. But this ability or rather imperative to acknowledge and attend to such needs is arguably the ability or the will-power that Nietzsche-Zarathustra demands that we exercise in the process of self-overcoming. For, this process is not explained in terms of an enlightened, sovereign individual deciding and determining what they want to become. But instead, as we saw in the chapter “on the way of the creator,” it is about being able to create our specific good and evil, which is only accessible to us to the extent that we are able to attend to our specific needs.⁹⁶ For we are not our-selves yet, we are always becoming.⁹⁷ And because we do not have access to this, because we do not know the specific needs of the future selves we must become, we can only aim to be receptive to them. Attentive and receptive to needs we cannot fully know yet—this is ultimately the way to creativity and self-overcoming that Nietzsche-Zarathustra develops.⁹⁸

It is also in these terms that we understand the thought that in going zu Grunde we may be preparing the house for the Übermensch (Nietzsche 1999, 4.17), or that we should give birth to the Übermensch (Nietzsche 1999, 4.85). For, it is about engaging, like in pregnancy, in creating the conditions of possibility for a new form of life to be born. Nietzsche sees this process as one that is absolutely devoted to life. Yet not to this life that already is, and also not to some abstract life beyond all human finitude, but to an unknown yet specific form of life, a promise of a beginning of something unique. And yet this new being is becoming within us, so that in this instance pure altruism, devotion to another, and utter selfishness and self-centeredness are one and the same. This is also, by the way, why the figure of the artist is inadequate for the kind of self-transformation that Nietzsche develops in Zarathustra. The creation of new values, the creation of something above and beyond ourselves, is not to be understood as the result of a powerful, creative imagination, but as a process that is able to attend to the needs of a new form of life that must become. And Nietzsche himself uses pregnancy against the figure of the artist in GS 369 (that is, after completing Zarathustra), when he addresses the question regarding the extent to which those who are truly engaged in a constant process of creativity (the Beständig-Schaffender) are aware of and able to determine and even appreciate correctly what they create.⁹⁹ Here, Nietzsche argues that, in order to create something that might excel and surpass us, one must—like the future mother, “in the grand sense of the term [eine “Mutter” von Mensch, im grossen Sinne des Wortes]” (Nietzsche 1999, 3.619)—become oblivious to everything that is not their pregnancy. Only in this state, he says, where one has no time to reflect upon the work itself, where one forgets one’s own taste, might it be possible to create something that truly surpasses one’s taste.

In his readings of Nietzsche,¹⁰⁰ Heidegger uses the notions of art and creation (schaffen) to explain the essence of the will to power and its relation to self-overcoming, the Übermensch, and other key-notions in Nietzsche’s thought. Heidegger makes clear that art should not be understood in aesthetic terms, but more broadly as “the essence of all willing that opens up perspectives and takes possession of them” (Heidegger 1943, 241). And still, the way in which he uses art and this form of creativity (schaffen) as exemplary for grasping the way in which the will to power operates, necessarily leaves out many of the aspects that we have highlighted above by using the notion of pregnancy. By understanding creation (schaffen) as a purely productive, overpowering activity,¹⁰¹ and by giving primacy to the thought of the will to power as a constant striving to increase power (Steigerungn) and overpower (übermächtigen), it leaves us with a rather empty project: Steigerung for the sake of Steigerung so to say.¹⁰² Indeed, it undermines the importance of the way in which, for Nietzsche, creativity, the creation of new values, as a project, has to be understood not only in terms of desire (as a constant desire to gain power), but also as being addressed to and responding to very specific needs. And more importantly, that these needs cannot be found in the present alone, but rather must be sought in an unknown future.¹⁰³ Thus, when Nietzsche writes (after having explained that nihilism is the result of an inevitable process rooted in the logic of our values themselves)¹⁰⁴ that “at some point we will need new values . . . “ (Wir haben, irgendwann, neue Werthe nöthig . . .)” (Nachlass 1887, 11 [411], Nietzsche 1999, 13.190), we interpret this as a call for us to realize the extent to which the values we live by now are “obsolete” and to anticipate, to put ourselves in that futural position, in order to engage in a project that is both responsive and formatting, since its task is ultimately to anticipate the needs of a form of life that we should want to become. Surely, this impossible exercise that creates from and responds to the needs of a yet unknown form of life, full of hope in the future, is consolidated in Zarathustra, where Nietzsche ventures to give a name to this impossible future perspective through the figure of the Übermensch. And thus, in the mouth of Zarathustra, Nietzsche says: “Let the ray of a star shine in your love! Let your hope be called: ‘May I give birth to the Übermensch!’” (Zarathustra, Old and Young, Nietzsche 1999, 4.85).

Understanding the core of Nietzsche’s project of transvaluation and self-overcoming through the lens of pregnancy also enables us to find new ways of addressing the question regarding the criteria that Nietzsche gives us (or not) for the creation of new values.¹⁰⁵ We have seen how this is a problem that already appears in The Gay Science, at the very moment in which Nietzsche speaks from the perspective of life and knowledge becoming an experiment.¹⁰⁶ But, in Zarathustra the problem is taken to a further level as the project concerns self-transformation of the human (and is no longer, primarily, a question about knowledge and its relation to life). Thus, the inevitable question becomes: how to know if the changes we undergo are ultimately taking us to grow beyond and above ourselves? Or, is it merely about embracing change and transformation, regardless of the content? We have suggested throughout this paper that although Nietzsche does not give us “new tables,” the project of critique and transvaluation are not utterly directionless. Using pregnancy as a cipher of self-overcoming has enabled us to argue against the idea that Nietzsche would be advocating change for the sake of change. By emphasizing the way in which self-overcoming is bound up with developing an attentiveness to new needs, we have shown how transformation and change are not blind but require that we anticipate and become attentive to our changing needs. And although Nietzsche does not (cannot) spell out what these needs are, he does give us a number of tools for critique and analysis of the present without which the very assessment regarding the “need” for new values would not make sense. In Nietzsche, critique, destruction, negation, and so on are not reckless; we have seen this, for instance in the way in which he distinguishes between different forms of zu Grunde gehen: one that is pregnant with the future and comes from exuberance, love and devotion to life, another that stems from lack, envy, and we could also say, anticipating a notion from Genealogy of Morals, ressentiment. It goes without saying that this very analysis already directs towards a new way of assessing and questioning our values and needs. In other words, paying attention to Nietzsche’s project of self-overcoming, and the way in which he presents it in Zarathustra, we can say that just as critique becomes more and more intertwined with affirmation, and creation, it is also the case that affirmation, the creation of new values, is informed by critique. It is, however, perhaps in Beyond Good and Evil and The Genealogy of Morals that Nietzsche focuses on providing ever more refined tools of critique and analysis, but that cannot be addressed here.

