32 pages • 1 hour read
Friedrich NietzscheThe Gay Science
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1882A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Book Third-Book Fifth: We Fearless OnesChapter Summaries & Analyses
Summary: “Book Third”
In “Book Third,” Nietzsche dissects the construction of knowledge, proposing that “the strength of conceptions” like logic “does not […] depend on their degree of truth” (85) but results, instead, from changes over time in an individual’s relationship to the human herd, and that “the only experiences are moral experiences, even in the domain of sense-perception” (86).
He proposes that logic grows out of the immense illogical chaos of the universe. Here, Nietzsche examines how individuals whose philosophies go against herd-instinct cause “him a sting of conscience–and his neighbour likewise, indeed the whole herd!–it is in this respect that we have most changed our mode of thinking” (87).
In “Book Third,” Nietzsche writes his most famous phrase, “God is dead” (81), and later adds “We have killed him” (90). In ancient times, knowledge was a means to virtue. Eventually that virtue corrupts, to a point. Society no longer values the figures of the Christian church, as it once did, and so, Nietzsche proposes, as the polytheism of the Greeks gives way to that of the Romans, similarly the concept of a monotheistic God loses its value. This occurs, Nietzsche contends, in Martin Luther’s time. Nietzsche explores this in the first half of “Book Third,” and proposes that the idea of man as flawed. Nietzsche call these flaws the four errors, alluding to Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths. He then dissects and critiques conceptions such as logic, cause and effect, and Schopenhauer’s concept of freewill.
In the second half of “Book Third,” Nietzsche applies what he conceives as new ways of thinking to old philosophical inquiries. Topics like work and art, the origin of good and bad, and what makes something heroic receive playful and sometimes cryptic applications that can undermine ideas already put forth. This can be seen as Nietzsche having fun with philosophy and applying the concept of the gay science.
“Book Third” opens with a warning against “thinking that the world is a living being” (81). Nietzsche proposes mechanisms that seem like laws of nature, such as explaining the universe through cause and effect, that result from incomplete knowledge. Nietzsche asserts that logic represents a thinker selecting “a few isolated points” (85) within a larger continuum in constant flux. He states it was a faith not rooted in knowledge that led ancient thinkers to probe intellectual concepts and ideas that were considered taboo. Nietzsche cites Buddha and Jesus as two figures whose ideas clashed with the foundational religious beliefs of their eras. Nietzsche argues against faith, but later celebrates the energy of faith of one who believes in themselves and that true knowledge can be gained in going against the current tide of ideas. Nietzsche exploits this paradox in order to suggest knowledge is a dynamic push and pull between individual and collective understanding, between the individual and the religious, intellectual, and artistic norms of one’s time. In keeping with Nietzsche’s theme of philosophy as medicine and a means of personal liberation, “Book Third” closes with empowering language: “What is the seal of attained liberty?–To be no longer ashamed of oneself” (118).
Summary: “Book Fourth: Sanctus Januarius”
After deconstructing and analyzing the architecture of knowledge in the first three books, in “Book Fourth” Nietzsche proposes freedom exists for individuals who overcome fear and, in the face of whatever danger and distress, become heroic investigators of their own received knowledge and creators of their own new tales, which are based on personal values reached through experience.
“Book Fourth” closes with the image of Zarathustra, a godlike figure, descending from the mountains. These mountains are both literal, in setting, and figurative, in that they are metaphor for the discovery of knowledge: “We must become the best students and discoverers of all the laws and necessities in the world. We must be physicists in order to be creators in that sense” (148).
Here, Nietzsche celebrates individual thinking and impulse. He derides herd-mentality thought demonstrated by preachers of morality “who have seduced us to the opinion that the inclinations and impulses of men are evil” (128). Nietzsche proposes that an individual’s doubt and fear of how others will perceive them blinds people from realizing “we are free-born birds! Wherever we come there will always be sunshine and freedom around us” (129).
Nietzsche believes individuals are godlike, and that the Greeks invented their gods, as Christians invented the Christian God. Science replaces that belief in God. “Book Fourth” closes suggesting one should live in a way where they would be pleased to repeat the same life again through eternity, suggesting that truth, beauty, or a pure knowledge reveals itself only to the brave, and only but once.
“Book Fourth” opens with a poem, followed by wordplay; Nietzsche inverts Descartes’ famous “I think therefore I am” phrase, by writing: “Sum, ergo cogito: cogito ergo, sum” (119). Here, Nietzsche says, I live therefore I think, signaling a reversal–and an undermining–of long-championed philosophic discourse. Nietzsche wants to break the intellect free from old understandings, propelling a thinker into new intellectual territories. Nietzsche proposes societal taboos restrict intellectual advancement. The aphorisms in “Book Fourth” read like philosophical prescriptions for an ailing intellect or personality, furthering Nietzsche’s theme of philosophy as a healing science. Nietzsche proposes that both individual understanding and collective knowledgeresultsand evolves from unique experience, and so each individual’s knowledge is a personal journey and a societal contribution. It’s a journey towards happiness that depends in part on experiencing pain and doubt.
