1

Translated and Edited by Wanyoung Kim

ALAIN BADIOU
Nietzsche Seminars 1992-1993
I. Anti-Philosophy

Notes taken by Aimé Thiault, Transcription by François

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Acknowledgments

I give the following individuals my sincerest thanks. These are Daniel Tutt of
the Global Center for Advanced Studies, Duane Rousselle of Grand Valley State
University, Jaden Adams of the New Centre for Research and Practice, Simon
Critchley of the New School University, and Eugene Thacker of the New School.
I also thank the Friedrich Nietzsche Gesellschaft and the North American
Friedrich Nietzsche Society.

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Translator’s Foreword

Philologist, poet and musician, Nietzsche is often understood from the

standpoint of his socio-political aesthetic along with his autobiographical and
psychological commentary, historically and philosophically. If as we say,
“madness is with genius closely aligned,” rarely, if ever are figures of his
literary stature or intellect examined in their own right as psychological
philosophical subjects, with a nod at William James. When we examine
Nietzsche’s emphasis upon psychological interpretation in politics and
philosophy especially in Beyond Good and Evil, where it is mentioned that
Drive (Trieb) interprets the world, some are unfortunately hard-pressed to
resist the urge to turn psychological interpretation back upon its own head
by examining Nietzsche of so-called ‘pathologies’ or categories, the terms of
a psychologistic reduction. Life as Nietzsche states is pure Chaos, which
Badiou calls “Becoming” in flux—and as such, human behavior often resists
psychoanalytic analysis as philosophical interpretation. We not only create
the world but our own analysands, as the very masters of ourselves. It is
important to indicate that editing and translating is interpretation, along with
the composition of art, literature, music or poetry Nietzsche advocated as
self-reflexive vitality of mastery, that is, self-mastery, in interpretation.

I believe the true meaning of Friedrich Nietzsche is, you can only build
upwards from the passive nihilism of Hinduism to The Active nihilism of
Buddhism to the affirmation of Christianity. The self-alienated totality of the
West is what Nietzsche calls ‘Life Denying’ as it claims to be Life-affirming.
Nietzsche’s description concerning not a genuine Christendom as he
describes in Anti-Christ, but his nearly corpus-wide critique of a hypocritical

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and debased or decadent Christendom similar to what Kierkegaard also

described in later life in the Corsair Affair. As such, the ‘Anti’- of ‘Anti-Christ
is not a strict binary or diametrical opposition, but we must know that in
Deleuze, as well as Hegel, dialectical opposition always resolves itself in
higher synthesis.

To someone affirming in the flux of life (similar in structure to faith in

Becoming), the question remains if Being “falsely” analyzed or squeezed into
overly narrow categories of interpretation or Totalization as “Other” point at
all to possible oppression of binary oppositions as a thing and its negation,
or through identifying with overly concrete signifieds? Creation resists the
passive nihilism in Becoming one with Void, yet its fluidity is integrated with
the concreteness of active nihilism, creating as master of oneself in and
despite the merely perceived shallowness of the inevaluable depth as Void.
This will bring in the importance of faith as a veridical perception of substance
that one can foist onto or grasp, in order to create. What resists interpretation
psychoanalytically or hermeneutically is not grounds for being a passive
nihilist of Nietzsche’s Camel stage as oppression. Nietzsche, with respect to
his role as an observer both within and outside of Christianity, may very well
be called a pastor as well as minor prophet.

With the fervency of a third, or at least a third-and-half generational

Protestant Christian background (Nietzsche’s father, grandfather and great-
grandfather being Lutheran ministers, or those whom Nietzsche refers to as
priests, and Nietzsche himself having studied with a Protestant theologian
‘free-thinker’ and philologist named Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl), Nietzsche is
especially qualified to identify genuine Christ-Being, as he mentions in Anti-

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Christ, as well as critique the hypocrisy of Christendom. Having had this

third-generational Protestant background on my own mother’s side, with a
great-grandmother converted to Protestantism by missionaries in 1890 [it
happens to be the year of the “collapse’ of Nietzsche’s mental faculties shortly
after a year of writings including Anti-Christ and Case of Wagner], perhaps I
can closely identify with Nietzsche’s gazing upon “half-Christian” hypocrisy
of Western ideals, or “world-denying modes of thought with an Asiatic,
supra-Asiatic and more-than-Asiatic eye,” §56, Beyond Good and Evil,
translated by Ian Johnston. I have an agnostic Buddhist father being
descended from a long line of Mahayana Buddhists. I mentioned
Kierkegaard earlier; whom I was reading alongside Nietzsche since youth.
However, my delving into the Protestantism of Nietzsche only began the
summer of 2012 after I had visited Kierkegaard’s grave and began conversing
with a person at adolescence, reading the Nietzschean corpus.

The Act of final Crucifixion which Nietzsche speaks of in letters,

before his own death, can be identified with some chronic pain. Christ
himself suffered a form of what Simone Weil calls affliction, the chronic
version of acute psychological as well as physical pain, and Nietzsche is a
true Christian, mystical at that, as far as he relates the chronic nature of his
psychological suffering to that of Christ. However, even chronic pain can be
transcended in the case of an anhedonic.

What I have translated as “Rupture” regarding Nietzsche’s break in

two of world history, is perhaps especially interesting with regard to
psychical trauma. Even in cases of the worst rupture we see in his works,
including Zarathustra [§15, “The polytheistic deities died laughing”],

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Nietzsche always describes the importance of laughter or the comic. Gaiety

or mirth involves joy amidst the tragic, the tragic as tragi-comedic. It’s in
those who are left-handed, including Nietzsche himself, having most likely
suffered trauma in the womb, in whom we find the most hearty laughter, that
is a subconscious sense of humor. Perhaps this is what we can relate to
Badiou’s “primordial tragedy,” mentioned in New Course 5. In addition to
being described clinically as one of the more mature coping mechanisms, we
find laughter as a way for the soul’s striving strength to overcome suffering
and hardships. However, Will to power is not only active but a synthesis of
active (willful) and passive (willing); for most of the body’s joy, to be
sublimated or raised high above the Self, is located in the Drives. See Untimely
Meditations, regarding the phrase (in “Schopenhauer”). “Your true nature
lies, not hidden deep within you, but immeasurably high above you, or at
least above that which you normally take to be yourself” (R.J. Hollingdale
translation). Thus, ‘Life’ persists in and past pathology, even perhaps past a
form of death.

The Superior Human as an almost otherworldly Overhuman in

Nietzsche is one who, as the common Christian saying goes, lives in the
world but not of it (John 17:1). Perhaps what we may find more helpful is
Romans 12:2: “Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the
renewing of your mind.” The Übermensch or Überdame as hermeneut is
someone who constantly creates, imposing their own interpretation upon the
categories of the world. Such is the very meaning of Dionysus creating or
imposing new categories as a Master signifier for the inevaluable depth of the
World that one nonetheless says yes to over and against a confusion or Void.

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These are the definitions that our old categories can defy. We do not stop
forming new definitions and actively interpret- we will never stop being
masters or to stop interpreting. That is the very essence of cooperating with
Apollo as Dionysus- not doing away with values nihilistically but of
imposing new definitions for old categories, expanding old categories to fit
new definitions genealogically. Here is the caution against producing versus
the product: clinging onto products and objects, the objectifications or
historical categories in words themselves, which stops us from more actively
creating. From Nietzsche’s essay, “Truth and Lying in an Amoral sense,” on
language, we can see that words are in flux as well as old definitions of words
as products continually in development. So we can never forget words
themselves and language evolve with meaning imposed by new masters for
the absence of signifieds in the chaos and fluid process of the world that is
nonetheless not void. We create meanings as well as categories to fit new
processes as well as phenomena socially, politically, philosophically,
artistically. Such is a nature to saying yes to the world but not of doing away
with an active nihilist notion of interpreting.

Imposing our own psychological categories upon Nietzsche, whether

as analysts, philosophers or even translators, concerning his own person or
even philosophy, psychologistically, is to be a bit uncreative. I hope that static
complacency with regard to roles as categories or situations, preventing
growth in Becoming as Life, will never be found in myself or others who
creatively interpret, whether it is through translating, writing and
performative art. (Indeed, speaking volumes for hermeneutics in British
English is the fact, one can note, that translating is interpreting. Art and

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Western philosophy is thus infinite conversation, as the latter and former

exchange the passive and active, respectfully. There may be at times be in
philosophers, as in any humans in livings vicissitudes slight personality
quirks, as well as trauma in philosophers, even hysteria at one point in
Nietzsche—or as some may say, a high-functioning neurosis. But these are
all tendencies of being human, and is of lesser importance than the effort of
trying to understand what Nietzsche’s own categories might signify. It is
notable in Badiou’s analysis of Nietzsche, he is actively reversing the
standpoint of analyst as master signifier alone: for though we are questioning
Nietzsche’s text, it is still alive as a formal dialogue or trade.

For us to render an honest or open-ended dialogue with Nietzsche

untainted by Elizabeth Nietzsche’s fascist editorial hand, it’s necessary to
emphasize that Nietzschean power has been translated from the original
seminars as puissance. German Macht similar to puissance as the psychological
force of self-overcoming, not simply the crude physical strength of Kraft is
what characterizes Nietzsche’s Overhuman or Superman. Macht
differentiates the power toward which one wills, from the mere brute force
of Thrasymachus, or sheer physical Kraft (strength or bodily fitness) of the
Nazis. It is this French designation of puissance that will help guard Nietzsche
against any further distortions of Will to Power based on its historically
inaccurate usage of Nietzsche by the Nazis after Nietzsche’s sister made
liberal or abusive edits to the texts, substituting Kraft for Macht.

Nietzsche, reverent of the will to power and noble resignation of Jews,

including Jesus the Essene, is critical of Anti-Semitic Christendom and its
parishioners, and would not have condoned the base indistinction between

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power of the psyche, and sheer physical Might exercised by someone like
Hitler who did not master his egoistic insecurities of slave morality such as
ressentiment. It is “Macht” resulting in an overcoming of one’s basic nature
of slave morality, differentiating the truly noble from those who merely
appropriate it to a Western European stock somewhat mythically distilled
from the broader definition of Aryans. It has historically been demonstrated
that so-called Aryans are actually Eurasians, which genetically as well as
culturally includes descendants of Hindu Aryans in India, Bangladesh, and
South-Central Asia, as well as the Hindus’ Buddhist cultural and linguistic
counterpart in China, Korea, and Japan from whom Hitler appropriated the
Indo-European symbol for happiness and prosperity. The added distinction
made by puissance makes clear that Nietzsche’s will to power is not simply
the striving toward destructive mastery or power exercised over others, but
the power of mastering oneself before mastering, and leading others nobly.
In Nietzsche, self-mastery is a trait of true nobility or the generous
magnanimity of those superiors qualified in character to guide the rest of the
crowd. Macht in its early stages designates the soulful skill and strength of
the character of a being, not merely a destructive force of ressentiment
arguably found in crude, brute, and extremely conservative spins on
Nietzsche.

Alain Badiou often uses the word regime to discuss ‘order’, or

structure, scheme. I have left it as ‘order’ to be true to the historical usage of
‘order’ such as for example, in Foucault, The Order of Things, or in Badiou,
“the order of truth,” “the order of the address,” “the order of the argument.”
Furthermore, I have rendered “précipitation vers la folie” of the Nietzschean

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act as a ‘rushing toward’, or ‘rush of’, when we speak of Nietzsche’s madness,

or The Act of final crucifixion as Dionysus or Nietzsche.

And perhaps, the most unique aspect of Badiou’s treatment of

Nietzsche as an anti-philosopher, is in his distinction of the “anti” in anti-
philosopher from mere opposition within dialectic, which precedes a
meditational synthesis. This is part and parcel Deleuzian as it transcends a
Hegelian notion of opposition. Such a feature relates to the discussion of the
noncontradictory ‘against’ in the 2nd Course, as well as in the Appendix
discussion of Nietzsche against Wagner.

Badiou, in the 6th Course, renders the pure multiplicity of “il y a”

distinct from Being as l’être, or l’étant as a state. My use of “state of being” for
l’étant designates Being (l’être) within “il y a” ‘s pure multiplicity. Being is
merely faithful to Heidegger’s distinction between Being and beings, but
those familiar with Badiou will find interest in the Nietzschean
supplementation of Becoming, devenir in ”il y a”, within the vital force or
power of puissance.