Conclusion

We introduced our paper asking about Zarathustra’s love of those who want their downfall (Untergang), and how to situate it within his project of self-overcoming. Answering this question has required us to consider the different ways in which Nietzsche reflects on critique and self-critique, and how he sees the relation between negation, zu Grunde gehen and affirmation, from Daybreak to Zarathustra. But we began our first sections presenting the figure of Pascal as a complex case of “going zu Grunde” in Nietzsche’s writings. Its complexity lay in the way in which Nietzsche sees him both as a promising but disappointing figure; a missgeburt. But we also saw an important shift in Nietzsche’s thoughts on Pascal, a shift that led him to the rather strange utterance in Ecce Homo, where he suggests that he loves Pascal because he went zu Grunde.¹⁰⁷ Thus, the question that still remains is to what extent this love is similar to the love that Nietzsche explores through the figure of Zarathustra.

Analyzing selected passages from Zarathustra, we have argued that Zarathustra’s love has to be understood as an acknowledgment of the suffering and mourning involved in the process of self-overcoming. We have also seen that Zarathustra does not love all forms of going zu Grunde, but only those that come from a commitment to and love for life, and not just any life, but only a life that is openly self-affirming. We have used the figure of pregnancy to explain some of the difficulties in understanding a positive form of going zu Grunde, and how it can lead to self-overcoming and the creation of new values. Thus, in the first instance, it would make sense to dismiss the idea that the love Nietzsche expresses in Ecce Homo is the same as the love Zarathustra has for those who embrace change and self-overcoming. Not only because of the fact that many of the texts where Nietzsche criticizes Pascal most viscerally are written after Zarathustra, but more importantly, because it seems wrong to think that Pascal, the one who sacrifices his intellect for Christianity (Beyond Good and Evil 229) and goes zu Grunde in the most horrendous way (Nachlass 1887, 11[55], Nietzsche 1999, 13.28) could ever be seen as “a bridge” to the Übermensch. If anything, he seems much closer to the so called “despisers of the body,” whom Nietzsche-Zarathustra very clearly rejects.

And yet, the thought that we would like to explore as a form of conclusion is that there is perhaps a sense in which one could think of Pascal, and his very particular intellectual trajectory with and against Christianity—exploring, struggling, and finally succumbing to Christian (life-negating) dogma—as an inevitable step towards the self-overcoming of Christianity that comes from Christian morality itself. But this is not possible if we see Pascal as an individual. Instead, like Nietzsche himself says, we must read him as the symbol of an historical event that is still underway; that is to say, if we look at history, not from a perspective out of history (which is what Nietzsche does in Beyond Good and Evil), but from within. In this way, we could perhaps venture to say that what Nietzsche ultimately comes to accept, affirm, and love about Pascal is the way in which he incarnates a necessary, inevitable failure that can only be overcome by making Pascal into his own, by incorporating him and giving birth to what Pascal himself was not able to do, thus transforming Pascal's miscarriage into a case of thus I willed it; or perhaps: thus life willed it.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katia Hay

Katia Hay is Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Amsterdam.

Jamie Parr

Jamie Parr is Adjunct Professor in the School of Philosophy at Australian Catholic University, Sydney, Australia.

Notes

1 Schwanger and its variations appear nine times. Even if we also take into consideration the notion of giving birth, gebären (which appears 12 times), the sum of these appearances is still relatively low.

2 See for instance Nehamas 1985. In a collection of essays devoted to Nietzsche’s Zarathustra from 2000, the notion of art or work of art appears over 60 times, whereas pregnancy does not appear at all (compare with Gerhard 2000). See also, more recently, Sommer (2003, 196–206). And yet, Nietzsche himself is not shy in criticizing artists (in Gay Science book V, Genealogy of Morals, especially the third essay) so that, in the end, it becomes difficult to maintain the artist as a model for the kind of transformation Nietzsche has in mind. We come back to this in section 4.

3 “It is in this state of consecration that one should live in! One can live in it! And if what is expected is an idea, a deed—towards every bringing forth we have essentially no other relationship than that of pregnancy and ought to blow to the winds all presumptuous talk of ‘willing’ and ‘creating’” (Daybreak 552, Nietzsche 1999, 3.322–323).

4 In the pregnant one “there reigns [waltet] a pure and purifying feeling of profound irresponsibility, rather like a spectator has before the closed curtain—it is growing, it is coming to the light of day: we have in our hands nothing to determine, either its value or its hour” (Daybreak 552, Nietzsche 1999 3.322).

5 Several examples exist in Zarathustra’s Prologue 4, not all of which use the phrase “zu Grunde gehen”; particularly notable of those that do not are: “I love the one who makes of his virtue his desire and his doom: thus for the sake of his virtue he wants to live on and to live no more [willen noch leben und nicht mehr leben]” (Zarathustra, Prologue, Nietzsche 1999, 4.17); “I love the one whose soul squanders itself, who wants no thanks and gives none back: for he always gives and does not want to preserve himself [will sich nicht bewahren]” (4.17); and, “I love the one who is free of spirit and heart: thus his head is only the entrails of his heart, but his heart drives him to his going under [Untergang]” (4.18).

6 Nachlass 1884, 26[191], Nietzsche 1999, 11.200: “Man muß sich zu einer solchen Denkweise (wie die christliche ist) den idealen, ganz zu ihr geschaffenen Menschen denken — Pascal z.B.”.

7 A number of insightful studies of the Nietzsche-Pascal relation have appeared relatively recently, but the field remains sparse. See for example Vivarelli 1998; Lebreton 2017, 175–194; Frigo 2010, 275–298; Weiß 2012; Vioulac 2011, 19–39; Rehahn 2013, 343–354; Brum 2000, 35–41; Berr 2006; Calçado 2012; Donnellan 1982 and 1985, 161–176; Voegelin 1999, 251–303; Léveillé-Mourin 1978; Williams 1952; Dionne 1974; Saurat 1928; Birault 1962: 67–90; Andler 1920; Lohmann 1917. Important observations are also made by Franz Overbeck 1999 and Ida Overbeck 1985.

8 Compare with Nachlass 1873, 28[1], Nietzsche 1999, 7.614. Other early uses of Pascal appear at Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks 2, Nietzsche 1999, 1.811; Twilight of the Idols 2, Nietzsche 1999, 1.887; and Nachlass 1874, 35[11], Nietzsche 1999, 7.811.

