Shunichi Takagi, Pascal F. Zambito (eds.): Wittgenstein and Nietzsche

Exploring the possible ‘intersections’ between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical itineraries may still be received today with some scepticism, as these two authors are not usually paired together, let alone brought into dialogue. Similarities between their philosophical styles and temperaments were noticed as early as 1959 by Erich Heller. Since then, their respective writings have elicited a wide array of comparative and historical studies. Nonetheless, Shunichi Takagi and Pascal Zambito’s edited collection of essays – straightforwardly entitled Wittgenstein and Nietzsche – is the first of its kind. It provides a much-needed overview of the current research on both authors, sums up the most up-to-date knowledge on what Wittgenstein read, knew, and said of Nietzsche, connects and elaborates on many aspects of their respective thoughts, and sets the stage for further comparative work.

The volume successfully demonstrates that there is more than one way in which Wittgenstein and Nietzsche can be read together. As the editors make clear in their introduction, by no means does this amount to the conclusion that Wittgenstein and Nietzsche are in the end saying the same thing. On the contrary, the volume helpfully questions superficial views of their similarities (for instance the idea that they are both carrying out a ‘critique of language’ in the same sense) but also conventional views of their dissimilarities, usually exemplified by the tired opposition between Nietzsche as poet and Wittgenstein as logician, between artistic creation and austere analysis, transgression and quietism. That such a straightforward opposition does not hold is best shown by a remark by Wittgenstein himself from 1938 in which he explicitly states that his goal (Zweck) is a “transvaluation of values” (Umwertung von Werten) and that by this he “comes to Nietzsche as well as to the fact that […] the philosopher should be a poet (Dichter)” (Ms 120: 145r, my transl.). This is perhaps the most intriguing and suggestive remark among the few Wittgenstein ever wrote about Nietzsche. It is not surprising therefore that it is at the centre of several essays in the volume, especially those by 415Marco Brusotti, Oskari Kuusela and Zambito, who have given substantially different accounts of its meaning and significance.

All chapters are original, except for two: Nuno Venturinha’s, which is a reprint from 2011 supplemented with an afterword, and Stefan Majetschak’s, which is a translation from a German paper from 2006. The chapters are grouped into two parts. The first part is supposed to be dealing with the question of “influence”, whereas the second part is less concerned with historical matters and explores “more systematic intersections” between the two thinkers (p. 1). As the editors admit, no sharp line can be drawn between the two parts of the book (p. 9). The question of “influence” is a difficult one in the case of Wittgenstein, as he was famously very discreet about what he read and took from other philosophers. As Brusotti showed in a seminal article from 2009 and repeats in his essay in the book, one should be careful in saying that Wittgenstein was ‘influenced’ by Nietzsche in any strong sense of the term, especially as he was probably not that interested in what Nietzsche had to say about language. But it is true that he did read Nietzsche and reflected on some Nietzschean ideas throughout his entire career. Then, the difficulty is to agree on what should count as a reasonable standard of evidence to speak of ‘influence’, and it appears the authors of the volume have adopted diverging perspectives on this issue (see for instance Loeb, p. 228, n. 5). In this regard, one could even wonder whether the concept of ‘influence’ is a relevant one to think about the relationship between Wittgenstein and Nietzsche.

This is not to say that the careful historical and philological study of Wittgenstein’s remarks about Nietzsche is pointless, nor is the investigation of the various contexts in which Wittgenstein may have come across Nietzsche’s work. The chapters by Venturinha, Andreas Vrahimis, Majetschak and Brusotti show quite the contrary. Venturinha investigates the first remark about Nietzsche that Wittgenstein wrote in his secret notebooks from 1914 (cf. Ms 102: 39v–41v). As Wittgenstein uses the word “solipsism” for the first time in this very same remark, Venturinha aptly shows how the meaning of solipsism for the early Wittgenstein can be understood in the light of his reading of Nietzsche. Venturinha’s afterword expands on his skilful genetic study and interestingly argues against an “epistemic reading” of Tractarian solipsism (p. 27), but it leaves Nietzsche out of the picture, insisting on the contrary on Bertrand Russell’s crucial influence. As Venturinha’s insightful essay is the only one in the volume dealing with Wittgenstein’s remark from 1914, one cannot help but wish it said a little bit more about what the “truth contained in [Nietzsche’s] writings” (Ms 102: 40v; transl. Venturinha) might have been according to the young Wittgenstein.

Vrahimis’s essay provides key elements of context: it emphasises the importance of Nietzsche for Moritz Schlick and Friedrich Waismann, who were both 416close to Wittgenstein by the end of the 1920s. Vrahimis contrasts their receptions of the German philosopher: the main focus of his paper therefore is not directly Wittgenstein’s engagement with Nietzsche but rather a comparison between Wittgenstein, Schlick, and Waismann, who all responded differently to Nietzsche’s outlook.

