“When Napoleon wanted to bring Europe into an association of states they botched everything with their ‘wars of liberation’ and conjured up the misfortune of the insanity of nationalities (with the consequence of racial wars in long-mixed countries of Europe!)” – Gaya Scienza, Nietzsche
When I was a student in Belgium at the Universite de Louvain in the 1970s, I first heard that Friedrich Nietzsche’s collected writings were the books of choice on the nightstand of every European intellectual. Though I had already read some Nietzsche, this practice impressed me. I continued with my reading of the great thinker alongside my regular studies in economics. Nietzsche can be best defined as a thinker and, through his writings, thinking for one’s self is precisely what is acquired.
I am no longer in touch with the new generation of intellectuals and students to know if this still holds true. At the time, though, it did. The notions learned from frequenting the great European thinkers shed light on the deep roots of problems we otherwise only understand on a deceptive surface. Such a problem, I surmise, is the European project. In these times, dusting off Nietzsche’s insights can help us understand European unity both that which we have lived since his time and that still to come.
A Philosophical Note
Nietzsche’s philosophy is not one of the theorems and their derivatives but rather an exploration of the dialectical contradiction found in life’s phenomenon. He often states an observation than its opposite. He opens our minds more than transmitting a ready-made doctrine.
Nietzsche has long suffered from unfortunate associations with Nazi ideology and from being summarily dismissed in the Anglo-Saxon world. Despite this, he has remained an influential thinker on modern culture. His association with Nazi philosophy has always been a distortion. It was enthusiastically encouraged by his sister Elizabeth Forster-Nietzsche, an Aryan zealot, who became curator of his literary estate upon Nietzsche’s death.
Concepts like Nietzsche’s ‘Ubermensch’ in Thus Spoke Zarathustra are unclear at best, but here certainly relate more to a wise philosopher and elite aristocrat than any mass movement. Such concepts, grossly distorted, were seized upon to claim the great thinker for Nazi ideology. This conclusion would be impossible for anyone who actually read Nietzsche.
A Proponent of ‘Europe’
Nietzsche was a proponent of ‘Europe’ and a critic of the narrowness of the European nation-state. Germany is often the subject of his ire. One of the few things on which Nietzsche is abundantly clear is his dislike of the militant elements in German politics and culture of his epoch, ones that he predicted would lead to national destruction, long before Hitler was born. He sees no dialectic here, only looming disaster.
Take, for example, this one of very many of denunciations Nietzsche levelled against German militarism, antisemitism and nationalism, taken from Gaya Scienza: “No, we do not love humanity; but on the other hand, we are not merely ‘German’ enough, in the sense in which the word ‘German’ is constantly being used these days, to advocate nationalism and race hatred and to be able to take pleasure in the national scabies of the heart and blood poisoning that now leads the nations of Europe to delimit and barricade themselves against each other as if it were a matter of quarantine […]”.
And, if it was necessary for him to be clearer, here is an excerpt from a letter he wrote while in Switzerland in 1887: “I feel kinship only with the most cultivated French and Russian people, but not at all with the so-called distinguished elite among my own countrymen who judge everything from the principle: ‘Germany above everything’ (Deutschland über alles)”.
Cultural Views from Nietzsche
Nietzsche repeatedly denounces the anti-semitism that he finds rabid in German culture dating at least from the writings of Martin Luther, which he considers a sickness of weak-minded individuals lacking self-esteem. Any careful reader of the philosopher would confidently conclude that he would say the same about anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment today.
It is also apparent reading Nietzsche that the marriage between continental Europe and the Anglo-Saxons was on shaky footing from the start. Nietzsche finds Anglo-Saxon culture radically different from the values he cherishes on the continent. Plebian values of “individual happiness” and “practicality” made the Anglo-Saxons unfit for the great cultural projects that Nietzsche felt were at the heart of any civilization and that he saw as the future of Europe.
Making Good Europeans
Nietzsche does not content himself with simply dissecting the nationalist illness of the day. Instead of prophesising where it would lead, he attempted to embrace an alternative.
Writing to his mother from Sils Maria, the Romanish-speaking village in the Engadine valley in Switzerland, that he liked to frequent, in 1886 he sets himself apart from those he criticizes: “Even if I should be a bad German, I am at all events a very good European”.
Nietzsche’s ‘good Europeans’ had a few important common traits: a secular, cosmopolitan culture that was at home across the continent. They were individuals comfortable with many languages and cultures, and who display open and inquisitive minds. They were Renaissance men, Europeans, completely free from the national and religious passions of their day.
He also gives a few important examples of individuals who he perceives to fit this description. In addition to Napoleon, these are Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal, Heine, Schopenhauer, and even Wagner, whom he’d previously fallen out with due to the nationalist elements present in his music.
“We are, in one word – and let this be our word of honour – good Europeans, the heirs of Europe, the rich, oversupplied, but also overly obligated heirs of thousands of years of European spirit.” – Gaya Scienza.
A Final Reflection
Nietzsche appreciated the folk evolution of the European peoples in their variety. However, after having created diverse types of excellence influenced by geography, climate, language, diet and the many other factors that constitute a culture, he thought that their day had come to an end. His “good Europeans” had taken a dialectical step beyond this stage of evolution. They were citizens of the world comfortable anywhere.
At a time when nationalist and racist passions have again come into fashion, along with narrow-minded interests not too different from those prevailing in Nietzsche’s time, we find some in Europe turned inward and against any notion of openness. It would be good to remember, especially now, his warnings and where Europe may be headed again if not heeded.
