For Whom the Bell Tolls

Nunc lento sonitu dicunt, Morieris.

—John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation 17

I

In the opening section of the preface to On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche addresses his target audience, which, he explains, comprises those kindred “knowers” who remain blissfully “unknown” to themselves (GM P:1).¹ In support of this characterization of his target audience, Nietzsche develops several compelling images. For example, he likens their pursuit of knowledge to the routine, to-and-fro flight of the “honey-gatherer,” who is simply too absorbed in his or her task to take notice of anything else.² Less favorably, Nietzsche also compares these knowers in their naïveté to the resentful audience for whom the sour grapes subtext of the Gospel of Matthew is intended. Hopelessly disadvantaged in the competition for real treasure, he apparently means to suggest, these kindred knowers have managed to persuade themselves of the superlative value of the lesser treasure they have amassed. These knowers, he seems to imply, could do better, though we (and they) do not yet know what would be better for them than simply “bringing something home” (GM P:1). Continuing to develop this image of spiritual poverty, Nietzsche identifies his target audience as lacking the “earnestness” and “time” needed to take ownership of the “so-called ‘experiences’” that embed and potentially enrich their lives (GM P:1).

Although these images might suggest that Nietzsche is unimpressed with his target audience, we have good reason to think otherwise. First of all, Nietzsche is careful throughout this opening section to address his target audience in the first person plural, as a “we.”³ This form of address is apparently meant to remind us that he too shares in the faults and failings that define his target audience. Notwithstanding the distance that separates him from these “knowers,” a distance confirmed by the asymmetry that informs his mode of address in section 1, he is one of them. Whereas Nietzsche and Zarathustra often claim to be separated from their typical audiences by a yawning, despair-inducing gulf (cf. GM P:8), Nietzsche here presents the distance between himself and his kindred knowers as both finite and negotiable, apparently by virtue of the family resemblance that obtains between him and them. As a “we,” he and they collectively represent the current generation of the family whose story he is determined to tell in GM. Here we may be meant to think of Nietzsche on the model of the enlightened philosopher, who, having escaped the flickering shadows of the cave, eventually returns home to share his or her acquired wisdom with his or her former cave mates. Alternately, we may be meant to think of Nietzsche on the model of the wise patriarch, who determines, among other things, the right time to rouse his family in pursuit of its destiny.

In any event, Nietzsche addresses his target audience not as an outsider, who might be tempted to plunder their treasure or, even worse, apprise them of its relative worthlessness, but as a fellow “knower” who is intimately familiar with the opportunities and challenges that characterize the development of this particular family. He speaks to them, that is, as an expert guide who has already traveled the path that, according to him, they now must follow. As we shall see, in fact, Nietzsche trades on this intimacy throughout the program of education and training that he conducts in GM.

Second, the image that dominates the first section of GM P is distinctly flattering to his target audience. Explaining why he and they have been unable thus far to “give [their] hearts” to their experiences, he likens this “we” to “one [who is] divinely preoccupied and immersed in himself ” (GM P:1; emphasis added) and who, by virtue of this condition, is unable to count the twelve bell strokes that announce the arrival of midday. Similarly “surprised and disconcerted,” Nietzsche allows, he and his fellow knowers “sometimes rub [their] ears afterward and ask … ‘what really was that which we have just experienced?’ and moreover: ‘who are we really?’” (GM P:1). So it is, Nietzsche concludes, that...