9 See also Human, All Too Human I 282 and II Assorted Opinions and Maxims 5.

10 See Daybreak 46, Nietzsche 1999, 3.53; 63, Nietzsche 1999, 3.63; 64, Nietzsche 1999, 3.63; 68, Nietzsche 1999, 3.65; 79, Nietzsche 1999, 3.77; 86, Nietzsche 1999, 3.81; 91, Nietzsche 1999, 3.85; 192, Nietzsche 1999, 3.165; 481, Nietzsche 1999, 3.285; and 549, Nietzsche 1999, 3.319. References of note in the Nachlass from 1880 include: 7[106], Nietzsche 1999, 9.340; 7[158], Nietzsche 1999, 9.349; 7[184], Nietzsche 1999, 9.355; 7[185], 7[265], Nietzsche 1999, 9.373; and 8[31], Nietzsche 1999, 9.389. After 1880–1, Pascal again appears consistently in Nietzsche’s notebooks from 1885 onward, following an absence in 1882 and lull during 1883–4. Important examples of Nietzsche’s published engagement with Pascal after Zarathustra include Beyond Good and Evil 46, Nietzsche 1999, 5.66, and The Antichrist 5, Nietzsche 1999, 6.171.

11 Though the terms embryon, embryonisch, and so forth, are not particularly extensive in Nietzsche’s works (collectively, 5 references in published texts, 17 in the Nachlass, 1 in the letters), he often employs them in ways important for his conception of the human and its future. Notable here is Gay Science 9: “Countless things that humanity acquired in earlier stages, but so feebly and embryonically that no one could tell that they had been acquired, suddenly emerge into the light much later, perhaps after centuries; meanwhile they have become strong and ripe” (Nietzsche 1999, 3.381; compare with Nachlass 1881, 11[256], Nietzsche 1999, 9.538). See also Nachlass 1881, 15[17], Nietzsche 1999, 9.642, where, after contrasting himself with the higher human beings of antiquity, all of whom desired fame in their own time because they lacked a sense of their own heritage and earlier development, Nietzsche claims that he is proud to declare, “‘I have an ancestry’—which is why I don’t need fame. In whatever moved Zarathustra, Moses, Muhammed Jesus Plato Brutus Spinoza Mirabeau, I, too, am already living, and what embryonically took a couple of millennia first saw the light of day by ripening in me.”

12 Nietzsche owned C. F. Schwartz’s German translation of Pascal’s works (Pascal 1865). His copy is marked by pencil strokes in the margins, Eselsohren, and the occasional written remark. For a helpful overview, see Campioni 2003, 430–431.

13 We follow Philippe Sellier’s ordering of the Pensées (Pascal 1976), hence the siglum “S.” We have used Roger Ariew’s English translation of the Pensées (Pascal 2004), which follows Sellier, when necessary adapting Ariew’s translation to Schwartz’s German.

14 An Eselsohr also appears at Pascal 1865, 1, 202, which contains S 458: “When malice [Böswilligkeit] has reason on its side it becomes proud, and displays reason in all its brilliance [Strahlenglanze].”

15 For Pascal, while faith is a supernatural gift and the source of genuine certainty (Pensées 41), the seeking of proofs of its claims is an intrinsically limited, merely human endeavor, the phenomenology of faith not being open to unbelievers. Also, if reason is applied beyond its remit (Pensées 219), one is led to dismiss the supernatural, though it is a condition of possibility of faith (Pensées 204). Pascal’s “solid arguments” (659), therefore, are generally not straightforward rational arguments for the truth of Christianity, but powerful appeals to his reader’s existential condition (for example, Pensées 229, 230), and even to their somatic nature (for example, Pensées 39, 680).

16 Compare, for example, Gay Science 107, Nietzsche 1999, 3.464 : “Hätten wir nicht die Künste gut geheissen und diese Art von Cultus des Unwahren erfunden: so wäre die Einsicht in die allgemeine Unwahrheit und Verlogenheit, die uns jetzt durch die Wissenschaft gegeben wird . . . gar nicht auszuhalten. Die Redlichkeit würde den Ekel und den Selbstmord im Gefolge haben”; Nachlass 1888, 16[40] §6, Nietzsche 1999, 13.500 : “Die Wahrheit ist häßlich: wir haben die Kunst, damit wir nicht an der Wahrheit zu Grunde gehn.”

17 This perhaps explains also Nietzsche’s marking of pensée S 454: “Evil is easy; it has countless forms, while good is almost unique. But a certain sort of evil is as hard to find as what is called good, and this particular evil is often for this reason taken as good. {Indeed it takes as much extraordinary greatness of soul to attain [verrichten] such evil, as to attain [Vollbringung] good” (Pascal 1865, 1, 186)). Here and elsewhere, curled brackets indicate the span of Nietzsche’s pencil marginal strokes. The final sentence of this text chimes with a note regarding the internal spiritual contradictions and frequent self-misunderstandings of individuals who are both great and evil: “Whether one does not have the right to account all great men evil? This cannot be shown in a pure state in all individual cases. Often they have been capable of masterly dissimulation and assumed the outward forms and gestures of great virtues. Often they honoured virtue seriously and with a passionate hardness against themselves, but out of cruelty—seen from a distance, this is deceptive. Many misunderstood themselves. . . . The essential point is: the greatest perhaps also possess great virtues, but in that case also their opposites. I believe that it is precisely through the presence of opposites and the feelings they occasion that the great man, the bow with the great tension, develops” (Nachlass 1885, 35[18], Nietzsche 1999, 11.515). For Nietzsche, Pascal may have had a keener sense than many of his own “evil” nature, and hence the need to keep much of himself hidden. For example, an Eselsohr appears on the page containing S 125: “We must have a deeper reason in the background and judge everything by it, even if we speak as ordinary people” (Pascal 1865, 1, 212). Nietzsche also highlighted the end of S 618: “When we do not know the true nature of something, it is good that there is a common misconception about it, etc.” (1, 241).

18 That is: “Der kirchliche Druck von Jahrtausenden hat eine prachtvolle Spannung des Bogens geschaffen, insgleichen der monarchische: die beiden versuchten Entspannungen (statt mit dem Bogen zu schießen) sind 1) der Jesuitism 2) die Demokratie. Pascal ist das herrliche Anzeichen von jener furchtbaren Spannung: er lachte die Jesuiten todt.” See the preface to Beyond Good and Evil, for which this text is a sketch.

19 That is: 1 John 2.16: “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world.”

20 Compare with Daybreak 91, which also explores the confluence of knowledge, faith, and anxiety in Pascal: “No one has been more eloquent [than Pascal] concerning the ‘hidden God’ and his reasons for keeping himself so hidden, . . . an indication that he could never quite calm himself on the subject . . . . He caught wind of something immoral in the ‘deus absconditus’ and had the greatest shame in, and aversion to, admitting it to himself: and so, like someone who is afraid, he talked as loudly as he could” (Nietzsche 1999, 3.85).

