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  • In Defense of an “Esoteric” Nietzsche
  • Maudemarie Clark (bio) and David Dudrick (bio)

Although he finds in it an “ingenuity and daring” that is “remarkable,”1 Richard Schacht evidently does not like our book on Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil. We argue for an “esoteric” Nietzsche, one who sometimes writes in a way that is deliberately misleading, hence does not mean what he initially seems to mean. It can therefore take considerable work to uncover his true meaning. Schacht appears to find this offensive, as if one does not play such games in polite society, but lays all of one’s cards on the table. In any case, he spends most of his discussion objecting to this aspect of our book. He also has a number of other complaints, including that our Nietzsche is as “philosophically mainstream as can be.”2 But in these cases he offers little argument beyond an incredulous stare. When he does offer a clear argument, it is against a very small portion of our book, which he rightly sees as the “springboard” for our esoteric Nietzsche. We will concentrate on showing that our Nietzsche remains airborne after this attack, and address in our conclusion several other complaints, including Schacht’s objection to how we do the history of philosophy. But we begin by explaining our reasons for attempting to interpret BGE esoterically.

1. Why Attempt an Esoteric Interpretation of BGE?

Our first reason is that Nietzsche practically invites us to do so in BGE 30:

The exoteric and the esoteric as philosophers formerly distinguished them, among the Indians as among the Greeks, Persians and Moslems, in short wherever one believed in an order of rank and not in equality and equal rights—differs one from another not so much in that the exoteric stands outside and sees, evaluates, measures, judges from the outside, not from the inside: what is more essential is that the exoteric sees things from below—but the esoteric sees them from above! There are heights of the soul seen from which even tragedy ceases to be tragic.

(BGE 30) [End Page 353]

It is uncontroversial that Nietzsche believed in “an order of rank” and not in equality and equal rights.3 So it seems implausible that BGE does not reflect the distinction between “the exoteric and the esoteric,” given that the book explicitly associates recognition of that distinction with a sensibility that its author shares.4 At the very least, therefore, we should be open to the possibility that he writes in view of this distinction, meaning that he deliberately writes in a way that he knows will lead some to misinterpret his claims. And Nietzsche’s repeated reference to the use of “masks” supports the same point about how he writes.5

But notice that the quoted passage distances a concern with the esoteric from a concern to distinguish insiders who know the code from outsiders who do not. Admittedly, its emphasis on seeing from above can seem indicative of something worse, an arrogant looking down on those who see things from below. But here is another way to look at it: an esoteric interpretation reflects a viewpoint that looks down on an earlier understanding that the interpreter has now overcome. This fits better with the suggestion in the final line of the quotation that “from above” means from a “height of the soul,” presumably a level up to which one must climb. Such a “height” would be attained not by failing to see anything tragic in tragedy, but only by developing a second perspective on what was originally seen only as tragic.

Second, as we attempt to practice it, an esoteric reading involves the kind of approach that Nietzsche himself encourages. Contrary to Schacht’s claims and innuendos, our esoteric Nietzsche says exactly what he means. It is just that understanding his meaning requires that we pay close, indeed exacting attention to what he says, and take some time in deciding what he means. But this is precisely the kind of reading Nietzsche tells us is required for understanding him. Within a year of finishing BGE, he wrote two well-known passages to this effect. One is the...

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