There is, at last, a parallel aspect between Being and art in this work’s
Appendix, devoted to Nietzsche and Wagner. In New Course Five, I have
chosen to translate l’apparaître as “appearance,” distinct from l’apparence as
well as semblance (same in French) which is distinct from semblant (seeming).
I have rendered the translation of “theatralisation” in French to “drama”, or
dramatization, which, in addition to a hysteric drama, carries the more
suitable nuance of Nietzschean “truth” or anti-philosophy as not strictly, or
in binary opposition against truth as a falsity, or even a diametric of Veritas
in the flux of Truth as Becoming. But will to power contains the truth of

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poetry, art, psychology, and rhetorical advice as thematically situational, that

is historical within Life as Becoming, as is the adequate means to express our
situation in life. Truth expressed by poetry, art and politics as historical
themes of expression are not strictly opposed to the conception of Life and
Becoming as philosophical Truth. Such is the nuance of Against or “Anti”-
Philosophy in Badiou’s Nietzsche.

Wanyoung Kim - January 2015

Brooklyn, New York and Grand Rapids, Michigan

ALAIN BADIOU - SEMINARS 1992-1993: NIETZSCHE I,

ANTI-PHILOSOPHY
Translated and Edited by Wanyoung Kim

1st Course – Triple Objective On “Anti-Christ”

(Heidegger, Deleuze, & Madness)
3rd Course
3 Goals
Reminders
How to Question Nietzsche’s Text
The Crapshoot: Nietzsche and
Status of Mad Utterances Mallarmé
Heideggerian Interpretation The Act: Superimposition of Rupture
and Eternity
Deleuzian Interpretation
Chastisement of Christianity
2nd Course On the Dionysian “Yes” -
Nature of Affirmation Law against Christianity of “Anti-
Christ”
The Function of Proper Names
The Hellhound and the Silent Event
Usage of “Against"
4th Course – On the Creation of
Act as an Event: Breaking in 2 World
Being
Histories
Nietzsche and Politics
Question of Revolution
The Ambiguity of the Word “Life”
Complications: On Eternity

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Dionysian Dithyrambs 6th Course: Dialectics: of the

Creation & Void
The Circle
Reminder: The 6 Anti-Philosophical
The World and Language: Ontological Propositions of Nietzsche
Historicized Sophistry and Anti-
Theatrical poetics The 6 Philosophical Ontological
Statements of Alain Badiou
a) The World
1st proposition: the “il y a” in
b) Language Nietzsche is named the Becoming or
4 Questions Addressed to Nietzsche life 2nd proposition: Being is a
dramatic designation: it isn’t
Question of Being in 6 propositions necessary to name the “il y a”
(top)
1st statement: The Name of “il y a” as
a) First Statement:”il y a” has the multiplicity or pure multiple
name of “Becoming” or “Life”.
2nd statement: naming the multiple
b) Second Statement: Being is a Being of “il y a” perhaps innocent if
fictitious designation: The “il y a” one splits this designation, i.e. if one
ought not be named. parts Being and truth from all
continuity with meaning.

5th Course – GrossePolitik (Arch- 3rd statement, Logic is what

Politics) philosophy retraces in itself due to
mathematics.
The State, the New Idol
4th statement, since there is pure
a) First Thesis: Disjunction between multiplicity, there is no relation.
people and the State
5th statement: The means of
b) Second Thesis: God is Dead, Death philosophical thought will overlap or
of the State combine or articulate the ideal of
adequate language and that of intense
c) Third Thesis: the State is
drama.
Corruption
6th statement: The element of intense
d) Fourth Thesis: the State changes
drama in every philosophy is, in truth,
Art, Science and Philosophy into a
what is traced in philosophy in its
cultural magma.
artistic condition.
e) Fifth thesis: Humanity is always
The Act and Nihilism
beyond the State
a) Introduction
The ontology of Nietzsche in 6
statements

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b) The Release of Three Orientations Appendix : Wagner’s

(Hegel, Heidegger and Deleuze)
Anti-Philosophy
First interpretation: The Act would
New Course 1 - Poetry, Theater &
have the essence of creating new
Nietzschean Act
values against reactive nihilistic
values.
New Course 2 Badiou, Nietzsche Art
Second interpretation: The Act is a
promotion of everything that is of New Course 3 - Apollo & Dionysus
maximal intensity. [Drunkenness and the Dream]

Third interpretation: Foucault’s New Course 4 – Wagnerian Art

Nietzsche: the question of
interpretation New Course 5 - Knottings [The Pen-
Exposition of Foucault's thesis Ultimate Course

Critique of Foucault's thesis New Course 6 - Philosophy,

Subjectivity & Art
3 Metamorphoses

First Course: The Triple Objective

(Heidegger, Deleuze, & Madness)

Good evening. Tonight I’d like to talk about what might be called the
strategy of this seminar in terms of questions, problems, and, indeed, difficulties,
not to mention its methodology. As announced, the topic of our seminar will be
Nietzsche. But saying that we will talk about Nietzsche is in itself quite
indiscriminate. What to see right away is that there is a complexity of the target, and
that this review of Nietzsche, this passage of Nietzsche, carries at least 3 goals, that
may not immediately be superimposed.
The first goal is to attempt a qualification of the Nietzschean text. What is
the exact status of the Nietzschean text? Obviously, this will in part be measured by
the question of philosophy and of eventual definitions of philosophy taken up and
left to guide the question: In what sense was Nietzsche a philosopher? And is he
really one? One can also pose the question another manner, i.e. Ought philosophy

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let us state that Nietzsche is a philosopher? Or even yet: if Nietzsche is a philosopher,

what consequences are there for philosophy? From the point of view of the
immediate Nietzschean text, this question is extremely complex, because Nietzsche
both claimed the identity of a philosopher in some passages, and radically distanced
from it in others. For example, he argues that in reality, the philosopher has always
been a masked priest who is hidden. But in contrast to the formulas of this kind,
there are others which show what he views the true philosopher to be. However, he
will also use a few other names. He is far from designating his undertaking under
the name of philosophy. Also, the immoralist will be one of the names of the true
philosopher. It is therefore what I would call a topical question: from where is the
Nietzschean text is uttered?
The second question can be described as such: to what extent was this
century Nietzschean? After a topical interrogation, we would conduct a historical
one. Was there something essentially Nietzschean in this century? Recently, a
number of people got together to write a book titled: Why We Are Not Nietzschean. A
book that made a slight commotion. An account of what they are, a question no one
had asked them! But at last, they found it necessary to respond and say, with
thunder and lightning, why they were not Nietzschean. Which, of course, is
removed from the assumption of a general Nietzscheanism to which they made a
glorious and collective exception. We can thus say that the question of what it means
to be or not be Nietzschean is comprised a little like a question which is actually
asked by the century. When we see the group in question state so decisively: “Why
we are not Nietzschean,” I would like the first idea we have of it to be that perhaps
we should be Nietzschean. Besides, it is for me a relative surprise to discover myself,
willy-nilly, as Nietzschean. This has enabled, I must say, my relation to Nietzsche,
that I had by all means anticipated, as I announced this passage of Nietzsche before
the publication of this book, but it has accelerated the need to go see more closely in
what sense perhaps, what part of the century and its thinking had indeed received

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a Nietzschean touch.
At the other extreme, since we are investigating particular instances, I would
like to point out that the beautiful book by Sarah Kofman, titled Explosion I, is an
extraordinarily careful assessment of Ecce Homo, an almost perpetual commentary
on that book, paragraph by paragraph, and nearly line by line. A book that we have
to traverse several times. Explosion I was nothing but the first part of this
undertaking, which in its own way, also establishes or re-establishes the question of
Nietzsche as a question that is immediately essential and contemporary. So the
historical question would be: Can we think, or let ourselves think that something in
the century was Nietzschean, and that it would be necessary to reformulate this
position, whether we’re opposed to it one way or another?
Indeed, in the path which I suggest to you, we will find two essential
questions concerning this question, which are the interrogations of Heidegger and
Deleuze: To what extent has this century been Nietzschean?
For Heidegger, as you know, the main referential texts are the two large
volumes published by Gallimard: Nietzsche I and II, which reconstitute, without
doubt reshaping the courses given by Heidegger between 1936 and 1946 - a peculiar
time. There are of course a number of other allusions in the texts by Heidegger on
Nietzsche- in particular, the text that has achieved something completely
remarkable, and has the title: Who is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? But the massive corpus
of the Heideggerian assessment of Nietzsche comprises two large volumes.
For Deleuze, the main book is Nietzsche and Philosophy. And as we’ll see, I
think Heidegger's interpretation and Deleuze's reconstruction draw a kind of
maximal deviation around the question of Nietzsche’s contemporaneity.
The 3rd view will have to do with the determination of the relation of
philosophy to art as I mentioned near the end of last year, i.e. taking Nietzsche as
support for an active or current determination that philosophy, provided that it
persists or insists, converses with artistic activity. In very broad strokes, what has

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happened to the proper order of philosophy in this regard? You know that Hegel
announced the end of speculative interest in art (let’s use this phrase). One has often
concentrated upon the form of the end of art, but it is not exactly the end of art as a
factual end of artistic activity; this is not what Hegel means. Hegel believed that
what was at stake in the form of philosophy no longer has a relation of immediate
interiority to art. So we can state that art as such, no longer offers philosophy truth
about the question of the mind. That said, it is quite true that this Hegelian judgment
has placed on the day's agenda another question, which is the question of the end of
art. It has placed on the agenda a perspective of a kind of interiority with which
philosophy converses with art.
Opposed to the Hegelian movement, there has been from the beginning of
the 19th century a vigorous promotion of art as a condition of radical thinking, even
in some cases as the sole condition for thinking. A position taken by German
Romanticism, certainly continued by Schopenhauer, where Nietzsche is the
principal figure of this reconfiguration of the question of art in a central interiority
of philosophy, not in the least because, ultimately, the philosophical type that is his,
in his very terms, the type of philosopher- artist. For Nietzsche, art is primarily a
subjective type. Before and essentially in the work, art’s figure is that of the artist,
and in such a regard, Nietzsche depicts the kind of philosopher, namely the artist-
philosopher who is basically the philosopher and not a priest, or no longer a priest.
Art will serve as a crucial paradigm, including the essential Nietzschean gesture of
the reversal of all values, and especially what you might call a change of type for the
philosopher. Nietzschean mutation is ambiguous in the sense that we can
immediately say that Nietzsche is both philosopher and anti-philosopher, because
it offers a de-typing and retyping of the philosopher. So in this type of philosopher
as an artist-philosopher, there is a reconfiguration of the essential connection
between philosophy and art, which is why Nietzsche proves to be a decisive author
on the question of the relation between philosophy and art. It is a question that goes

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beyond Heidegger up until today. This question for us will be this: what the natural
mode in which philosophy retraces art, i.e. what is the mode in which philosophy is
under the conditions of art, in the sense that it retraces it, and renames it. For
example, we can say that Nietzsche retraces art in the figure of its type and not in
the figure of his formal configuration - but in the figure of its type. The question of
art as a form of truth - we can say it is so in the eyes of Nietzsche - how is it traced
in the contemporary philosophical gesture? And as in my jargon, art is a generic
procedure, like any procedure of truth. We will say that this question is a generic
question, i.e. the question of the generic quality of art with regard to a philosophical
disposition.
The strategy of this seminar will entangle, or concern three questions:
- Topical Question: Status of the Nietzschean text
- Historical question: Was the century Nietzschean, and how so [in what
sense]?
- Generic question, centered on the question of art

The Way to Question Nietzsche's Text

The entanglement, which is already a fairly complex problem in itself, will
be redoubled in another difficulty, recurrent in the assessment of Nietzsche, which
is linked to Nietzsche, and precisely suited for Nietzsche, and it is the question – a
fundamentally simple one - namely, What exactly does it mean to utilize the
Nietzschean text? What is the protocol for a possible use of the Nietzschean text?
More precisely, which of these questions can be addressed in such a text? And can
one even ask such a question? And does it have to do with a text that is inherently
exposed in the question? Those who have truly read Nietzsche know that his text
does not appear to be open. It is not in the form of the proposition: it exhibits more
than it proposes. The text is not available for questioning as such, for reasons that
are internal to himself and are quite essential. To describe it in a very superficial

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manner, the text usually oscillates between pamphleteering and angry destruction,
the text of which is an animation, and an affirmative order, which by no means is in
dialectical relation to the previous order. The affirmative order is by no means a
dialectic correlation of destruction. Nietzschean assemblage is not an assemblage
where negation would precede or constitute the possibility of affirmation. Instead -
and this, as Deleuze points out is highly relevant - there is a kind of stalling that is
quite singular between the negative or critical dimension, words that are also too
weak for Nietzsche words, in the destructive dimension, so to speak, and then in the
structure appointed by Nietzsche as the Great Noon, i.e. the system of affirmative
serenity of the return. But whether pamphleteering destruction or Dionysian
affirmation, neither one nor the other are proposed to the questioning assessment.
This is not its status. Or, if you want, the Nietzschean text is not dialogical. It does
not fit in the recurrent form of Platonic philosophy as dialogue. Nietzsche is
essentially a thinker who exposes his thoughts in a form exempted from dialogical
character, as in dialectics. With this connection we may recall the subtitle of Twilight
of the Idols that everyone knows of: "How to Philosophize with a Hammer." Obviously,
a hammer is hardly something with which to address a question. One can certainly
receive it to say why, but philosophy taken in the image of hammer indicates
precisely that it is not dialogical. Such is the essential point. The hammer is both
what will destroy what deserves to be destroyed, and possibly enforce the
paramount affirmation. This is not what will be the subject or object of the form of
the question. In particular, it cannot, at any time of the Nietzschean text, be
examining evidence or even the will to probation. One can even say that the
Nietzschean device is that of undoing the argumentative structure. Basically, even
when there are apparently arguments or sequences, philosophy is hammering
against the slope of the argumentative structuring. Thereupon, the final maxim is in
the Twilight of the Idols. It is with great strength, when Nietzsche said, "What needs
to be proved is not worth much," Aphorism 5.