21 A significant irony exists here, albeit in line with Nietzsche’s conception of the “self-overcoming” of all “great things” (Genealogy of Morals III 27, Nietzsche 1999, 5.410: “All great things bring about their own demise [gehen durch sich selbst zu Grunde] through an act of self-sublimation [Selbstaufhebung]’), in Pascal’s own implication in the end of Christianity: “To be sure: if this history had been understood at the right time, if the writings of Paul had been read, not as the revelations of the ‘Holy Spirit,’ but with a free and honest exercise of one’s own spirit and without thinking all the time of our own personal needs—really read, that is to say (but for fifteen hundred years there were no such readers)—Christianity would long since have ceased to exist: for these pages of the Jewish Pascal expose the origin of Christianity as thoroughly as the pages of the French Pascal expose its destiny and that by which it will perish” (Daybreak 68, Nietzsche 1999, 3.65).

22 Compare with Daybreak 192, Nietzsche 1999, 3.165: “There is Pascal, in the unification of ardor, spirit, and honesty foremost among all Christians—and consider all that needed to be unified here!” See also, Nachlass 1880, 7[174], Nietzsche 1999, 9.353 and 7[234], Nietzsche 1999, 9.366.

23 Compare with Nietzsche’s discussion of “teachers of the purpose of existence” in Gay Science 1: “It cannot be denied that laughter and nature and reason triumphed in the long run over every single one of these great teachers of purpose to date: the brief tragedy in the end always faded back into the eternal comedy of existence . . .” (Nietzsche 1999, 3.372). For recent work on the topic of laughter in Nietzsche, see, for example, Meyer 2018, 153–173; Parr 2022, 105–122; and Hay 2022, 161–178.

24 For an interesting treatment of laughter and comedy in Pascal, see Russell (1977). While Russell’s characterization of the status of humor in Pascal’s work is occasionally overstated (for example, she claims (119) that in the Pensées “humor becomes the language of [Pascal’s] whole intellectual challenge,” which we cannot agree with) her analysis of the change in the role, nature and extent of humour between the Provincial Letters and the Pensées highlights a shift that, for different reasons, is also important to Nietzsche.

25 Nietzsche places a long vertical stroke in the margin.

26 That is, “The true and only virtue, then, is to hate ourselves—for we are worthy of hate because of our concupiscence—and to seek to love a being truly worthy of love. But as we cannot love what is outside us, we must love a being within us who is not ourselves. And this is true for each and every man. Now, only the universal being is like that. The kingdom of God is within us. The universal good is within us, is both ourselves and not us” (Pascal 2004, 149).

27 Compare with S 35 : “Apart from [Christ], there is only vice, wretchedness, error, darkness, death, despair”; S 36: “[W]e do not know ourselves except through Jesus Christ” (Pascal 2004, 7). Further, Nietzsche’s marginal strokes alongside pensée S 494 highlight characteristics of the self that suggest (in nascent and, given Pascal’s moral perspective, pejorative form) Nietzsche’s conception of the individual as a complex of wills to power involved in a perpetual struggle for domination: “{[T]he self has two qualities: it is unjust in itself for making itself the centre of everything;} it is a nuisance to others in that it tries to subjugate them, for each self is the enemy of all the others and would like to tyrannise them. {You take away the nuisance, but the injustice remains: you only make it pleasing to the unjust, who no longer see it as their enemy; and so you remain unjust, and can only please the unjust.}” (Pascal 1865, 1, 191).

28 That is, “ … Pascal, der nur dreißig Jahr zu früh starb, um aus seiner prachtvollen bitterbösen Seele heraus über das Christenthum selber hohnzulachen, wie er es früher und jünger über die Jesuiten gethan hat.” This text echoes remarks Nietzsche makes about Jesus in the chapter “On Free Death” in Zarathustra (Nietzsche 1999, 4.95).

29 The importance of the ruinous logic of Christianity appears to be underscored by Nietzsche’s remarks in a letter to Georg Brandes, to which we referred at the end of our last section: “Ihren Worten über Dostoiewsky glaube ich unbedingt; ich schätze ihn andererseits als das werthvollste psychologische Material, das ich kenne,—ich bin ihm auf eine merkwürdige Weise, dankbar, wie sehr er auch immer meinen untersten Instinkten zuwidergeht. Ungefähr mein Verhältniß zu Pascal, den ich beinahe liebe, weil er mich unendlich belehrt hat: der einzige logische Christ . . . ” (Nietzsche to Georg Brandes, 20 November 1888, Nr. 1151, Sämtliche Briefe 8.483). We do not consider Nietzsche’s use here of the qualifer “beinahe” to be significant. Nietzsche had directly made the acquaintance of Brandes only in December 1887; the reputation of the Dane as an intellectual radical, Nietzsche’s desire to be taken seriously by such an influential figure, and the absence in the letter concerned of any further explanation of his view of Pascal (which may have made “beinahe” redundant), likely explains his qualification. In any case, the importance of the “logic” of Christianity, and Pascal’s strict adherence to and embodiment of it, will be made plain as we proceed.

30 Prior to his remarks in Beyond Good and Evil, the closest Nietzsche comes to such a position is in Nachlass 1884, 25[471]: “Das Gutheißen unserer Begrenztheit des Erkennens—die Vortheile dabei: es ist viel Muth und Lust da möglich. Das Seufzen und die Pascalsche Scepsis sind schlechtes Blut.—das Christenthum als die Wirkung des entarteten schlechten Blutes.”

31 That is, “We must chase away the clumsy psychology of days gone by, that knew nothing better to teach about cruelty than that it originated at the sight of another’s suffering: there is an abundant, superabundant pleasure also in one’s own suffering, in making oneself suffer—and wherever someone lets himself be persuaded to self-denial in the religious sense or to self-mutilation . . . or generally to desensualization, decarnalization, contrition, to Puritanical spasms of penitence, to vivisections of the conscience and to Pascalian sacrifizio dell’intelletto, then he is secretly lured and pushed forward by his cruelty, by that dangerous awe of cruelty directed against oneself. Finally let us consider that even the knowing one, by forcing his spirit to know against the inclination of his spirit and often enough also against the wishes of his heart—namely by saying No when he would like to affirm, love, adore—is reigning as an artist and a transfigurer of cruelty; indeed, every time we take something deeply and thoroughly it is a violation, a wanting-to-hurt the fundamental will of the spirit, that incessantly strives for appearances and surfaces—even in every wanting-to-know there is a drop of cruelty” (Beyond Good and Evil, 229, Nietzsche 1999, 5.166–167).

32 Although the thought is already present in Gay Science: “One can see what it was that actually triumphed over the Christian god: Christian morality itself, the concept of truthfulness that was taken ever more rigorously; the father confessor’s refinement of the Christian conscience, translated and sublimated into a scientific conscience, into intellectual cleanliness at any price” (Gay Science 357, Nietzsche 1999, 3.600).

