Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

Introduction

Introduction  N ikos Kazantzakis, one of the best-known modern Greek authors, was born on February 18, 1883, in Megalokastron, today’s Irakleion , Crete. The author of The Last Temptation of Christ, The Greek Passion, Zorba the Greek, and the monumental modern Greek epic Odyssey remained a controversial figure throughout his entire life. It is an eternal monument to his originality and greatness of spirit that Kazantzakis was assailed with equal savagery from left and right, treated acerbically both by religious and secular critics, deprecated uniformly by aesthetes and pedagogues, and execrated consistently both by café intellectuals and dilettante commentators. Kazantzakis’ influence endures long after his critics have been mercifully consigned to oblivion. This is not to say that all the diatribes were unfair or unreasonable. Kazantzakis’ themes and language, their pungent urgency preserved even in translation, probe deeply into the most threatening dead-ends that mock an anguished humanity. By virtue of its subject matter, as much as through its monolithic pathos, Kazantzakis ’ work inevitably arouses varied reactions. Sharing in the fate of authors who are essentially, not faddishly, controversial, Kazantzakis is bound to stir strong feelings. At the same time, Kazantzakis’ work is universal and perennially relevant while the controversy this kind of work is bound to arouse follows more epochal and transient rhythms. A substantial global population of Kazantzakis’ admirers has formed especially since his death in 1957. Equally important is that Kazantzakis’ spirit has not been haunted by the ineluctable imitators and propagandists who tend to bandwagon on newfangled success: Kazantzakis’ work, thought, and literary style defy the triune curses of imitation, dogmatism, and didacticism. ix Kazantzakis is a seminal figure of Modern Greek and, indeed, of World Literature. Interest in the seminal influences that shaped this rare soul is justifiably keen today. Before Kazantzakis was a writer he was an avid student of Nietzsche’s thought. This is how Kazantzakis reminisced about the fateful occasion for his acquaintance with Nietzsche in the thirteenth chapter of his fictional autobiography Report to Greco. Here is my translation of the relevant passage: One day, as I was reading attentively, all bent over, at the Library of Saint Genevieve, a young woman came up and leaned over me; she was holding an open book and had placed her hand underneath the photograph of a man, so that she would hide his name; all the while, she kept staring at me in disbelief: ‘Who is this?’ she asked, showing me the photograph. I shrugged: ‘How would you expect me to know?’ I said. ‘But, it is you, sir,’ motioned the young woman; ‘your mirror image, indeed: Look at the forehead, the bushy eyebrows, the deep-set eyes; except that he had a thick, drooping mustache, which you don’t have.’ I turned my eye, alarmed: ‘So, who is he?’ I ventured, trying to move her hand to the side. ‘You don’t recognize him? This is the first time you’ve seen him? It’s Nietzsche.’ Nietzsche! I had heard his name but had not yet read anything written by him. ‘Haven’t you read his Birth of Tragedy? His Zarathustra? About the Eternal Recurrence? The Übermensch?’ ‘Nothing, nothing,’ I kept nodding, ashamed, ‘nothing.’ ‘Stay here for a moment,’ she said and hopped away. Before too long she was back, bringing me Zarathustra. ‘Here it is,’ she said, smiling; ‘here’s lion’s fodder for your mind—if you have a mind, and if your mind is hungry.’ Whether the influence lasted is controversial but that a period of schooling took place is attested by Kazantzakis himself in his autobiographical Report to Greco and by the fact that the Cretan author wrote a dissertation on Nietzsche’s political and legal philosophy. It is this dissertation that I have the distinct privilege to offer to the English-speaking audience in what follows. Modern Greece is a nation obsessed with its unresolved Balkan inheritance . Epigone to the glory that was once ancient Hellas, and descendant of the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire, the modern country regained her independence after a relatively brief and bloody insurrection against a superannuated and teetering Ottoman Empire. Greece’s heritage is as divided as x  Introduction the Greek soul is ambivalent between ancient rationalist humanism and mystical Christian Orthodoxy. Modern Greek cultural commentary is known to oscillate uneasily between stultifying lamentation of an undeservedly Ottomanizing past and a frustrated longing for a long-delayed and uncertain...