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For, indeed, the general order of what is thought is not in the structure of the
argument or that of evidence. It is therefore necessary to hear it in the strong sense:
When Nietzsche said "what needs to be proved is not of much worth," it is an
essential judgment, because, of course, the value, or evaluation is precisely the key
operation in Nietzsche. As we shall see in detail - the Nietzschean philosophy is
fundamentally a philosophy of assessment, and transvaluation, as its two operations
are the two operations key to this thought. It addresses what is essential or it
questions everything as it is. So you could say - this is an anticipation of what we
have to say about Nietzsche's ontology - what needs to be proved, more generally
even evidence, question even which is not of worth. The essential weakness for
Nietzsche from the system of evidence, it is not so much whether the argument is
strong or weak, or quibbling, but it is that once you are in the element of proof you
are vis-à-vis in the light of what is, what has been lacking in worth. What is of value
from what is by itself exempt from the evidence. Thus, no questioning of Nietzsche
can be an argumentative questioning of assemblage, a logic of consecution, or even
a standardized articulated demonstration of what it is. Those who read Nietzsche
truly know that the text does not appear as open. It is in the form of the proposition:
it exposes more than it offers. The text is not proposed to questioning as such for
reasons that are internal and essential. To describe it superficially, the text oscillates
in a general manner between pamphleteer and angry destruction, where the text is
animation, and an affirmative register, which is in no way in a dialectical relation
with the previous order. The affirmative structure is not the dialectical correlation
of destruction. Nietzschean assemblage is not an assemblage where the denial
would precede the possibility of affirmation. On the contrary—and this Deleuze
emphasizes with great relevance: There is a sort of extremely unique stalling
between the negative or critical dimension, words which are otherwise too weak to
describe the work of Nietzsche, so we say the destructive dimension, then the
structure which Nietzsche names the Great Noon, i.e. the system of affirmative

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serenity of the return. But whether destructive pamphleteer or Dionysian

affirmation, neither one nor the other are proposed to the questioning assessment.
But for now, in any case, let's not see this as a thesis of irrationalism, save but
to think that any reason is part and parcel a calculative or argumentative reason.
Let's just say that if there is reason for Nietzsche, it is an evaluating reason, i.e. a
reason offered or disposed from the angle of what it is worth. And the evaluating
reason is not a compelling one. However, of course the question of knowing what
question Nietzsche addresses in the evaluating reason is a blurred question,
because, as we shall see, there is always that feeling of being in discord to non-
relatable principles of evaluation, i.e. which does not even come to establish a
common space. This is why the reason is evaluating, and philosophy cannot be
dialogical. But there is yet a more essential reason for the question which is so
difficult to address in the Nietzschean text: that the central argument of Nietzsche's
business is nothing besides Nietzsche himself, which presents a very striking
philosophical singularity. Nietzsche introduces himself in the heart of the device as
a principle central to evaluating his own project. And the more time passes, the more
this is so. In the texts we will mainly retain, namely the texts of 1888, for reasons that
I will justify later, this approach is omnipresent. Everything happens as if Nietzsche
himself is summoned as a principle of evaluation of the project where, moreover, he
takes us left to be witnesses. Nietzsche not only functions as an author, or an author
more or less removed from the universality of the text, but Nietzsche is part of the
text itself, and strategically a centerpiece. One will obviously say, and one has said
it again: but this here is madness! Especially if you take 1888 into account, as this is
a year that seems to rush to the catastrophe of January 1889, which will finally tip
Nietzsche in silence, and into dementia. But this argument, I believe is weak,
especially as is this argument, which, let's say is pathological. Nietzsche, in these
days has stated, in my view, just what he had to say. You find it at various points,
but particularly in the text, Nietzsche against Wagner: the psychologist takes a

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speech: "Madness can be the mask of a fatal, all-too-certain knowledge."

This statement by which Nietzsche himself falls into the evaluational device
assessing his own project, in other words, what is deposited in Nietzsche's text as a
principle immanent in its assessment; is a certain structure of absolute subjective
certainty, that is, life itself as a stretching of thought, a knowledge too certain,
knowledge in excess of itself during its own stretching, which is proof, the central
argument of the layout of the text itself. Or, if you prefer, we can say that the
Nietzschean text is the provider of excess. It is properly that which traces or how
this excess is deposited, and basically, Nietzsche sees no harm in naming madness
insofar as it is nothing but "the mask of a fatal knowledge, far too certain. "This
excess is a surge of truth, i.e. a truth exposed to a quite radical structuring of
appropriation or if it is stretched so that it is itself its own provocative exhibition.
And the text is only there to both welcome and calm part of this excess. It welcomes
it. It will be the dimension of stretching and internal evidence, but it will soothe it,
i.e. include it anyway in the order of the address, which is quite particular in
Nietzsche and we shall return here.
Previously, I had the opportunity to write that any philosophical text,
properly speaking, superimposes on its form a drama of knowledge and drama of
art. What characterizes the discursive structure of philosophy and makes it impure,
as well, is that it entangles a drama of art and drama of knowledge. In this regard,
we can say that in Nietzsche, there is a sharp break and that the drama of art has
radical influence on the entire philosophical text. But I indicate that this influence is
simply the trace of convincing excess of the truth about oneself, i.e. the trace, not of
the truth, but the power of the truth. And what will serve as evidence for the truth
is precisely this power such that prose captures it or organized it in the order of its
form, all of this comprising, on one hand, folly, which bears the same structure of
the text where the challenge is to have Nietzsche himself at the heart of his own
project. Hence the absolute imperative of the poem on the text, the correlation of

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philosophy to the poem as an imperative, which is not an exterior or ornamental

gift. It isn't just to make it beautiful, but it is in the inner logic of this self-exposure
of the subject in the text, as stated in countless passages. For example, in Ecce Homo:
"How could I endure being a man if the man is also a poet and decipherer of signs
and redeemer of chance?"
Then, as long as the text is confidant of an excess of self-truth, which is that
in some sense the enunciation of truth is convincing, the evidence in excess in the
text will attest, in the eyes of even Nietzsche, to everything first of all in form, i.e. in
its style. What is exempt from the argument will end up or be deported as excess of
itself, truly in the power of the form. Basically, this kind of ambivalence that I
pointed to earlier, which is that the poetic surge of the text makes both truth in excess
of itself, and is evidence for itself, and at the same time, the text is also what allows
one to bear this situation, to calm it, to confer to it an address. So Nietzsche's textual
poetry in its organically philosophical role is both the possibility of truth and the
possibility to support it. This is its power and the ability to endure this power. And
this will arrange the text around the form of Nietzsche as one who, precisely, is
exposed to this double movement: to be crossed by or to be the carrier by the excess
power of truth, and at the same time to endure it, tolerate it, and be the confidant
who is both crazy and patient. Nietzsche is a poet, i.e. the philosopher artist, so
Nietzsche is prey to his own writing, and one can say that life is the truth it
proclaims.
This is thus why it must be there in person: Ecce Homo, here is the man! He
is literally there, not as author, unless exempt, but now deployed, unfolded in the
text itself as a life of the truth it proclaims. And the life of truth it proclaims makes
sense, and will thus replace the order of the argument. The argument, or evidence
is what questions Being from outside as the only thing that matters, that has worth.
But if one asks it in evaluating reason, i.e. from what is to be, or as it may be worth,
then we must expose the truth as life, and not as a convincing argument. But

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exposing it as life, is to expose itself, and there is no other way. And this exhibition
will consist in poetic style as the life of truth. From where this poetic will inscribe
Nietzsche as such in the text, and when you understand this crucial point, it must in
my opinion, be a method of reading, taking literally the most emphatic, most
amazing, most extraordinary statements in the letter.
Nothing, I believe, is more damaging to an in-depth understanding of
Nietzsche and thus, the question: Are we or are we not Nietzschean, than of
attempting to define excessive statements, where the mark of insanity is obvious,
from statements we say are calm or ordinary. In reality, this is not the way it works,
because madness itself or an emphatic statement or statement which seems
extravagant, or as we say delusional, well this statement is only that establishing of
Nietzsche himself as the living truth it proclaims. And if you read this, its emphatic
character apparently bloated, it takes on another dimension, where we see that in a
certain sense it may even be modest. Even when Nietzsche says statements of the
structure: "I carry the fate of the century", they are less - in my view - delusional
statements, even if they are so- but in a sense, it doesn’t matter! - Statements that I
would call utterances establishing the structure of the text, i.e. the Nietzschean text
is only possible if similar statements are also possible.
If it is really the approval of a truth is in its own life, it is necessary that the
exposure is radically subjective, and therefore such statements must be co-possible
with the truth that says that because, in fact, one had absolute responsibility - one
must solitarily carry absolute responsibility. That's why I think we should take these
statements at face value, and make them work as philosophical statements, rather
than as symptoms. This point of method is very crucial to me. So what is it in these
utterances?
Status of Nietzsche’s Mad Statements
Firstly, it shall have to do with speaking on his own behalf (speaking as
himself). Nietzsche is a full philosopher who has pushed to the extreme limits the

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need to speak rigorously in his own name, i.e. speaking as himself. It is also quite
striking that between what Nietzsche understood as "speaking as yourself" and what
Lacan means by "not giving into his desire", the connection is extreme. From this
point of view, the maxim "not giving into his desire", if it means something in the
history of philosophy, this is what Nietzsche meant when he said it himself and
settled in the heart of his own saying, to the point that the phrase "not yielding" will
come very naturally from his pen in Ecce Homo: "My instinct irrevocably resolved
to do away with this habit to assign, to do like everyone else, to take myself for
another." It really is not to give in, so that one is convinced that what utters, one
utters it as oneself, i.e. the desire in which one is coextensive. The real challenge will
be to take himself for himself, not for another. Or, of course, what Nietzsche is well
aware of is that the common system of speech is always the order of anonymity for
everyone, i.e. the system of anonymity of the "we", or the serial order of opinion. So,
indeed, conquering the possibility of not giving up his desire to say, that's the
stretching or the exception. The ordinary structure is: I am like everyone else, and
therefore I take myself for another. However, conquering the opportunity to take
oneself as oneself, that is really the question of "philosophical saying," with all the
quotation marks you want.
Secondly, that truth is always in the order of the decision. Speaking under
his own name, taking himself as himself, will go with what is called the truth in the
form of deciding and not in the form of exteriority or rally. Take for example this
statement that is quite emphatic from Ecce Homo: "I am first to behold the criterion
of "truths." I am first who can decide." "I am the first". This here is madness as a
"mask of a fatal and too sure knowledge," and nothing else. But the heart of the
question is to establish that the truth is the order of the possibility of decision. And
that one is, in reality, in the question of truth if and only if it is the structure of the
possibility of the decision. "I am the first who can decide." It is indeed a power itself
dependent to take oneself for oneself, i.e. the ability to speak in his own name. We