33 We are not trying to defend the idea that miscarriages should be seen as failures; we do believe, however, that when Nietzsche describes Pascal as a “miscarriage” (Missgeburt), he uses this term in the sense of “missraten,” that is, that which has turn out badly, or failed. See for example A 2: “The weak and deformed should perish [Die Schwachen und Missrathnen sollen zu Grunde gehen]” (Nietzsche 1999, 6.170); also Beyond Good and Evil 62, which claims that those who have botched the development of the human being over the last few millennia were “not strong and far-sighted enough to stand with a sublime self-discipline and allow the foreground law of thousandfold failure and ruin to simply run its course [Menschen, nicht stark und fernsichtig genug, um, mit einer erhabenen Selbst-Bezwingung, das Vordergrund-Gesetz des tausendfältigen Missrathens und Zugrundegehns walten zu lassen]” (Nietzsche 1999, 5.83). Among several other examples of Nietzsche’s use of missraten, and cognates, see Gay Science 359, Nietzsche 1999, 3.605 and Zarathustra, Higher Men 14, Nietzsche 1999, 4.364.

34 Compare with Nachlass 1888, 15[118], Nietzsche 1999, 13.479.

35 That is, “Allow me to imagine a contrasting state [to the artist], a specific anti-artisty of the instinct—a manner of being that would impoverish and attenuate things, render them consumptive. And in fact, history has a wealth of such anti-artists, life’s starvelings: who necessarily still have to take things to themselves, consume them, make them more meagre. This is for example the case with the genuine Christian, Pascal, for instance” (Twilight of the Idols, Forays of an Untimely One 9, Nietzsche 1999, 6.117). While it is true to say that it is not until texts such as Ecce Homo and Twilight of the Idols that the clinical character of Beyond Good and Evil 62 gives way to a strongly emotive expression of Nietzsche’s feelings, it ought also to be observed that some of Nietzsche’s earlier Nachlass references to Pascal clearly demonstrate his complex positive regard for him, such as: “Ich habe die Verachtung Pascals und den Fluch Schopenhauer’s auf mir! Und kann man anhänglicher gegen sie gesinnt sein als ich! Freilich mit jener Anhänglichkeit eines Freundes, welcher aufrichtig bleibt, um Freund zu bleiben und nicht Liebhaber und Narr zu werden!” (Nachlass 1880, 7[191], Nietzsche 1999, 9.356); see also Nachlass 1881, 12[52], Nietzsche 1999, 9.585.

36 That is, “Man soll es dem Christenthum nie vergeben, daß es solche Menschen wie Pascal zu Grunde gerichtet hat. Man soll nie aufhören, eben dies am Christenthum zu bekämpfen, daß es den Willen dazu hat, gerade die stärksten und vornehmsten Seelen zu zerbrechen. Man soll sich nie Frieden geben, solange dies Eine noch nicht in Grund und Boden zerstört ist: das Ideal vom Menschen, welches vom Christenthum erfunden worden ist.”

37 Like Nietzsche’s, Pascal’s physical health was precarious for much of his adult life, and his Prière pour demander à Dieu le bon usage des maladies (see Pascal 1992, 998–1012) appears to document his Christian response to a period of particularly difficult suffering. Despite being a document of considerable emotional force, it also seems to function as a means by which Pascal coped with his anxiety at not responding to his invalidity in the manner expected of him. See for example §2 and §13.

38 The notion of zu Grunde gehen is not easy to translate, with English translations typically using the terms “perishing” or “dying.” Although going zu Grunde is not always meant in the literal sense of, say, an individual’s actual death, its use should also not be understood as merely an exaggerated metaphor. Zu Grunde gehen has serious connotations: dying, or perishing, as disappearing or partly disappearing; or as cracking up, succumbing, being totally defeated; or as losing one’s sense and direction, and so forth.

39 This in contrast with, for instance, the following note (from the same notebook): “. . . What is weak and a failure [mißrathen] should perish: Life’s highest imperative. And one should not make any virtue from compassion” (Nachlass 1888, 15[120], Nietzsche 1999, 13.481).

40 For an account of the different ways in which Nietzsche thematizes, understands, and uses conflict and destruction, see Pearson 2022.

41 See for instance The Gay Science 283: “The secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is—to live dangerously! . . . ” (Nietzsche 1999, 3.526); also Nachlass 1888, 16[88], Nietzsche 1999 13.517: “The worst is that everything cuts into the heart too deeply: almost every year has brought me 3, 4 things, in themselves irrelevant, but that have made me almost go zu Grunde. Not that I am making reproaches to anyone. [Das Schlimmste ist, daß alles zu tief ins Herz einschneidet: fast jedes Jahr hat mir 3, 4 Dinge gebracht, an sich unerheblich, an denen ich beinahe zu Grunde gieng. Nicht daß ich damit Jemandem Vorwürfe mache.]”

42 Nietzsche"s relationship to danger is not as nonchalant as may be suggested by his well-known maxim from Twilight of the Idols, for example: “From the war-school of life: what does not kill me, makes me stronger” (Nietzsche 1999, 6.60). This maxim is retrospective, not prospective: it is the expression of what one has learnt from one’s personal experience, as is connected to notions of convalescence and growth; it does not express a desire to seek danger merely for danger’s sake.

43 For example,“ I love the one who is ashamed when the dice fall to his fortune and who then asks: am I a cheater? —For he wants to perish” (Zarathustra, Prologue 4, Nietzsche 1999, 4.17). For further examples, see footnote 5, as well as section 4 below.

44 For a more biologizing reading of Nietzsche’s philosophy, and his notion of the will to power in particular, see for example Emden 2016.

45 We do not consider here the peculiar way in which Nietzsche describes the need to engage in change when he writes of “spirits who are prevented [Geister, welche man verhindert] from changing their opinions . . .” (our italics). Indeed, what is peculiar about this formulation is that the point Nietzsche is making is not (only) that we should engage in change. Explicitly, what he is saying is that we should not prevent others from changing, which opens up further questions we cannot address here, although we would tend to interpret it in terms of care and love for life.

46 See also Daybreak 79 and footnote 66 below.

47 See for instance Nietzsche in Ecce Homo, where he refers to Daybreak as a “yes-saying book” (Ecce Homo, Nietzsche 1999, 6.333).

48 Keith Ansell-Pearson has focused much of his work on analyzing the role of the drives in Nietzsche’s thought. For a reading of Nietzsche’s middle writings aimed at the cultivation of our drives or instincts as a form of care of the self, see Ansell-Pearson 2018.

49 In Daybreak 134, Nietzsche argues that if pity (Mitleid)—which he understands as a passion—were to become the dominating drive for only one day, humanity would go zu Grunde (Nietzsche 1999, 3.128). Similarly, in Daybreak 137, Nietzsche argues that a philosophy based on pity will take us to ground, and will do so “in very short time” (Nietzsche 1999, 3.130), implying that it is something that must urgently be avoided.

