Critical Affinities: Nietzsche and African American Thought

Introduction:The Art of the Cultural Physician

The chapters in this volume bring to light a number of ways in which the themes of cultural and human flourishing reveal a nexus of convergence between Nietzsche’s philosophy and various expressions of African American thought. More specifically, however, these chapters articulate the ways in which the critical affinities they delineate serve as guides to new ways of conceptualizing, analyzing, and cultivating human and cultural well-being. In doing so, they simultaneously foster and exemplify a nuanced understanding of what both traditions regard and revere as the art of the cultural physician. In general, much of Nietzsche’s philosophy connotes an attempt to assume the role of the cultural physician. Troubled by what he considers the conspicuous decay and decline of modern culture, Nietzsche turns to the ancient Greeks for insights concerning ways to effectively promote and preserve the future health of Europe. Focusing more specifically on the pernicious potential of fixed cultural ideals, he concludes that at their height the Greeks skillfully availed themselves of philosophy as a powerful liberating and regulating tool of culture. Moreover, he surmises that for the Greeks, the ultimate significance of philosophy was predicated on the way it embodied a “skeptical impulse” that would strengthen “the sense of truth over [and] against free fiction,” and in doing so bring about the destruction of all “barbarizing, immoral, and stultifying” forms of “rigid dogmatism.”1 Thus viewed, Nietzsche considered the Greeks an early example of a people who deftly utilized philosophy as a means of curbing and controlling our very powerful and potentially dangerous “mythical impulse.” Burdened with a consciousness that beckons us to question the meaning of our own existence, Nietzsche finds that our mythical impulse, that is, our impulse to create our own narratives of meaning, saves us from falling prey to a life-threatening sense of nihilism (GM Introduction: The Art of the Cultural Physician 1 III, 28) Unfortunately, however, grandiose efforts to avoid the Scylla of nihilism eventually plunged the Western descendants of the Greeks into the downward spiraling Charybdis of otherworldly idealizations of identity and value. Leery of the way modern Westerners dogmatically cling to such metaphysical contrivances, Nietzsche challenges all conscientious seekers of knowledge to take seriously the possibility that such sacred pillars of culture may actually connote “a danger, a seduction, a poison, a narcotic,” through which human beings in the present are wantonly living at the expense of the vigor and health of human beings in the future (GM P, 6). Convinced that this is indeed the case, Nietzsche chastises the purveyors and proponents of dogmatic ideals and values for arresting humanity’s development. Moreover, inspired by the Greek ideal of the cultural physician, Nietzsche strives to counteract the root causes of Europe’s insidious decadence by cultivating a powerful new generation of philosophers that embodies a revitalized skeptical impulse. Dedicating themselves to what Nietzsche foreordains as a new “aristocratic” vision of cultural health, these new philosophers initially focus on unmasking and undermining all of the ideologies and ideals that impede this vision from becoming a reality.2 Sadly, however, Nietzsche’s highly touted new generation of philosophers is prone to exhibit more of the persona of dictatorial legislators than that of compassionate physicians. Consecrating themselves to the task of “[forcing] the will of millennia upon new tracks,” Nietzsche’s new philosophers are aptly described as embodying a willingness to sacrifice untold numbers of human beings for the sake of promoting the welfare of those he exalts as “higher types” (BGE 203).3 In contrast to Nietzsche’s rather ominous aspirations for the future, African American thought has traditionally been preoccupied with promoting much more egalitarian and cosmopolitan agendas. Moreover , whereas Nietzsche frames and addresses existential and cultural issues in ways that are actually amenable to domination and exploitation , most expressions and exponents of African American thought exemplify an overarching commitment to subverting the institutional and ideological underpinnings of all forms of human oppression. Ironically, notwithstanding this radical difference in social aim, the affinities between Nietzschean and African American engagements in the art of the cultural physician are both palpable and powerful. Deeply concerned about the prospects of those intellectuals, artists, and free spirits who lie at the margins of mainstream society, Nietzsche exposes and combats cultural constructs that undermine their flourishing . Similarly, many of the critical and creative aspects of African 2 Introduction American thought resolutely illuminate,resist,and contest the ideologies and discourses...