Majetschak’s contribution elaborates on Wittgenstein and Nietzsche’s similar understanding of philosophy as a kind of “work on oneself” (CV 1998: 24e), drawing on striking “Nietzschean traces” in the Big Typescript (p. 79). Majetschak’s thorough analysis of these passages leads him to suggest that Wittgenstein’s perspective in the Big Typescript might have come from his reading of Paul Ernst and from discussions about Ernst in Olmütz during the war. It is indeed not improbable that Ernst’s Friedrich Nietzsche (1900) was being discussed by Paul Engelmann and his friends at that time. But as Majetschak himself admits, evidence is lacking to support such a claim. The role Ernst and the so-called ‘Olmütz circle’ might have played in Wittgenstein’s reception of Nietzsche remains therefore highly conjectural.

In a very rich and informative essay, Brusotti expands on his important paper from 2009 which already gave a comprehensive and detailed account of Wittgenstein’s remarks on Nietzsche. Brusotti’s newest paper is original in two essential respects. First, it shows that the Nietzschean ‘influence’ one might be tempted to detect in Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language might more probably be attributed to Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, whom Nietzsche also admired: the connection between Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and Lichtenberg gives its title to Brusotti’s chapter, which is about situating Wittgenstein’s singular perspective between (Nietzschean) transvaluation and the (Lichtenbergian) rectification (Berichtigung) of language. Second, Brusotti’s chapter explores further the relation between philosophy and poetry in Wittgenstein and Nietzsche by focusing on some new material which was not yet published in 2009, namely Wittgenstein’s conversations with Rush Rhees (1939 – 1950) edited by Gabriel Citron and published in Mind in 2015.

The two following essays, by Zambito and Kuusela, provide a complementary approach to the first four and are already leaning towards the second part, which is more strictly comparative. Zambito’s essay compares the Tractatus’s take on values and the limits of language with Nietzsche’s project in Beyond Good and Evil, whereas Kuusela draws an interesting parallel between Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language-games and Nietzsche’s genealogical method, which, according to him, are similar in not taking empirical truth as their ultimate standard.

The essays in the second part of the book are more diverse. Philip Mills’ essay comes back to the question of poetry and philosophy from yet a different angle, investigating Nietzsche’s and Wittgenstein’s peculiar styles and forms of writing. Pietro Gori’s contribution touches on epistemological matters: he compares Wittgenstein’s and Nietzsche’s conceptions of knowledge and certainty which both 417rely, according to Gori, on a radical emphasis put on practice, hence on a shared “pragmatist strategy” (p. 188). Paul Loeb is more concerned with the differences between the two philosophers, and his essay is oriented towards a “Nietzschean critique” of “Wittgenstein’s philosophical quietism” (p. 209), by which Loeb means that Christian values and priestly ideals still pervade Wittgenstein’s thinking. Gordon Bearn’s essay attempts to draw a contrast between Nietzsche’s and Stanley Cavell’s philosophical projects as diverging ways of overcoming what Ralph Waldo Emerson called “chagrin”. The final essay by Peter Westergaard emphasises subtle affinities between the later Wittgenstein’s work and Nietzsche’s philosophy of the free spirit, especially his doctrine of the “closest things” in The Wanderer and His Shadow. Such affinities tend to confirm, according to Westergaard, that they were both looking for a “particular peace” (BT 2005: 416/307e) in philosophy which is by no means achieved by stopping to think.

The essays of the second part are all faced with a similar difficulty which is essential to any comparative work on Wittgenstein and Nietzsche: namely, that the views of both philosophers were constantly and rapidly evolving but were also never exempt from self-criticism. It is therefore difficult to compare Wittgenstein and Nietzsche as such, as one can always feel justified to ask: which Nietzsche and which Wittgenstein? This explains in particular why the essays sometimes do not fully do justice to Nietzsche. The Nietzsche from The Birth of Tragedy is hardly a ‘critic of metaphysics’ in the same sense the Nietzsche from Human, All Too Human is. The Nietzsche from The Wanderer and His Shadow certainly looks for a kind of idyllic-heroic peace, but the Nietzsche from Dawn does not: he is willing to risk not only his own life but the whole of humanity in the name of his passion for knowledge (cf. Dawn: §45; §429). This does not mean any comparison made between Nietzsche and Wittgenstein is bound to be worthless but that such comparisons can only illuminate partial aspects of their thoughts.

This insightful book will undoubtedly be of great use to scholars interested in Nietzsche and/or Wittgenstein. It has obviously not exhausted its (immense) subject: Wittgenstein’s remarks on eternal recurrence (cf. BBB 1958: 104; Ms 115: 164; Ts 302: 5) as well as those on the soul as “something of the body” quoted from Zarathustra (Ms 115: 284; Ms 131: 68; RPP II 1980: 689 – 690, my transl.) are barely touched on, let alone his views on music and especially on Wagner which are to some extent consonant with Nietzsche’s. The book puts a warranted emphasis on style and method, yet it does not explicitly ask what kind of ‘work on ourselves’ we should hope to achieve when jointly reading Wittgenstein and Nietzsche if we are to approach them not just as academics but as readers inclined to philosophise. This is, in other words, the question of ‘therapy’, which could have been more explicitly discussed in the volume as it is a rather natural locus of confrontation between the two philosophers. Of course, all of the book’s essays are in 418their own way concerned with this question, which is the very general question of “the task of philosophy” (p. 8) and its meaning. And this indicates that it is perhaps not so much a topic of comparison among others as the defining point of intersection between both authors, from which they also still speak to us today.