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say that Nietzsche's philosophy is projected into a hysterical order of truth, prior to
the conceptual development of this system in the course of analytic discourse.
And that is really the establishment of the truth to his hysterical structure: "I,
the truth I speak," which always means: me, the truth, I speak first, or I am the first
who speaks, and I decide not to plan approval or argument, but in the structure of
utterance, because it is the utterance that binds truth to its power. This also means -
and this is an essential point - that Nietzsche is the first to establish his speech in the
thesis that there is no truth but the truth. There is a decision to truth, but nothing
comes overlooking this decision to authorize or guarantee it. The truth, as far as a
decision which ruled, since I take myself as me, and not for another, only authorizes
itself precisely as pure structure of decisive utterance.
It follows that truth itself is given in the form of a risk, i.e. unlike any figure of
wisdom or contemplation, and the whole problem is that we are able to bear it. The
fundamental question of the truth is: what can I bear? It is not the question of its
research or contemplation, but of the manner in which we endure, which is also very
close to the subsequent teachings of the analytic discourse. It is clear that the truth
is to share in the question of suffering. Nietzsche often repeated, of course not in the
redemptive or Christian sense, i.e. in the sense that he must suffer so that at the
bottom of this suffering comes the saving redemption, but in the sense of the
question of what animal am I to bear, endure or suffer such and such amount of
truth. It’s very clear in this page of Ecce Homo: "What dose of truth a spirit knows
he can bear, knows he can risk? This is what has increasingly become for me the true
test of values" (Preface, 3).
Thus: decision, risk, exposure of oneself, taking up action for oneself-- all
these themes refer to a poetic connection or speaking around a textual configuration,
where we see that it is the Philosophical Act according to Nietzsche, a structure
which makes truth never what is argued or discussed, but the truth as truly what it
states. All truth is in the form of a statement of risk, where the main witness as well

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as the main provider of evidence is the subject of enunciation itself in its ability to
endure, to bear what it says. Ecce Homo concentrated all upon this quote that I am
closer to this projection of the hysterical structure: "It is the truth that speaks through
my lips, but my truth is terrible." And, as always, Nietzsche implies that it is
overwhelmingly terrible for him. It is not simply that it will terrorize the world, the
first reason that it is terrible, it is the subject which endures in the modality of the
fact that it is Nietzsche who speaks.
These is a series of things to keep in mind in order to refer to the Nietzschean
text, in order to know what can or will be asked of it:
- Be absolutely oneself, i.e. break with a series of opinions
- Risk and decide whatever the cost
- Face the terrible as far as it is to speak the truth, i.e. from being directed
to utter it
We can say that for Nietzsche, truth is first of all a terrible rupture in a
declarative form, where the person who breaks and declares is the true witness. It is
also the one who testifies for the declaration he has made. You have to take
“testimony” in its strong sense, i.e. it is convincing evidence for the statement that
he made, because he describes how he endures the break that he declares. We'll see
how this figure, despite the resemblance is actually the opposite of the martyr figure.
It is not that the martyr is the truth that one says, as it would be inadmissible
interpretation in the eyes of Nietzsche, but that the martyr is the joyful witness
insofar as this joy is precisely the terrible as such. This great afternoon of testimony
to the statement of truth is also terrible, attesting that this dose of truth is suffered
by the subject who has consented to be oneself, to speak as oneself and not another.
It is only by having all this in mind that we can understand phrases such as, for
example, in Ecce Homo: "I bear upon my shoulders the destiny of humanity." We
can say a priori: a delirious paranoid sentence, and yes, it is. But how to understand
it? How must we understand its philosophical projection? This is what interests us,
i.e. what is its non-symptomatic operation, if it is evaluated other than as a sentence

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of madness? Well then, I think it means this: Immediately, between what is said and
the person who speaks, there is no difference, because the reactive, the priesthood,
the vassalage and the lowering, begins, in Nietzsche's eyes, when one establishes a
standard between the one who speak, and that which is spoken.
This very gap is almost the origin of the negative in the history of humanity
as far as it is a disjunction, albeit small, between what is said and who says.
Nietzsche's radical thesis posits that it is one and the same one who said and he who
says. When we talk about art, we see the particular approach to Nietzsche, for whom
there is no difference between the art and the artist, which is very difficult to
understand in the productivist logic in which one conceives of art. It is not simply
that the author is in his work and that only his biography counts; this is not meant
at all, but strictly between the artist type and art, there is no gap, there's no need to
create a gap. Generally, authentic speech that is genuine, so to say, philosophical, is
the exposure of enunciation as a rupture, and thus it engages all of humanity, even
if this engagement only brings one of its points. But whenever this happens, it
involves whole humanity: each time there is full exposure of the utterance as a
rupture, then this commits all mankind, even if this commitment covers only one of
its points. The fact that it engages in one of its points does not matter, because
nothing in Nietzsche is numerical or statistical or multiple, but is typological and
can be localized.
And if in one of its points there really is no difference between what is said
and the status of the who that states something, and anywhere that this occurs, the
fate of all mankind is at stake. This is why Nietzsche can say: "I bear the fate of
humanity on my shoulders," except that in his own eyes, this sentence becomes
emphatic or delusional, and simply it is Becoming this - especially in Ecce Homo
where it’s: Here I am! -establishing a system of discourse, in fact, without any
difference between the one who spoke and what is spoken. And Nietzsche has a
deep, modest, and rigorous awareness that doing that, doing so, even in one of these

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points, the fate of humanity, is entirely at stake. One can also say, and for my part I
am very sensitive to this in every sense of the term--is that in Nietzsche nothing is
given in the form of generality. There is no generality. What exists, i.e. that involves
the destiny of humanity, never has a general status. It is always something that is in
a point, i.e. always resorption at this point, from a gap prevailing elsewhere. This
difference is a disjoint between what is said and who says, and then, in the history
of writing, of art, of thought and of humanity, it can occur that at a point this gap is
circumstantially or temporarily canceled and so there is exposure of the utterance
itself.
This is what Lacanian language calls the anchoring point of the history of
thought, i.e. what counts as a point where the history of thought retunes toward its
Real, because there is a termination of the gap and the occurrence of the terrible,
terrible if given the status assigned to Nietzsche, i.e. the primary attribute of a truth
whatsoever. In other words, when there is full exposure of the enunciation, a
disjunction is absorbed at one point, the fate of humanity is at stake, and whoever is
there, i.e. a person who is same with the text, and not the author or the innocent
product, carries on his shoulders the fate of humanity.
Faced with all this - and to return to the starting point of this very first
crossing – we might ask: how do we question the work of Nietzsche? Basically, one
could be tempted to say that with regard to Nietzsche, there is only the taking action
of what takes place. Nietzsche himself says very bluntly that before anything else, it
is an event, himself, Nietzsche, i.e. the same as the text. Thus we can say that there
is only the taking of action in this Event, from the fact that it takes place. The only
connection that one can support in Nietzsche, is to acknowledge that Nietzsche
took place, and make free use as we wish to make of an Event, i.e. to enroll in its
wake, or on the contrary, to abolish its effects. But I believe it would not really
make any sense to be Nietzschean or anti-Nietzschean from this point of view, for
Nietzsche would refer to the idea of a doctrine, where one may share the main

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argumentative thesis. However, the Nietzschean text does not fit in a doctrinal
configuration, but in a declarative Evental form. This Evental declaration took
place, so it fits into the overall scheme of what took place. So there is no sense in
being Nietzschean, but there is simply meaning in taking a position with regard to
this: there was Nietzsche, if we bend to Nietzschean rules.
At this point, what has happened, and what has taken place, is first and
foremost in the power of a form, i.e. the capturing of the taking place (avoir lieu) is
not a doctrinal capturing, and does not require a rallying or belief. It demands to be
known, as is also the case in any Evental situation, what we think of formal power
of this taking of place. And Nietzsche, in addition to what we have just said, the
main argument of saying what is revealed where language is capable. Nietzsche is
the declaratory Eventthat reveals what language is capable of. It reveals a previously
unperceived capacity of language, which is thus the same thing as the statement of
truth, as the absence of any distance between the subject of the utterance and the
subject of what is uttered. Thus, in the eyes of Nietzsche of course and at last resort,
Eventality is a declaratory Event of the truth, where the most obvious sign has
revealed an unprecedented dimension of the capacity of language.
I give you one final quote from Ecce Homo: "Before reading myself, one
knows not what can be done with the German language, or what can be done in
general with language." Another "crazy" and emphatic statement, but that means
that taking place in a Nietzschean manner manifests as an Event in an unperceived
capacity of language. But indeed, this is true of any Event, because in my opinion,
any Event always summons a formerly unseen capacity of language-- otherwise it
remains nameless, and thus undecidable, i.e. a non-Event. There are only facts that
can be named in the available resources of language. Events themselves require -
that is to say that we are following traces - that language is called to its own inner
emptiness, i.e. to a nominative resource itself, previously unperceived. So here,
Nietzsche only repeats what must be read as an Event, and not as a doctrine that the

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right relation to its intervention is. We will say that the discovered power of
language, i.e. what one discovers from the power in language, demonstrates the
absolute exposure of the subject to risk and to the pure decision of the declaration
of the truth.
This is the manner in which Nietzsche arrives to us. He says that there was
a power previously unperceived in language, and this is of what it is capable, and
this unperceived capacity demonstrates for this that I, myself, Nietzsche, am
absolutely exposed to risk and to the decision of the declaration of truth. In light of
such a configuration, one can finally recognize or not recognize the Nietzschean
event, which is quite different from “to be or not be Nietzschean.” It could be of this
Eventin the sense that it is recognized, i.e. where we recognize the Evental
dimension or not. Notice that in light of what we have just said, recognizing it is the
one and only thing than recognizing what has made language capable of what it was
previously incapable. In other words, again, recognizing that Nietzsche is an
Eventof thought is, to the eyes of Nietzsche himself, the same as admitting that he
has made the German language (but actually language in general) capable of what
it was not capable of before. Or we could say, the stylistic reading or artistic relation
to the Nietzschean language is the same thing as the recognition of its declaration of
truth or its subjective exposure in language. Moreover, Nietzsche, in the last year,
absolutely intervenes with an argument in favor of the text that is recognized as such
by the crowd--it doesn't matter by whom.
These are quite moving passages, and one might also say, extremely insane
ones, but you see how they arrive at the heart of what we were saying, as Nietzsche
has such a strong sense that what he asks is an Evental recognition and not a
doctrinal rally. He asks you to take literally the events documented in the language
dimension, that he came to believe that it doesn't matter who in the street is
recognized as such, i.e. as Nietzsche who saying indivisibly he who says and he who
is said, recognizable even in its anonymity, since it is he who is exposing himself as

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such in the text. This argument is, in fact, the most generic, namely that it doesn't
matter who recognizes in Nietzsche, not at all a savior to one's belief rallied as a
prophet, but what he willingly calls a prince of truth, i.e. nothing but what is
exposed, naked in the text that became previously incapable, at the risk of its own
statement.
Again, in the chapter of Ecce Homo, titled, Why I write such good books, thus
as an argument in favor of its text. Imagine Nietzsche in an absolutely lonely time,
virtually unknown in the city of Turin, fleeing Germany, for which he has a
devastating hatred, so that when it is remembered that German nationalism has
claimed him, we are still stunned because nobody hated Germany and the Germans
so excessively. Nietzsche himself in his beloved Italy, writes (I love it): "What is for
me most flattering, is that the old Market of Four Seasons never ceases to choose for
me the ripest grapes. Here's how one must be a philosopher." It's beautiful, it's
funny, it's very crazy and quite beautiful, because there we expose the generic
vocation of philosophy itself, i.e. if it is really what Nietzsche says, i.e. the exposure
of saying anyone who simply consented to be oneself without giving into The Act
of taking oneself for another, hence endured the terrible truth, when philosophy is
addressed and recognized by anyone, regardless of whether they read it or not,
because something is for Nietzsche himself able to be read from this naive exhibition
that he endures, not once again, as an extraordinary character by birth or vocation,
but simply as he agreed to not differentiate between one who speaks, and what is
said. If you do not make a distinction, well the market of four seasons will give you
the ripest bunches of grapes. I find it beautiful. Nietzsche said that in winter 88, and
Nietzsche will collapse if we talk of collapse, on January 3, 1889, canonically
considered the date Nietzsche enters dementia. Well this point that there is a generic
recognition of philosophy, if it is conceived as he conceives it, is very important, for
on December 21, 1888 he writes to his mother: "There is no name that is now pronounced
with more consideration or respect than mine. No name, no title, no money, I am treated here

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as a true prince by everyone, starting with the Market of Four Seasons."