50 In his article “Beyond Compassion: on Nietzsche’s Moral Therapy in Dawn,” Ansell-Pearson (2011) argues that, in Daybreak, Nietzsche criticizes the morality of compassion in favor of a morality based on moderation and self-cultivation. For an overview of Nietzsche’s critique of compassion, see also Vasfi O. Özen 2021.

51 In the late preface, Nietzsche infamously uses the language of “tunnelling” (bohren), “mining” (graben), and “undermining” (untergraben) to describe the work undertaken in the book. This thought is also present in the book itself, as we can read in Daybreak 477.

52 This is a point that Paul Franco also stresses in his book (2011, 58 and following). But as David Owen (2003) convincingly argues, this kind of critique is not as effective as Nietzsche might have hoped in Daybreak. Owen reads the genealogical project as a response to the shortcomings of the critique of morality Nietzsche develops in Daybreak.

53 “You should not kill—but we continuously kill the thoughts and products of others, it is necessary, we constantly let something in us die, so that something else may live. So the life of the human goes hand in hand with a constant letting die: humanity must always slough its skin” (Nachlass 1880/81, 6[154], Nietzsche 1999, 9.236). Although, at other moments in these notes, Nietzsche argues for a sacrifice of humanity per se: “Indeed, we perish from this passion! But that is not an argument against it. Otherwise death would be an argument against the life of the individual. We must perish [zu Grunde gehen], both as individual beings and as humanity!”(Nachlass 1880, 7[171], Nietzsche 1999, 9.352).

54 In a later Nachlass note Nietzsche reflects on this when he writes: “If one has the temperament, one instinctively chooses what is dangerous: e.g. adventures in speculation if one is a philosopher; or in immorality, if one is virtuous. One kind of man will risk nothing, another wants risks. Are we others despisers of life? On the contrary, we seek life raised to a higher power [ein potenzirtes Leben], life lived in danger . . . but that, to repeat it, does not mean we want to be more virtuous than others. Pascal, e.g. wanted to risk nothing and remained a Christian: perhaps that was virtuous.” (Nachlass 1888, 15[94], Nietzsche 1999, 13.463).

55 In this sense, our reading differs slightly from Brusotti’s, which emphasizes the way in which self-sacrifice is part of the essence of this “extreme passion” (1997, 212).

56 In the late preface this thought becomes central in section 2, where Nietzsche advances the idea that perhaps the majority of philosophy hitherto has been the result of a sickness. In Gay Science 348 Nietzsche takes this thought further as he explains how the way philosophers think, reflects the kind of person they are and their heritage. In both cases, however, it is difficult to see how literally Nietzsche means what he says, for example: “The son of a lawyer will also, as a researcher, have to be a lawyer; he primarily wants his cause to win; secondarily perhaps also for it to be right” (Gay Science 348, Nietzsche 1999, 3.584). But the idea that thought is a product of life, runs across the entire book.

57 In Daybreak 79, for instance, presenting Pascal as the embodiment of the Christian belief that condemns the ego, Nietzsche argues that the notion of an all-loving God basically responds to the need of feeling worthy, and thus writes: “Love yourselves as an act of grace [Gnade]—then you won’t need [nötig haben] your God anymore, and the entire drama of Fall and Redemption will come to an end in yourselves!” (Nietzsche 1999, 3.78, our italics).

58 Nietzsche explores different answers to the question regarding the problem of knowledge throughout the book, which is why it is difficult to give even a provisional answer. One could argue, with Gay Science 335 in mind “Long live Science!,” which comes towards the end of book 4, that the only knowledge left for us to pursue is, precisely, to focus on better understanding our needs as a very specific form of self-knowledge: “. . . we must become the best students and discoverers of everything lawful and necessary in the world: we must become physicists in order to be creators in this sense—while hitherto all valuations and ideals have been built on ignorance of physics or in contradiction to it. So, long live physics! And even more long live what compels us to it—our honesty!” (Nietzsche 1999, 3.563–564). But this reading is not unproblematic, because it depends very much on the notion of intellectual honesty (Redlichkeit), which still seems to be in tension with the thought that says that reason is a result of life responding to certain needs. Thus, one could also argue that the knowledge that we gain is the kind of meta-knowledge presented in Gay Science 54, namely that we cannot but surrender to the fact that “lies” and “appearances,” or as he puts it there “dreaming,” are necessary for the human (including the seeker of knowledge) to survive. These, to mention only some possibilities. In their article, Herman Siemens and Katia Hay have argued that the best way to make sense of the tensions in Nietzsche’s Gay Science and how he addresses them is by seeing his project as one that necessarily alternates between what are in the end opposite positions—one of Redlichkeit, reason and knowledge, another of laughter, art, and life (2015, 111–136). See also footnote 71 below.

59 In Daybreak 91 and 101, for instance, Nietzsche questions with humor the idea of a moral, honest God, and shows how unmoral our moral behavior often is. Interestingly, in Daybreak, Nietzsche’s use of laughter very often takes the form of ridiculing (“spotten” is a term he uses as much as “lachen”). This changes in Gay Science, where laughter plays a more complex and affirming role.

60 With this, we do not intend to suggest that in Daybreak Nietzsche manifests a naïve, quasi-Spinozistic, optimism in reason (as in knowledge can transform behaviors and feelings). In Daybreak 103, for instance, Nietzsche distinguishes between identifying something to be false (in this case morality), and being able to transform the way that “error” marks how we feel and continues to motivate our actions. On the basis of this difference, Nietzsche says: “I deny morality as I deny alchemy, that is, I deny their premises: but I do not deny that . . . countless people feel themselves to be immoral.” Nevertheless, the way Nietzsche concludes Daybreak 103 is by asserting that it is our task first “to learn to think differently [umzulernen]—in order to, maybe at a much later point, to achieve more: to feel differently [umzufühlen]” (Nietzsche 1999, 3.92).

61 “For thus is man: an article of faith could be refuted to him a thousand times; as long as he needed it, he would consider it “true” again and again” (Gay Science 347, Nietzsche 1999, 3.581, our italics).

62 It would be wrong, indeed, to assume that, in The Gay Science, Nietzsche is invested in defining and occupying something like a supreme, all-encompassing, or birds-eye perspectivism. However, he does seem to be “playing” with this possibility, by introducing, for example, the “perspective of the (preservation of the) species,” such as we find in Gay Science 1, 4, 55, 318, 354; the perspective of the “organism” in Gay Science 11, 110; the distanced perspective that enables one to say yes to everything, such as we find in Gay Science 276 (amor fati), even the very idea that grounds the demand that we should see life as an experiment and means for knowledge (Gay Science 324).