According to Nietzsche, egoism drives the preservation of the species.This egoism led to individual doubt in God. Egoism is often first ostracized by the community at large, and then, later, seen as noble. Nietzsche proposes that habit reduces all things of value to the popularity of a street-cry, and that the golden and novel insight loses authority. Once the value of a thought depreciates, it leads to potential new thinking:
Do you believe then that the sciences would have arisen and grown up if the sorcerers, alchemists, astrologers and witches had not been their forerunners; those who, with their promisings and foreshadowings, had first to create a thirst, a hunger, and a taste for hidden and forbidden powers[?] (131).
Nietzsche proposes that whatever has value in the world is invented by humanity. These values always change, and never represent the entire possibility of values or things. Nietzsche proposesman’s happiness depends on his investigation of his beliefs, and his selfish and unflagging determination, in the face of distress and contempt, to find his own happiness. His chauvinistic propositions in this section concerning love, and a woman’s role in a male’s pursuit of the aforementioned investigations, should also be noted.
Summary: “Book Fifth: We Fearless Ones”
In “Book Fifth,” Nietzsche proposes that an ego-driven, deep-suffering, romantic pessimist, overflowing with vitality and a need for knowing the truth, and who is indifferent to convention, is the kind of thinker needed to shake European thought from its belief in God. European collective consciousness, Nietzsche maintains, is still hindered by ideas like “abnegation, self-denial, [and] self-sacrifice” (159). Nietzsche argues that “selflessness has no value either in heaven or on earth” (158). The ancient Greeks invented their Gods, and since divinity is a man-made ideal, it’s the individual who surmounts the stereotypes and received knowledge of an age, and who leads individuals to new insights that heal physiological ailments. In this way, Nietzsche echoes Socrates’ famous declaration that the unexamined life is not worth living.
Nietzsche opens “Book Fifth” explaining how belief in God has collapsed, and with it the “entire European morality” (155). He states, “I know not what the spirit of a philosopher would like better than to be a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, and also his art” (196). Nietzsche analyzes the implications of this collapse with respect to German thinking, examining Martin Luther, Schopenhauer’s ideas of will, critiquing Wagner and German Romanticism, and deriding eighteenth-century philosophers like Hume and Kant as too weak, too moral, and too weighed down to preserve the species. He also explores how even scientific methods can eventually lose their authority.
After admitting his misinterpretation of Schopenhauer (“Book Fifth” was added by Nietzsche for a second edition of The Gay Science) and the power of individual will, which Nietzsche had initially claimed Schopenhauer left unanalyzed, Nietzsche then analyzes German Romanticism. He proposes there are two types of intellectuals: those who possess an over-abundant Dionysian vitality and need for life, and those with reduced vitality, whoNietzsche says harbor a “feminine” suffering.
Nietzsche first proposes that artists suffer from reduced vitality and fill this void in their personalities and lives with art and reflection. However, as he does throughout The Gay Science,Nietzsche proposes truth can always be undermined, and in turn undermines himself. He goes on to investigate how it’s possible for a great intellectual to suffer from both overabundance and paucity. In fact, it’s this type of individual, embodied by Zarathustra, the Dionysian romantic pessimist, who embodies Nietzsche’s ideal.
“Book Third”-“Book Fifth: We Fearless Ones” Analysis
In the final three sections of The Gay Science, Nietzsche proposesthat God is dead and interrogates the evolution of German thinking, from the fall of the church to his own time. He examines thinkers like Leibniz, and his idea that all knowledge exists in a shadow-world, and thus reality itself is artifice. He also analyzes Schopenhauerand Wagner. He then reiterates many of his proposals towards a fearless type of selfishness in one’s quest for knowledge, and the beauty the artifice of art provides. These final three sections can be viewed as Nietzsche applying the implications of his philosophy. “Book Fifth” reads as though Nietzsche’s had opportunities to strengthen his ideas in the years between the publication of the first and second editions, which also saw the publication of his text Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Important in these final three sections is Nietzsche’s conversation between ethos and pathos. Nietzsche proposes that consciousness evolves out of this communication between an individual’s deepest needs and how an individual perceives their needs in relation to others; i.e., one’s conscience. It is individuals’recognition of the failures of the principles of the Church that collapse the Church’s authority, undermine its meaning, and cause Nietzsche to declare that God is dead. Nietzsche considers this idea necessary and something to be optimistic about.
Nietzsche dedicates much of “Book Fourth” and “Book Fifth” to applying his philosophy to European intellectual developments that surface when the Church collapses, including the idea of Kant and Hegel. He performs his interrogations and dissections of various schools of knowledge to show that the truths realized by each school of thought can be undermined and philosophized into meaninglessness. This battle to fill meaninglessness with passionate happiness cuts to the core of Nietzsche’s thinking. All these interrogations concerning the architecture of knowledge and identity are meant not to dissuade individuals from philosophic inquiry but rather to inspire their own brave explorations free from fear of selfishness. Nietzsche’s work suggests individual instincts ought to be trusted and celebrated, not doubted, regardless of if those instincts can even be understood.
Nietzsche proposes the greatest artists and thinkers, whose insights transform and evolve humanity, live dangerous lives against the models of convention, and their lives and their art add compose the gay science, a prescription for fearless living according to one’s own needs, experience, and truths.
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