In relation to such a configuration, we can finally recognize or not recognize
the Nietzschean Event, quite different from “being or not being Nietzschean.” It may
be this Event in the sense that we recognize it, i.e. where we recognize the “Event or
not” dimension. Note, that given what we have said, it is to recognize a single thing
to recognize what made the language capable of what she could not do. In other
words, again, to recognize that Nietzsche is an Event of thinking is, in the eyes of
Nietzsche himself, the same as to admit that he made the German (but in reality
language in general) capable of what he could not. Or: stylistic reading or artistic
compared to the Nietzschean language is the same as the recognition of his
statement of truth or that of his exposure in the subjective language. Moreover,
Nietzsche, in the last year, completely intervenes as an argument in favor of the text
that is recognized as such by the crowd, by anyone. Let's look at the text, and see
how things go in this extreme over-stretching of the generic definition of
philosophy. It starts with this: "There is no name that is now pronounced with more
consideration or respect than mine," which means: today I am so inseparably
between “what” I say and the "I" who speaks, whose name is Nietzsche, that this
same name, which is nothing, is pronounced by everyone with consideration and
respect. So this allows us to return to our insistent question: if the Philosophical Act
seeks recognition, what question can be addressed to him? If there is a declarative
Eventality that eventually the Market of 4 seasons can recognize without knowing
it, where it knows the name because it has no name. What is the question addressed
to the Act?
A first element that adds a second, which is that in the name, Nietzsche, there
is nothing other than the name itself. It is not a name that was appointed as a name
that came to him from outside, and in this respect there is no name, i.e. he is "without
name, title, or money." This Nietzsche is a name without a name, an anonymous
name, a name without nominal recognition, and it is this name without name that

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recognizes the merchant of four seasons, i.e. the name of the person who is unnamed
because his name is solely what he says, and in this indistinguishable point itself,
only in the shelter of this name without a name; whom anyone can generically
recognize as such and constitute a prince. This metaphor of the prince is very
important: the philosopher as prince, as a little prince, is one that is recognized by
everyone as the unnamed name, and an anonymous name is a name that has
endured its own exposure without reward other than the terrible arrival, the risk
and decision. This is essential because it will allow us to gradually qualify what I
would call the Philosophical Act according to Nietzsche, in the heart of Nietzsche's
text. For now, we know, in any case, that this Act is without name, without title; but
it is radically subjective, i.e. it establishes the subject at the heart of the text which is
also poetic. Finally, and very importantly, it is generically recognized as such. The
emblem of the generic is here, as Nietzsche says, the market of four seasons. Let's
also say that the gesture of the Philosophical Act is not likely to be studied, but it is
fundamentally likely to be recognized, which is why this is a paradoxical act that
does not require a review or rallying, but a recognition. So that we return to insistent
question: if the Philosophical Act seeks recognition, any question contact him? If it
is a declarative Eventality eventually the market of 4 seasons can recognize without
knowing it, that she knows the name because there is no name, which is the question
addressed in this Act? It is here, in its preliminary title, that we will look at works
by Heidegger and Deleuze on Nietzsche. We see at which point this is embarrassing,
at which point Nietzsche is not an author who asks a question, because he asks for
recognition. It is quite complex. I simply wish to establish my own method, by
difference and by confrontation.
Heideggerian Interpretation
Heidegger's view is actually the Event, and this is the point where it is true
to Nietzsche. Anyway, at first, Heidegger actually discusses Nietzsche as an Event,
and he agreed to consider it as such. The movement of Heidegger will be to examine

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the Event in its Eventality, i.e. to examine the radical nature of this event. How far
is this Event really an Event for thought, i.e. to what extent does he argue for the
radical nature that he agrees with? Heidegger is going to question the Nietzschean
Event through its innovative power and exceptional singularity. The method will be
immanent for Nietzsche, because it does not at all deal with anything outside his
philosophy as a body of doctrine, but will treat Nietzsche as he wants to be treated,
i.e. in the recognition of an Evental statement, but Heidegger is going to bring the
assessment of a manner that increasingly closes in on the question of knowing
whether this Event is as much Event as he states it is. In other words, if Eventality
of this Event measures left to what it claims, i.e. that Heidegger will attempt to assess
the rupture: What is the Nietzschean rupture in terms of Event?
Let’s frame things in large: this evaluation by Heidegger of the Nietzschean act
follows a dual approach:
This dramatic reversal is The Act on behalf of which Nietzsche is set up and
described. Heidegger looks under that name and that name as may be appropriate
to act Nietzschean reversal of all values.
Clarifying the conditions of The Act of thought, i.e. the form of thought of
Being which allows The Act to have this name. This question will be raised: what is
actually the relation of thought to Being in Nietzsche, that the fundamental act on
behalf of which he asks to be recognized can be called the transvaluation of all
values? The bafflement is as follows: we will take action, the conditions of this Act,
and examine the conditions in thought of the name of The Act; a consideration will
revolve around two concepts, that of the will to power, and that of the Eternal
Return of the Same. We can say that the Heideggerian path will be to welcome the
Event’s dimension, understanding the name of this Act, examining the conditions
in thinking in terms of destiny of the being of this name under the double heading
of will to power on the one hand, the Eternal Return of the Same on the other. And,
as we know, this movement will conclude that the novel Event of Nietzsche novelty

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remains relative, i.e. that The Act of Nietzschean rupture can be assessed as still
remaining within metaphysics. But it will be, nonetheless, by memorization of the
Eventality of the Event that the Nietzschean act will be said to remain internal to
what he claims to be in ruins, namely Western metaphysics and Platonism.
Heidegger will at best condescend in stating that Nietzsche is the edge of the
completion of metaphysics. In its conclusion, it is framed by two propositions:
1) "Nietzsche’s thought is metaphysical, in accordance with any Western
thought since Plato."
2) "The age of the completion of metaphysics is seen when reviewing the
basic features of Nietzsche's metaphysics."
Statement One: Nietzsche's Thought is of a Metaphysical Structure.
However, in the second statement, a review of its basic features allows us to say that
one is situated in the era of the completion of metaphysics. I present here the
principle of its course. In a completely primary approach, we can say that the
evaluation of the Nietzschean Event by Heidegger is the assessment of the form of
an endpoint as what is at the extreme edge, i.e. the end of the recapitulation of where
it is the edge. At bottom, this Nietzscheanism will be the protocol of what Western
metaphysics draws as its endpoint, the point which is not beyond, but in interiority
recapitulative at the same time as it is an extreme effect. Note that this is nearly the
opposite of the representation Nietzsche has of himself. I'm not saying that this
invalidates Heidegger's interpretation, but the fact is that if there is one thing
Nietzsche says, it is although it is not an endpoint, a summary, or a completion.
The representation that Nietzsche has of his act, and which will be the
phenomenological question in the next session, is first of all a rupture, a break, a
break in half, and not at all something that comes from a topological board in a
species of the effect of closure, which would at the same time be the ultimate
disposition of all that it closes. This figure would honor Nietzsche in terms of the
representation of its act, even though strictly speaking there are all sorts of

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arguments to say that it's still like that. But in my opinion the essential point is when
Nietzsche speaks of his own act, and he conceives it as primarily a political act. This
Philosophical Act conceived as a policy instrument is held in the face of breaking in
the entire history in two, and not at all like arrival to the transgression of its limit.
Among the numerous texts on this topic, perhaps the most striking is a draft
letter to Georg Brandes, the Danish scholar of Nietzsche, dated December 1888, and
so a few days before what would be called the collapse or start of his breakdown:
"We have just entered high politics, even the most high. I am planning an Event that will
most likely break history into two sections to the point that it will require a new calendar
where 1888 will be '1’.” Here is Nietzsche's representation of his act, or madness. But we
have once again, axiomatically, madness as simply “the mask of a knowledge, fatal and far
all-too-certain.” And what is certain is that Nietzsche sees his Philosophical Act in the
image of breaking into 2 sections of history of all mankind, so that he sees it as an
absolute opening of a new era, as a "new agenda" and thus Nietzsche is measured
by the French Revolution, the single previous undertaking to have had, in effect,
constituted a new schedule. We must begin again the question of Year 1. In short,
the Philosophical Act is designed by Nietzsche as a revolutionary political, radical
and foundational act. This is a key point for me because, from there, I have an
opportunity to argue that Nietzsche is perhaps the thinker who tried to bring
philosophy to the tune of a revolution. It is in the age of revolutions, but it is in
thought. Nietzsche hates the French Revolution, hates socialists, but in thought,
Nietzsche is anything but a counter-revolutionary. In his ideological hatred of
figures of the revolution, what he reproaches in them is the being of aborted and
petty revolutions, packed into Christianity, and of missed revolutions.
And what he proposes is veritably the first year, i.e. the Revolution such that
the thought of the Revolution is on the level of the Revolution, or once again thought
is on the level of its act, or thought is even indistinguishable from its act, and this
will occur in the break in two of world history. Thus Nietzsche at not at all the

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immanent thought of a fencing-in. I believe that the representation that Nietzsche

has given himself is actually the thought of a break. But Heidegger finally missed
something in his evaluation, refined as it is, namely the true characterization of the
Philosophical Act according to Nietzsche, in this point: Heidegger questions why
The Act had the name “the transvaluation of all values,” without noticing that the
qualification of The Act is not exhausted by the name given to it. The fact that
Nietzsche says that the Philosophical Act by which he is about to break in two world
histories is the transvaluation of all values, which Heidegger relates to the eternal
problem of values, is finally a problem of unconditioned subjectivity, which he
states very strongly from the point of the name, as if, in this area, it were the name
of the Philosophical Act according to which Nietzsche could bear or endure the
entire interpretation of this Act. I do not believe this. I think that in the Nietzschean
configuration of The Act, there is something rebellious in the name he gave it, i.e. in
the name of the transvaluation of all values, i.e. in the name of values. We will try to
make this point work, because the question of Nietzsche's philosophy must start
from the extraordinary representation that Nietzsche gives to The Act. But
Heidegger shares too much of the name of The Act and practices a sort of intra-
Nietzschean nominalism, in which he remains true to Nietzsche, because that is the
name that Nietzsche states, but that's not why the name exhausts the substance of
The Act by its circulation throughout the whole of Nietzsche’s thought.
For Heidegger, the appropriation of the name Nietzsche, since it is always
by him, is available in the metaphysical category in the precise sense that thinking
like Nietzsche's philosophy text will be related or placed in the subsuming of
metaphysics. However, the metaphysics appropriated by Heidegger in the case of
"Nietzsche", it is metaphysics taken up in the form of its completion, which itself has
the name of nihilism, and one can say in an all-too-summational fashion, but which
tries to point the open way, in Nietzsche, nihilism is completed in overcoming it,
once again properly metaphysics, of nihilism even of nihilism, which for Heidegger

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is strictly metaphysical nihilism. This is the nihilism completed in the separation

from its own essence, as Nietzsche claims to have the means to overcome nihilism
from within, which, for Heidegger, makes Nietzsche the emblem of completed
nihilism, as defined where it is ultimately blind to its own essence. In the
undertaking of thought represented by the two volumes of Nietzsche by Heidegger,
the passage that is perhaps most synthetic is found precisely in the 6th part of
Volume II: The Metaphysics of Nietzsche (1940), which is descriptively the most
representative of the operation of Heidegger's thought on Nietzsche. And, in light
of the specification as Nietzsche as the enterprise which achieves it from the inside
of nihilism that ends up blind to its own essence, the most striking passage is found
on page 301 of Volume II, which is in the seventh section of the book entitled: The
ontological-historical determination of nihilism (1944-1946): "When the metaphysics
of Nietzsche not only interprets Being from the being in the sense of the direction of
the will to power as one value, but until Nietzsche will think the will to power is the
principle of an establishing of new values and he attempts and wills this, it as what
is supposed to overcome nihilism, and thus the extreme embarrassment of
metaphysics in the inauthentic nihilism comes to rule by the same desire to
overcome it, so that this embarrassment is hiding from its own essence, and so, as a
reduction of nihilism it simply transposes it into the efficacy of its originating
essence which is unleashed."
The movement of this text is clear, once Heidegger’s jargon is internalized.
He says that overcoming nihilism, which in Heidegger's eyes, is the program of
Nietzschean thought, i.e. the reversal of all values, but above all the introduction of
new values, unleashes nihilism itself, since, in claiming to overcome it, it establishes
the opacity of its essence, which is precisely nihilism that cannot be overcome, for
the essential historical determination of nihilism is that which, from within
ourselves, does not allow itself to be overcome. One could almost say that this is his
definition, in some respects. But when nihilism, i.e. Nietzschean metaphysics, is