63 As Nietzsche argues in Gay Science 354, one day, what now is useful for us will prove to be the “most fatal stupidity from which we shall someday perish [jene verhängnissvollste Dummheit, an der wir einst zu Grunde gehn]” (Nietzsche 1999, 3.593), and vice-versa, if, what now constitutes a danger for an organism, might be what later makes it effective and functional (Gay Science 11). The insight that what is life-enhancing/life-threatening is different for different forms of life is essential for understanding Nietzsche’s notion of health, although it is not always taken into account in the literature. Compare with Hatab 2021.

64 A further development of this thesis is not possible here, but the main thought is that the perspectives that Nietzsche develops in Zarathustra and Genealogy of Morals in a way are gestated in, and/or can be seen as a “natural” consequence of, Gay Science.

65 In this sense, we can say that Gay Science is preparing the ground for the work that Nietzsche further develops in his Genealogy, since this is precisely the kind of question that underlies his distinction between noble and slavish, resentful forms of morality. But there are also many aphorisms, especially in book V, that take on this genealogical character. It is, in a way indeed underlying and informing Nietzsche’s re-evaluation of what we call Romantic in Gay Science 370: “The desire for destruction, for change and for becoming can be the expression of an overflowing energy pregnant with the future (my term for this is, as is known, ‘Dionysian’); but it can also be the hatred of the ill-constituted, deprived, and underprivileged one who destroys and must destroy because what exists, indeed all existence, all being, outrages and provokes him” (Nietzsche 1999, 3.621–622).

66 Brusotti makes a similar argument, when he talks about how, in Gay Science, the thinker (Denker) is able to “reconcile [versöhnen]” with his past (1997, 214 and following).

67 Compare with Gay Science 377, where Nietzsche expresses how he rejoices in those “who love danger, war and adventures” (Nietzsche 1999, 3.629).

68 That is, after having written Thus Spoke Zarathustra. We come back to this aphorism later.

69 “Let your spirit and your virtue serve the meaning of the earth, my brothers: and the value of all things will be posited newly by you! That is why you should be fighters! That is why you should be creators!” (Zarathustra, Bestowing Virtue, Nietzsche 1999, 4.100).

70 In The Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche reflects on this problematic slightly ironically, when he says: “The greatness of a ‘progress’ can actually be measured according to how much needed to be sacrificed; to sacrifice humanity in mass for the prosperity of a single stronger species of man—that would be progress!” (Genealogy of Morals II 12, Nietzsche 1999, 5.315)

71 “I tell you: your self itself wants to die and turns away from life” [Ich sage euch: euer Selbst selber will sterben und kehrt sich vom Leben ab] (Nietzsche 1999, 4.40). For a detailed analysis of this chapter, see Gerhard 2000.

72 “And that is why you are angry now at life and earth. There is an unknown envy in the looking askance of your contempt” [ein ungewusster Neid ist im scheelen Blick eurer Verachtung] (Nietzsche 1999, 4.41).

73 In Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche describes a similar “discovery” when he invites the reader to have a look into the “dark workshop” where “ideals are fabricated” (Genealogy of Morals I, 14).

74 That is, “I love the great despisers, because they are the great venerators and arrows of longing for the other shore” (Zarathustra, Prologue, Nietzsche 1999, 4.17); “Oh my soul, I taught you contempt that does not come like a gnawing worm, the great, loving contempt that loves most where it has the most contempt” (Zarathustra, Great Longing, Nietzsche 1999, 4.278).

75 This criterion is not new, but rather traverses Nietzsche’s entire work in different ways. An interesting instance occurs in Gay Science 370, where Nietzsche distinguishes two forms of destruction or critique, one that is the expression of abundance, “an overflowing energy,” as we saw earlier, and one that stems from weakness and hatred, and destroys because it cannot bear what exists. It also underlies his critique of Christian values in terms of a slave revolt of morality in The Genealogy of Morals. In Beyond Good and Evil, for instance, Nietzsche will talk about “a mortally weary soul” [sterbensmuede Seele] and sees it then as a form or sign of nihilism (Nietzsche 1999, 5.23).

76 Bearing in mind the many different moments in which it seems that even Zarathustra is slightly confused, one might argue this confusion, and the mistakes that might derive from such confusion are constitutive for the process of self-overcoming that Nietzsche is describing.

77 Our claim is not, however, that Nietzsche’s project with the Übermensch is to envisage a radically new species, one that has finally overcome and overthrown the human. For Nietzsche-Zarathustra, the human is something that still needs to be created; the future of the human is what it is all about.

78 Zarathustra addresses the reader as a brother in nine chapters, but it is only in this one that such closeness and intimacy is sustained throughout.

79 The idea that the process of self-overcoming and the creation of new values is a process of self-legislation is a theme that appears strongly in both the chapters we consider here. However, we cannot give enough attention to this theme here.

80 For an analysis of nihilism in Nietzsche’s work, and especially an understanding of nihilism as the inability to abandon values that have become obsolete, see van Tongeren 2018.

81 This view, however, does not amount to identifying in Nietzsche the thought that compassion should be seen “an essential element of the imaginative creativity that Nietzsche holds to be the goal of human existence,” such as Frazer argues (2006).

82 See above, section 2.

83 See for instance the chapter “The Stillest Hour.” For an account of the ways in which in this chapter Nietzsche breaks with traditional models of understanding agency and creativity and reflects the suffering that is implied in a certain dissolution of subjectivity, see Hay and Siemens 2021.

84 “I pursued the living, I walked the greatest and the smallest paths in order to know its nature [dass ich seine Art erkenne]. With a hundredfold mirror I captured even its glance . . . ” (Zarathustra, Self-Overcoming, Nietzsche 1999, 4.147).

85 “That is your entire will, you wisest ones, as a will to power; and even when you speak of good and evil and of valuations” (Zarathustra, 4.146).

86 “Wherever I found the living, there I found the will to power; and even in the will of the serving I found the will to be master . . . .” And where there are sacrificing and favours and love-looks, there too is the will to be master (Zarathustra, 1999, 4.147–148).

87 As we saw in section 3, these questions are also raised in Gay Science.

88 When Zarathustra introduces the parable of the spirit’s three metamorphoses, he says that the child, with its innocence and forgetfulness, joy and playfulness, is the one who can best play the “game of creating” [Spiele des Schaffens] (Zarathustra, Metamorphoses, Nietzsche 1999, 4.31). However, it is unclear what Nietzsche actually means with the notion of child. It is indeed not surprising that in a Nachlass note he says: “One must be not only the child, but also the child-bearer [Gebärerin]: as the creator.” [Man muß nicht nur das Kind, sondern auch die Gebärerin sein: als der Schaffende] (Nachlass 1883, 5[1], Nietzsche 1999, 10.213).

89 In this sense, we disagree with readings that see in Nietzsche’s notion of love something that “overcomes judgment” (Chouraki, 2015, 4).

90 Nietzsche repeats this thought in different ways throughout his works, as in for instance Gay Science 324, where he explicitly says his philosophy is not a “bed to rest” in [Ruhebett] (Nietzsche 1999, 3.553).

91 This is similar to the idea of the eternal recurrence of the same, which should not be a ground for giving up on life, but for making the best out of it. See also Deleuze 1965.

92 In the late preface to The Birth of Tragedy (Attempt to Self-criticism), Nietzsche invokes Zarathustra as a counter example and a means to criticize the life-negating instincts and weariness underlying the Romantic ideal. He makes a similar point in The Gay Science 370, which was also written after his Zarathustra.

93 Sommer also describes an “‘integration of destruction’ within a total process of creation” (2003, 195).

94 The thought that the project of self-overcoming is about giving birth to someone new is illustrated in a dialogue with Dionysus from a Nachlass note: “‘You seem to me to be up to something bad [Schlimmes], one might think you wanted to take the human down [den Menschen zu Grunde richten]?’ –I said once to the god Dionysus. ‘Maybe, answered the god, but so that something might result for him.’ –What then? I asked curious. –‘W h o then? you should ask.’ Thus spoke Dionysus and remained silent in the way that he does, namely temptingly versucherisch]. You should have seen him!” [“Du scheinst mir Schlimmes im Schilde zu führen, sagte ich einmal zu dem Gotte Dionysos: nämlich die Menschen zu Grunde zu richten?” –“Vielleicht, antwortete der Gott, aber so, daß dabei etwas für mich heraus kommt.” – as denn? fragte ich neugierig. –“W e r denn? solltest du fragen.” Also sprach Dionysos und schwieg darauf in der Art, welche ihm zu eigen ist, nämlich versucherisch. –Ihr hättet ihn dabei sehen sollen!]” (Nachlass 1886, 4[4], Nietzsche 1999, 12.178).

95 Shahvisi (2020) argues against the idea that the phenomenon of “nesting” should be ascribed to biological changes, and argues instead that it must be explained in terms of gender stereotypes and the behavioral responses that these foment. While sharing Shahvisi’s concern “that biological explanations [be] erroneously used to reinforce gender stereotypes, in this case the stereotype of women as biologically-compelled to perform housework” (2020, 4), what these debates show, is that such phenomenon cannot be explained in terms of autonomy only. What is interesting is to see how authors claiming opposite views cannot but acknowledge the way in which many women experience this process as being both autonomous and a quasi-compulsive behavior.

96 From the beginning, it is clear that the changes Nietzsche-Zarathustra envisions involve a new way of understanding the relation between the body and the mind: “I love the one who is free of spirit and free of heart: in this way his head is only the entrails of his heart, but his heart drives him to his going under” (Zarathustra, Prologue, Nietzsche 1999, 4.18).

97 Or as he puts it in Beyond Good and Evil, we are the “not yet determined animal [das noch nicht festgestellte Tier]” (Nietzsche 1999, 6.81).

98 In Daybreak 552, it is precisely this aspect of pregnancy that Nietzsche finds so fascinating, as we highlighted in the introduction. And yet, once again, it is as if Nietzsche were only able to fully integrate these thoughts in Zarathustra. For an analysis of pregnancy in relation to Daybreak, see Mitcheson (forthcoming 2024).

99 “A perpetually creative person, a “mother” type in the grand sense of the term, someone who doesn’t hear or know anything but the pregnancies and child-beds of his spirit anymore, who simply has no time to reflect on himself and on his work and to make comparisons, who no longer wants to exercise his taste and simply forgets it, i.e. lets it stand, lie, or fall - maybe such a person would finally produce works that far excel his own judgement, so that he utters inanities about them . . . ” (Gay Science 369, Nietzsche 1999, 3.619).

100 Specifically, we refer to “Nietzsche’s Metaphysics,” a series of lectures written in 1941/42 but not delivered, and to his text “Nietzsche’s Word: God is Dead” from 1943.

101 “Art is the condition” for the will “to be able to rise up to power and increase power” [Die Kunst ist die im Wesen des Willens zur Macht gesetzte Bedingung dafür, daß er als der Wille, der er ist, in die Macht steigen und sie steigern kann] (Heidegger 1943, 241).

102 Thus, we agree with Sommer, who claims: “when Nietzsche writes in his Nachlass note that “the only happiness [Glück] lies in creating [schaffen],” this does not mean that he adheres to conventional genius aesthetics and develops a totally detached subject who creates from within himself (something, which he still honoured in his early writings)” (2003, 194). And yet, in the end, Sommer advocates for a certain creativity for the sake of creativity, when he writes: “the aim [Ziel] of the Nietzschean transvaluative process would be to the creative power [Schöpfermacht] of life and the human,” (2003, 203).

103 In this way we are not suggesting that Nietzsche sees the will to power as an adaptative capacity, that is constantly responding to its environment (Genealogy of Morals II 12). We are referring to the tensions discussed earlier, and the fact that Nietzsche’s philosophy cannot be reduced to the standpoint of the will to power as a desire to outpower, expand, and grow.

104 We are referring here to late a Nachlass note devoted to the uncompleted manuscript on The Will to Power. Nietzsche puts it thus: “nihilism is the last logical conclusion of our great values and ideals [die zu Ende gedachte Logik unserer großen Werthe und Ideale]” (Nachlass 1887, 11 [411], Nietzsche 1999, 13.190). The logic Nietzsche is referring to was anticipated already in Zarathustra, and comes again in Genealogy of Morals III 27; it is a logic that says that all values necessarily end up undermining themselves. We refer to this also in section 2.

105 Or in Heidegger’s words: “If being itself is will to power, how to determine the totality of beings as a whole? . . . What value does the entirety of being have?” (1990, 30). In our view, Heidegger’s reference to and interpretation of the eternal return of the same at this point leaves us with a very unsatisfactory answer, for it inevitably ends up in a circle, as he himself denounces: “if being as such is will to power and hence eternal becoming, but on the other hand the will to power demands purpose-lessness [Ziel-losigkeit] and excludes the endless progress towards a goal [Ziel], if at the same time the eternal becoming of the will to power is constricted in its possible configurations and constructs of domination because it cannot be new unto eternity, then being as will to power must allow for the same to reoccur, and the eternal recurrence of the same must be eternal. This ‘circuit [Kreislauf]’ entails the ‘original law [Urgesetzt]’ of being as a whole if being as such is will to power” (34).

106 See section 3.

107 “I do not read Pascal, but love him as Christianity’s most instructive victim, slowly assassinated, first physically, then psychologically, the whole logic of this most horrible form of inhuman cruelty . . . ” (Ecce Homo, Why I am so clever 3, Nietzsche 1999, 6.285).