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expressed in the program of overcoming it, thus stated as its ultimate ability
precisely when it is incapable, then nihilism is actually unleashed, because it is no
longer even retained in its own essence, what Heidegger calls "the unleashed de-
essences" of nihilism. In this sense, for Heidegger, Nietzsche is the one with the
program of nihilism, the destructive agenda of the reversal of all values, but also the
program of the establishing new values in the form of the great afternoon of
affirmation. And as with Nietzsche has endowed the nihilism of such a program,
and has delivered it from the prescription of the visibility of its own essence, and
unleashed efficiency, if one means by revolution a programmatic vision of historical
rupture, namely the program combined from destruction from what is an Event of
a radical innovation. This is where essence comes to be darkened to the point of
hiding from its essence, when liberated, under the form of pure efficiency, or the
arrest of Being, the sheer power of nihilism itself. In passing, I would like to make
the following remark: when Heidegger grasps and thinks like Nietzsche concerning
the programmatic dimension of the revolutionary element of thought, what is
interesting is that this is truly what he criticizes, i.e. not as the generic idea of a
rupture because after all Heidegger calls it also establishes the form of a reversal,
but he criticizes the idea that this reversal can take the shape or the form of
establishing a program, even the introduction of new values. Heidegger argues,
instead, that nihilism provides a program of exiting from nihilism, and essentially
accomplishes the principle of releasing one from nihilism. This is the way of a
consistent power in the appropriation of the text of Nietzsche. The question is
whether it is relevant, i.e. if the Nietzschean text is left to be exposed to this
appropriation, is another matter, to which we will later return.
Deleuzian Interpretation
In contrast, what Deleuze places at the center of his perception of Nietzsche,
his main qualification, is not the subjective exposition in the first plan. This is not
the starting point of Deleuze, which is no longer the revolutionary dimension of The

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Act, but what Deleuze will attempt to specify in full, is Nietzsche as a tragic
philosopher. Deleuze addresses in Nietzsche the following question: what is a tragic
philosophy in the sense that Nietzsche himself understands it? The context of
Deleuze's assessment, which will be employed in an extraordinarily orderly manner
- Deleuze's book is constructed quite systematically and stringently compared to the
Nietzschean corpus – has as an emblem the designation of a type of exemplary
philosophy, which is of the tragic kind, where Nietzsche himself claims the naming.
So we share intra-Nietzschean words. ». Ecce Homo: "I am entitled to consider
myself as the first tragic philosopher, i.e. as the opposite extreme of a pessimistic
philosopher." The key coupling will be that of tragedy and pessimism, which is
naturally also in the opposition between Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. What is
meant by tragedy in the Nietzschean sense, but ultimately, too, in an almost
universal sense? Tragedy seems to have two essential references:
The first is that there is tragedy when an inevaluable depth is found, a
bottomless bottom or something reduced to the standards he founded, inaccessible
from departing from what depth grounds. In Nietzsche, the inevaluable depth is
from one end to the other of his thought called life. And in a first sense, Nietzsche's
philosophy will be tragic because life, which is the principle of any assessment, is
itself inevaluable. Twilight of the Idols: "The value of life cannot be assessed." This
maxim established despite all subtracted depth, denoted at the same time it is totally
affirmed in the order of assessment.
The second reference which characterizes tragedy is that chance is
irreducible. The occurrence that happens in the face of the terrible does not let itself
be subsided by anything. There is a crapshoot, which will give it quite beautiful
comparative pages of Deleuze between Nietzsche and Mallarmé. And even as
Nietzsche says in Ecce Homo: "I'm always left to chance." Nietzsche's a tragic
philosopher because he is "always living in the height of chance." Tragedy is the
correlation of an inevaluability and the chance supplementing it.

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On the bottom side, something slips away, evading the assessment and, in
addition, there is the chance of the level of what it requires to be in the incalculable
manner. If you wish, the tragedy is the correlation of the depth and excess of chance,
which constitutes the tragic as fate, as destiny in its Greek sense. We must not take
any of destiny as a form of necessity, the fate of the Greek tragedy is the exposed
correlation between the lack of assessment of the foundation, and what establishes,
and the incalculable excess of chance. Such is the fate that works in Greek tragedy,
and not at all formal requirement which precedes, or a determinism. The tragic hero
is one who in a double binding is at once exposed to the hiding of the assessment in
the depth at the same time that he will strike a supplementary chance at the heights
which he desperately tries to reach. The tragic philosopher is also the one whose
declaration of thought is that the value of life cannot be evaluated, but that it is
required to try to be worthy of life. The tragic fate in the Nietzschean sense dictates
two statements that you find in an entire chapter of Ecce Homo, entitled "Why I am
a Destiny" – why it is “I” - and in the Twilight of the Idols, seeking to know what
one is, i.e. what that anyone is. Nietzsche will say, "One is a fragment of fatality." If
one takes fatality in the sense I have just mentioned – what one is, when one is
something - it's a fragment of thought that crosses the concealment of the depth and
supplementation of chance. But although he does not say so, it is "I" who has to
reconstruct, it is the center of gravity in Deleuze, who concerning Nietzsche, deploys
the layout of the tragic philosophy: How, once this is said, does the philosophy
arrive at an establishment in Nietzsche?
Deleuze discusses this point on two levels:
On the first level: He immediately explains why all tragic philosophy
replaces the question of meaning with that of truth. This will be his first essential
interpretation. The opening sentence of his book goes: "The more general project of
Nietzsche is this: introducing in philosophy the concepts of meaning and value." Nietzsche
establishes the philosophy in the system of the question of meaning, precisely

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because he evades the depth of the hazardous supplementation demanding a

problem of meaning. So tragic philosophy contains a problem of meaning.
On the second: Tragic philosophy will examine the multiplicity of
meaning, because from the moment we leave the singularity of truth, we are in the
plurality of meaning. Thus the questions that Deleuze will address to Nietzsche will
be essentially typological questions, i.e. what are the different identifiable types
from which meaning is granted? This will be the axial matter traversed by a logic,
i.e. the typological question will be crossed by a logic of active and reactive forces.
If you wish to specify the types from which meaning is given, one must use a logic
of forces which distributes The Active forces and reactive forces as the first binary
logic of forces. So if you had to summarize in one word the question that Deleuze
asks Nietzsche, the usage that Deleuze makes of it, it could be said this way:
Nietzsche is tragic philosophy as a logic of the typological multiple.
- Tragic philosophy: randomness and unfounded grounding
- Logic: a logic of forces, active and reactive
- Multiple: there are multiple donations of meaning, never one
- Typological: this crystallizes into types (the priest, Zarathustra,
the superman, the last man) and finally, Nietzsche himself is a
type, the type of tragic philosophy.

For Deleuze, the appropriation of the name “Nietzsche” is carried out under
the central category of tragic philosophy. So it is the name Nietzsche designates
philosophy in its tragic type, since Deleuze assumes the typological principle of
Nietzschean thought. And thus Nietzsche, in an exemplary way, names philosophy
in its tragic type. However, as much as tragedy is the correlation of a depth that is
hidden, i.e. of a founding naming subtracted in this as it establishes, and a
coincidence that supplements, thus the crossing of exposure of its foundation, and
of the supplementation by coincidence, which of course, does not fill what it founds,
"the value of life cannot be evaluated," life being the possible name of depth in
Nietzsche, but precisely something from which value remains absolutely

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inevaluable and, as all thought is evaluation, in a certain sense, life as such is only a
name, a name robbed of its grounding.
In this last maxim, Nietzsche says of himself (but this itself is a category of
his philosophy): "I'm always left to the height of chance." Tragic thought thus stands at
the crossing of what it cannot evaluate which founds it at the same time it always to
be at the level of the unfounded. From this point of view, tragedy is the correlate of
a lack and excess, and the point where something missing is given in excess, an
excess which never fills this gap. This logic of the lack and excess frames Nietzsche’s
logic.
From the determination of philosophy as a tragic type, Nietzsche is engaged
in an interpretation that provides a coherent theory of multiples in addition to the
theory of the multiple of what gives meaning, namely of types. The Deleuzian
interpretation consists, then, of a typological path of Nietzsche that is settled by the
non-dialectical correlation between active forces and reactive forces. Instead, in
Heidegger, the entire focus is on the program of thinking attributed to Nietzsche by
Heidegger, i.e. the program of overcoming nihilism. Deleuze's vision will be
attached to the essential descriptive style in Deleuze, in the description of a path
related to the typological multiplicity in the work of Nietzsche. Deleuze touches
upon a significant and real point, not only in stating that there is a great Nietzschean
typology of homes, of principles or intensities of meaning, which is obvious, but
because this leads to a question that is fundamental, in my view: which is, in
Nietzsche, the question of proper names. What is the function of proper names in
Nietzsche, given that we have already met with a principal name that is Nietzsche,
but it is not the only one? Well, it is in light of all this that I will try to draw out my
own way in contraposition and review these points during the next session.

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Second Course: The Dionysian “Yes” - Affirmation

Last time, I’d begun speaking of the difficulties that are very peculiar to the
appropriation of Nietzsche's texts. This was a way to enter Nietzsche's singularity,
i.e. of not treating the text as a philosophical reference as any other, but to
understand what is absolutely specific as soon as we attempt to develop a protocol
of any appropriation of his text. I told you that the central difficulty converges
towards the fact that Nietzsche does not ask his textual proposition to be a
submission to an assessment or a commentary, nor does he demand, strictly
speaking, rallying. What the nature of Nietzschean text requires is a form of
recognition, i.e. the very fact that this text has taken place. It is necessary and
sufficient to note that taking action is the true relationship that Nietzschean text
requires and this is the form of what I might call his singular authority. Nietzsche
calls for this existence to be acknowledged, but one notices quite soon that what
Nietzsche requests to be acknowledged is the very existence of Nietzsche. It must be
mentioned that this is what Sarah Kofman suggests in her recent book on Ecce Homo,
titled Explosion I – that we must distinguish "Nietzsche" and Nietzsche. Thus there
is a Nietzsche who is, in fact, the circulating proper name to which we are
accustomed, and then there was the "Nietzsche" that could, in fact, punctuate or
emphasize something, and that is where Nietzsche's text asks to be acknowledged.
Or we can say that Nietzsche himself is presented, i.e. Nietzsche presents
"Nietzsche" as the name of an infinite power of thought and that this name as such
should be recognized. Let's indicate in this passage that this demand for recognition
is not actually a narcissistic demand, but a categorical demand, i.e. that Nietzsche
asks that the category "Nietzsche" is listed as it is in the flux or Becoming of thought.
One can also say that the main argument that Nietzsche displays in favor of his text,
is the validation of what this proper name recovers: "Nietzsche" as immanent
category of the textual device. We can also say: the proper name "Nietzsche" is what
is immanent evidence for Nietzsche's text. It is an even greater difficulty, which of

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course we should not hear: "Nietzsche", the "Nietzsche" as a category of Nietzsche's

thought, as a signature of the author, i.e. as what the text would refer to as its absent
cause, but one must rather understand "Nietzsche" as a central category of the work
itself. If we wish, we can say that "Nietzsche" is explicit in Nietzsche, and it is not
underlying quality of the author which is abolished- an author who is dead where
his text is most vibrant. "Nietzsche" is presented in his own life and not in his or her
erasure, or in his death, in the Nietzschean text.
Finally, I had indicated that this recognition Nietzsche requires, i.e. of
"Nietzsche" as a category of Nietzsche's text, is a generic recognition. It is not
intended, nor addressed. It is arbitrary in the sense that Nietzsche can and should
be recognized by anyone as "Nietzsche," and the rest of it is in part independent of
the text, despite independence in relation to the text no longer being the recognition
of a person or of a psychological subject. Let's say that in everything he does,
including, of course, his writings, Nietzsche bears the emblems of "Nietzsche". This
is expressed in the text that I have read you: "What has flattered me so far the most, is
the old market of four seasons have never ceased to choose, in my opinion, the ripest clusters
of grapes." It is here that the market of four seasons attests to and recognizes the
emblems of "Nietzsche" in Nietzsche. And Nietzsche adds, "This is how one must be
a philosopher," saying that being a philosopher is not about being the author of a
doctrinal test, but about wearing convincing emblems of life itself, where the text is
the text. Since there is a portrait of the philosopher Nietzsche, I would say that the
philosopher is this princely anonymity which is generically known and called
"Nietzsche," which Nietzsche himself deems "Nietzsche". Obviously, this form of the
philosopher and of his relation to his text, and, for example, "Nietzsche" is an
immanent category of Nietzsche's text, meaning that the relation to Nietzsche as a
work, as writing, as disposition to thought, seems to exclude the commentary. In
any case, Nietzsche's text as it stands and such as it is related to this exposition is
not a proposition for commentary. In fact, if one is Nietzschean, and I noticed the

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last time he is now well worn not to be, we must look at the text of Nietzsche simply
to verify that it is Nietzsche, i.e. to ensure it is consistent with the central explicit
category it contains and which is "Nietzsche", rather than comment that it excludes
the text calls a process of verification. The text is in check and it is not there for us to
clarify or interpret. Besides, if you look closely, Nietzsche himself keeps for its own
account to verify that the very thing he writes is "Nietzsche", i.e. homogeneous,
transitive, the immanent presence of Nietzsche in the extraordinarily ambiguous
status of the concept of the book. What is a book? We were just saying that the use
of a book of Nietzsche serves the best use type checking. But more generally,
Nietzsche states in in Ecce Homo that "no one can take from things, including books,
more than he already knows." So, strictly speaking, the book teaches nothing. And
we can no longer force the book to confess latent knowledge that is not already
explicit in its reader.
In referring to Nietzsche, one must really expect that we cannot draw upon
anything other than what has already been known. But what should we already
know? What is this prior knowledge that makes the ownership of the book possible?
One will respond that it’s necessary to know in what is the sense of the word
"Nietzsche"- at the least this, for what opens the book in the possibility of being
verified (and the verification is always the verification of what one already knows,
in knowing it has to do with Nietzsche's art). It is a basic mastery or control of the
proper name, "Nietzsche," as an opening category of the book.
From this point of view, Nietzsche's thesis is extraordinarily opposed to the
posterior theses which are attested to in the text either by the erasure or the death of
the proper name of the author, something that the text induces, i.e. it makes the
subject of writing an induction of writing. In Nietzsche things work in reverse: it is
the minimal control of the proper name "Nietzsche" which depends on what can
verify the writing of the Nietzschean book, and thus explain in existence. Let's add
that what makes available the name "Nietzsche" is not of the structure of discourse,

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but still in the order of style. It is from the way of style that the minimal recognition
of the word "Nietzsche" as an opening capacity of the book operates. Nietzsche says,
"Communicating through signs, including the tempo of these signs, a state, or the
internal tension of a passion, this is the meaning of any style. And if we consider
that the diversity of inner states is exceptional in me, so there is in me many
possibilities of style. One must then understand style as communication by the
tempo of signs of internal tension. A comment I already made: Let's try to
understand, once and for all, the 2nd sentence of this quote as the sentences
pronounced in Nietzsche's most rigorous modesty. If you hear the outset as
emphatic or delusional statements, I think believe that we lack the effective
interiority of Nietzsche.
When he says that there are in him "a variety of exceptional inner states," we
must credit him with the greatest integrity. I will have the opportunity to say that
there is an inner holiness that is indisputable in Nietzsche, and that this element of
exceptional integrity is what one must understand from the declarations of what
Nietzsche thinks, which are so obviously paranoid that they may seem to us
immediately so from the outset. But to return to the meaning of "Nietzsche" as the
working principle of the book, the instruction that you may have stuck it in style,
which is itself an immediate striking of the book, i.e. its rhythmic beginning. It is
very important to remember that for Nietzsche, style is the tempo of the signs. There
is a metaphorical element but also a rhythmic element, which is that entering
understanding of the word "Nietzsche" is first of all letting oneself fall into the
rhythm of the tempo of signs, and therefore in an image very central to Nietzsche,
the potential reader is first a dancer: it is necessary that something of thought enters
the dance of the tempo of signs so that the style is existing, and when the style exists,
then we can grasp the uniqueness of the uniqueness of the word "Nietzsche,"
grasped from the singularity which is the operation by which the book opens itself
to be verified. Here we have it. Evidently, all this makes a philosophizing

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appropriation of the Nietzschean text extraordinarily difficult, which would be

something different than the entry in the category "Nietzsche" from the dance in the
stylistic tempo of signs, themselves working a simple process of verification of the
homogeneity of the book in the category "Nietzsche" as a central category.
The Function of Proper Names
In reality, understanding Nietzsche involves, for a good part, if not all,
understanding the function of proper names. To take up the Deleuzian lexicon
again, it is a thought that exemplarily proves a philosophy of conceptual characters
that hinge and concentrate upon the crucial points of the Nietzschean device. There
is a first reason that this is quite clear, namely that in the eyes of Nietzsche, a proper
name has the immense advantage of initially lacking an underlying idealism, i.e.
that it is a proper name. And he'll have to state what he names, and that the name,
proper, does not only name in its proper name. In Nietzsche there is a real hatred of
the common names of philosophy: truth, the good, the beautiful, the just, the unjust,
and the entire network of common names of philosophy. Nietzsche proposes to
destroy the gesture the reversal of all values, which is largely a reversal of the
common names of philosophy. And there is on Nietzsche's part, an attempt to
substitute these common names with new proper names. And where we have the
true, the good, the beautiful, we will have Dionysus and Ariadne, or "Nietzsche,"
more than anything else. I would say that there is a Nietzschean movement, which
is that the reversal of common names results in the profit of the proper name. The
common name is not affected at all.
In Nietzsche's view, the common name organizes nihilism, i.e. the will to
nothingness as a fundamental maxim in Nietzsche, that man prefers to want nothing
rather than not wanting, hence resulting that in the age of nihilism man wants to be
under common names that communicate only nothingness. Only the proper name
will thus be able to designate the intensity of a sense, for all the common names are
definitely worn out, and their usage is precisely the annihilating aggregation which

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now specifies them. One cannot hope to recode, or rename the new intensities
arriving in the form of the proper name. From this moment, one is always tempted
to question the Nietzschean text from the question of who is it as such? Who is
Dionysus? Or as Heidegger says in a famous text, Who is Nietzsche's Zarathustra
(Essays and conferences)? It is striking that he himself is established in this logic of
who: Who is Ariadne, who is Socrates, who is Wagner. And then, of course: Who is
Nietzsche?
Only I ask at this point whether this is really the question relevant to the
proper name of Nietzsche. Under each of these names, is the right question: who is?
And I would even say, are these proper names really the names of a type? Do they
designate through themselves the likelihood or intensity of a unique form in the
granting of meaning? This question is very important and, in my opinion, quite
difficult.
The first thing to note is that proper names don't have insular operations.
Paradoxically, names do not work on their own, but form a network, and it is rather
the disjunctive correlation of proper names which is the location of meaning. I'm not
sure we can respond in an operational input text from Nietzsche, for example, from
the question: Who is Nietzsche's Zarathustra? Or, more generally, from the question:
Who is it? because what really works is a disjunctive correlation in a network, which
rather makes it necessary to have the canvas, or starburst of proper names, or the
coat of arms of names. To put it in another register of image, one can say that proper
names are the algebraic dimension of Nietzsche, i.e. coding in the network and in
operations of what is given, moreover, in fact, as networks of intensity. There is in
the proper name a recapitulation, an element of the point of capture and also,
between names, and quite complex operations-- it is for this reason that the idea of
algebra, i.e. the size topological Nietzsche would be of another nature, as it falls
within the system of intensity of meaning, and also in the historical system, but the
proper name is an encoding and also a cut or a stop in this circulation of the system

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of intensities. I would like to give a few simple examples, which we will find hidden,
and much more complicated. You know Ecce Homo ends with the famous words:
"Do you understand me? Dionysus against the Crucified ... ".
Notice: "Dionysus Against the Crucified" could have been the title of the
book by Nietzsche, or all the books by Nietzsche. Or, if you like, "Dionysus against
the Crucified" is Nietzsche himself. So if we understand, this is what we understood,
i.e. we understand a disjunctive correlation of two proper names. That's what we
understand, because this question of the correlation of names is an ultimate instance
of the Nietzschean text. But obviously, "Dionysus against the Crucified" is not the
question, but rather: Who is Dionysus? Or: Who is the Crucified? This is decisive,
but the apprehension of "Against".

Non-Contradiction in “Against”
Part of understanding "Against" depends, in fact, upon understanding
proper names that are placed there, in disjunctive correlation. We know that
"against" is not the "against" of contradiction. It is not: "Dionysus against the
Crucified" in the sense where Dionysus would be the element that contradicts the
crucified, or the antagonistic element which would relate Dionysus to the Crucified.
In the correlation of proper names, one must thus understand a non-contradictory
"against". That is the Nietzschean operation: the operation of "against" that one will
also find in the title, Nietzsche against Wagner, the very last writing of Nietzsche.
Since this is an exercise of the entry in the Nietzschean text, what about the
meaning of this "against"? These letters of madness are very revealing. One
commonly refers to the letters and notes of madness written by Nietzsche between
January 3, 1889 and January 6, 1889. These final texts are considered to be at the edge
of Nietzsche's. But what is striking about these letters is that most are signed
Crucified, and sometimes, Dionysus. But if we remember that "Nietzsche" is the
central explicit category of the Nietzschean device, one can also say that what these

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notes of madness attest to, is that Nietzsche is simultaneously the two, and that in
any case he is in the power of simultaneously being the Crucified or Dionysus. Or
let's say that he can place himself under two names. So we can say that Nietzsche is
against himself. In "Dionysus against the Crucified," Nietzsche is at the point of the
"against". And there is the distinction of two names under the "against" in the letters of
madness themselves. Naturally, one can see nuances. When the letters are signed
Dionysus, it is certain that "Nietzsche", since it is "Nietzsche" as the "against"
between Dionysus and The Crucified, is particularly the power of creating. This is
not so much the coupling of creating and destroying, as it is another tonality, another
color.
Letter to Paul Deussen, January 4, 1889: "It has been proven as an irrevocable
thing that I have, strictly speaking, created the world. Dionysus". But Dionysus is
also preferentially the destroyer of infamy. Dionysus is the proper name for
something that couples the power to create and the power to destroy.
Letter to Franz Overbeck, January 4, 1889, Turin: "... I will have to shoot all
anti-Semites. Dionysus". However, when Nietzsche signs "crucified", it is
preferentially the serene transfiguration of the world.
Letter to Meta von Salis, from 3 January 1889, Turin: "The world is
transformed because God is on Earth. Do you not see that all the heavens rejoice?
The Crucified." But perhaps more essentially, when Nietzsche signs The Crucified, he
is one who should be lost, not one who proposes or supports radical affirmation
beyond destruction; but one who is in the half day of the resurrection he'll have
forgotten as well.
Letter to Georg Brandes on January 4, 1889. Hear Pascal's tone: "After you
had found me, it was not hard to find me: the challenge now is to lose me ... The
Crucified". It is an admirable - statement- admirable. Perhaps especially in its
beginning: "After you got me open, it was not hard to find me ...". Obviously, all this
is sprinkled with Pascal's Meditation.

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Let's take the opportunity to state in passing that Pascal is one of the great
proper names of the Nietzschean device, a constant interlocution. It is interesting to
see that Pascal is the Nietzschean proper name designating, most exemplarily, a
loved victim, as Pascal called the Great Spirit, where Nietzsche is the brother, and
was eaten alive by Christianity. This is an example of a Christian victimhood. But
Pascal does not sum up Christianity; he names what attests to its power of
destruction from within Christianity. It is obviously in counterpoint with Pascal that
Nietzsche states: "The challenge now is to lose myself." So: in these so-called notes
of madness, there is a specification of "against", "Dionysus against the Crucified"
which appears at the same time, since "Nietzsche" can also signify all these notes
under the name or under the other, and at the same time, establishing between them
an essential nuance. But "against" which designates "Nietzsche" himself is an
extremely fine operation of nuancing between what is evidenced under the name of
the Crucified and what is attested to by the name of Dionysus. That is to say, that
when stating, "Dionysus against the Crucified," we must immediately deliver
ourselves from any perception of the contra which would not replace it as a
Nietzschean operation, or as Deleuze would say, an absolutely non-dialectical
operation. If we wish to summarize it, we will say that "Nietzsche" is the intimate
contra of Dionysus and the Crucified situated in reference to creation "destruction",
on one hand, and secondly the transfiguration as "loss": this is Dionysus and the
Crucified as far as possibly "Nietzsche," which can appoint both creation as
destruction and transfiguration as loss and the contra which relates them. Also, this
will be developed in the system of alternative possible names, this will migrate into
the complete system of names. In the notes themselves, Nietzsche will say that he is
also Ariadne, or with Ariadne.
Letter to Jacob Burckhardt from January 4, 1889, Turin: "... For me, with
Ariadne, I need only be the golden medium of all things ..." One could say that
Nietzsche is "the golden balance" of proper names - "all things" is primarily this:

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"Golden balance" of proper names. And in this golden balance, each of them will
turn into a delicate weighing of sense, whose evaluation will eventually assume the
full network of names. And, indeed, Nietzsche, from the signature in terms of the
account: Dionysus -The Crucified will migrate in the full network of these names.
You will also find it in the letters of madness to Cosima Wagner from January 3,
1889: "To Princess Ariadne, my beloved." I read you all the tickets that begin: "It is a
prejudice that I am a man," and yes, because it is "Nietzsche" and "Nietzsche" is not
a man, but a category. "It is a prejudice that I am a man. But I have often lived among
men, and I know all that men can experience, from lowest to highest. I've been
Buddha among the Hindus, Dionysus in Greece- Alexander and Caesar are my
incarnations, as I was Shakespeare the poet, Lord Bacon. Finally I was also Voltaire
and Napoleon, perhaps Richard Wagner ... [Laughs!] But this time I arrive as
Dionysus, the conqueror who will transform the land into a day of celebration ... Not
that I have much time to ... heavens be glad that I was there ... I hung on the cross
myself... ".
To my knowledge, this note is signed neither Dionysus nor the Crucified,
because both are intimately in the text itself: We move from "I come as the victorious
Dionysus that will transform the earth into a day of celebration" to "I've also been hanging
on the cross." But what will we remember here, is the migration in the full network
of names that makes the integral algebra of Nietzschean proper names, the
migration from name to name, which is here represented as successive
reincarnations, operates a route which are coded as close to the intensities of
inevaluable life, of life exempted from the evaluation, which is given closest to the
fundamentally subtracted basis that is in the full path of the network of proper
names. That's why I'm not entirely convinced that we can treat the names as the
question of who is? Rather, the network of names as a principal traveler through
which the algebraic version of inevaluable life is given, i.e. its encryption in
operations. From that moment, the last known text, the letter to Burckhardt on

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January 6, 1889, shows that the "Nietzsche" that interests us as an explicit category
is the result, the production in the way, beyond Nietzsche as a person or as subject.
We can say that "Nietzsche" as the name is the name of names, i.e. the name of the
entire network of names. That's what he says in proper terms: "I was Dionysus in
Greece - Alexander and Caesar ..." etc ... We can build "Nietzsche" if we have the full
network of names, which itself, finally the algebra of inevaluable life. We must
therefore understand that "Nietzsche", the "Nietzsche" where Nietzsche said, "Ecce
homo" - there it is! - This is something which being itself the home network is where
Nietzsche the person, and Nietzsche the topic, is victim, and not at all the cause. And
this is what Nietzsche will try to explain in the letter to J. Burckhardt on January 6,
1889, after which there is only silence. A letter that starts:
"Finally, I would much rather be a professor at Basel, than God." So here, the
“I” who speaks is the common Nietzsche, the Nietzsche as a common name, not the
"Nietzsche" as a proper name which will unfortunately be in the position of having
to write between others who are God, Dionysus, the Crucified, or against the
Crucified and Dionysus. But there is another Nietzsche, like you and me, quite
sincerely, still of a perfect honesty, because I know not a statement of greater
integrity than "I would much rather be a professor at Basel than God." Let's
absolutely believe that when he said this, he says it because it is his preference. Let's
not doubt for a second that he much preferred to be a teacher in Basel than God. In
fact, by the way, all this is not his preference; all this is what constitutes the
categorical "Nietzsche" as what the Nietzsche-subject is ultimately the prey. And the
statement that will balance this one is: "What is unpleasant and embarrassing for my
modesty, [is that deep down I am every name in history] ..." I quote these two
statements because they pinpoint the difference between Nietzsche and "Nietzsche".
Basically, we can say that Nietzsche the common name, which is, as he says himself
like everyone else, or one who is abandoned to be like everyone else, it is he who
says, "I would much prefer being a professor at Basel than God. By against,

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"Nietzsche" as a proper name will say, "I am every name in history."

"Every name" means that "Nietzsche" as a proper name is also the name of
names: the name in the ability to be the name of each name of history, and thus the
name of all names. From this point of view, "Nietzsche" in its own name is not the
name of the naming. It is the naming itself, not just a name--it is the name that allows
each name in history, which is the power of naming as such. Here we see before us
a primary status of the category "Nietzsche" in the works of Nietzsche. It is the
category of naming as a power of civilization in each name in history, being
understand that the path of all names of history are marked by a singular algebra
where there are names more significant than others, and between names of
extremely complex operations. Thus, the ultimate problem is going to be the
question: naming of what? Certainly a naming authorizing names, but from what,
where the names are in the subsequent network? The name of names, yes. But from
what is the network of names the operation? Whereupon, in what part, and in what
terms does it operate? Initially, the true gateway to grasp Nietzsche, is to grasp what
the nominal network such that "Nietzsche" is in the name or the naming, operates
upon. What is affected by these operations? The "against," for example--what does
it operate it upon? Naturally, it operates between the names, but operates between
names, and it defines an algebra which operates elsewhere - so where, in what place,
and in what? That is the question of The Act: what is Nietzsche's Philosophical Act
as such, which is the [nominal] home network and the route where "Nietzsche" is
the last name, the name of the naming, and ultimately the name of The Act itself?
To enter this question, I do not believe we can depart from a historical
situation, i.e. from an operation of historical placement. I want to say that the
question of Nietzsche's position in the movement of metaphysics seems to me to
inevitably miss the unique nature of The Act in Nietzsche. The power of
interpretation of the operation of the historical placement of Nietzschean discourse
is indisputable, but this power of interpretation, other than what ultimately does not

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take the text as it is exposed, i.e. is exempted from interpretation-- it lacks, more
essentially, The Act, and consequently what is ultimately meant by "Nietzsche" as a
proper name, i.e. as a proper name in operation.

Act as Event: The Break in Two of World History

In order to arrive at this question, I do not think we can from a historical
status, i.e. an operation of historical placement. I mean that the question of
Nietzsche's position in the movement of metaphysics seems inevitably miss the
singular nature of The Act in Nietzsche. The power of interpretation of the operation
of historical placement on the Nietzschean discourse is undeniable, but this power
of interpretation, besides that, ultimately, it does not take the text as it is exposed,
i.e. removed from the interpretation, it missing, most essentially, act, and lack,
therefore, what is meant ultimately to "Nietzsche" as a proper noun, i.e. as name
operation. I no longer think that one can depart from a primordial logic, and despite
everything, this is Deleuze's path.
What forms the entryway into the Deleuzian interpretation of Nietzsche, is
the logic of The Active forces and reactive forces as the logical organization of the
question of meaning as a question primordially established by Nietzsche. Oddly
enough, there in the Deleuzian approach something I would call systematic: it is a
reconstruction, certainly the most attentive reconstruction, the most descriptive one
which made in Nietzsche, but it is partly too controlled by a first logic, by a logic
matrix: the non-dialectical correlation of reactive and active, which allows the path
of types, so that it is built too well to be able to understand the discord of The Act
and its singularity.
But I do not think we can purely and simply leave the home network, i.e.
depart from the description of the course of names, although I do know this: I know
very well how one could say there are seven primary names, e.g. Zarathustra,
Dionysus-Ariadne in tandem, Christ, the Crucified, Socrates, Saint Paul the priest,
Wagner, and "Nietzsche". From these 7 essential names and their internal

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correlations and operations that govern the network, it could very well show how
one begins a crossing of the Nietzschean exposition of the text, and how we can infer
from this matrix the manner where this matrix is joined by other names, for example
German, Jewish, Russian, French, or Italian, or Buddha, Schopenhauer, or Kant. But
I do not think you can do it, because if we do that we will, indeed strongly algebra-
cate Nietzsche, i.e. reduce the network of its operations. While the network
Nietzschean operations turns out capital - we'll get there - and it is true that its
sensitive surface is the system of proper names, but this Nietzsche algebra-cation
give us a structural version of which it would be very difficult to exit, because its
descriptive power is also very great.
It’s thus up to Nietzsche as the naming of an Act, i.e. to ask: What is it that
Nietzsche refers to under the name, "Nietzsche," by The Act of the philosophical
thinker or artist - no matter what common names these are? What matters is the
determination of The Act. This also means that you need to understand, first and
foremost what Nietzsche states of himself, i.e. why am I destiny? But fate is the fate
of The Act, and is not the form of the operation of discourse. We must understand
the Philosophical Act where Nietzsche is for himself the proper name. But there is a
point to my decisive meaning, which is that this Act is conceived as an event.
Nietzsche does not represent the Philosophical Act as an interpretation nor as a
discursiveness, nor as access to wisdom, etc. ... He conceived it first and foremost as
an Event. The Philosophical Act is an Event, and the scene of this Event is the total
historical world. There is in Nietzsche a definition of the Philosophical Act, which is
both the most radical there is, the most discontinuous, and also the one that has the
largest amplitude, i.e. whose space of exercise is conceived as most vast. And this
Event, as any Event, is a radical rupture.
Letter to August Strindberg December 8, 1888: "... Because I am strong
enough to break the history of mankind in two." He is strong enough to commit The
Act. The force is related, measured by the size of The Act, and The Act is in its form

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- nothing is said here of its contents - is to break the history of humanity into two
sections. This is echoing the letter to Brandes from the same time which I read to
you last time: "I am preparing an Event that in all likelihood will break history in
two sections ...". So here we see first final determination of the representation of the
Philosophical Act by Nietzsche. This signifies that for Nietzsche, the thought
gathered from itself is not speech, and it is in this sense that we must understand, in
my view, what he says in a posthumous fragment in Spring 1888, prior to these two
statements, namely that his philosophy is experimental. Experimental is here clearly
opposed, not only to the conceptual, Christian. etc.... but to the discursive.
Philosophy must first be grasped in The Act of its experience. In this fragment,
Nietzsche speaks of "Experimental philosophy such as I am anticipating even
tentatively the possibilities of radical nihilism." "Experimental philosophy" means
two things: - It is referred in The Act, i.e. not simply falling from experience, but that
its act is in the Event-like form of its emergence.
It is structured in the preparation of this Act, which will result in obligations
and considerable complexities. Note that already in the above formulas, we would
have "I prepare an event", so that one is in the preparation of this event, which
Nietzsche also calls its anticipation. So experimental philosophy is the Event in its
anticipation. What is the anticipation, which eventually becomes an essential
element of philosophizing in Nietzsche? The anticipation as far as this incredible
Event that breaks world history in two. Anticipation occurs in radical nihilism,
which anticipates even the most advanced of radical nihilism. As Nietzsche says,
adding: "I will anticipate the possibilities of radical nihilism to achieve the inverse
of a Dionysian acquiescence to the world as it is without taking away, excepting or
selecting anything." So one anticipates in experience of the most radical nihilism
after the Event-like emergence of the inverse, i.e. - "The Dionysian acquiescence to
the world," nihilism being, roughly speaking, the acquiescence to nothing. The
philosopher is thus both the perpetrator of the Event and the person who prepares

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it. However, it is as if it opened a small crack. I hold that it is in this gap that
Nietzsche was literally lost. This flaw is experimental philosophy itself, as far as it is
simultaneously and jointly about The Act and its preparation. We will have to return
there, but what does preparing an Event mean, exactly? The Event in the dimension
of radical break, breaking in two, which are the images under which Nietzsche
attempts to apprehend it, the Event does not seem structured or structurable in a
preparation. Yet it is this experimental philosophy, namely the preparation of the
Event and, in a sense, the Event itself, because, as Nietzsche says, "I'm strong enough
to break the histories of humanity in two."
So this involves both the strength of The Act and a preparatory exercise of
this strength. This means that experimental philosophy is always in a position to
advance itself, because it is always in a position of anticipating its act. Experimental
philosophy is at the same time The Act and the Actual anticipation of this Act. This
dimension of anticipation of itself characteristic of the Philosophical Act in
Nietzsche is absolutely uttered as such in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in a well-known
passage formula called From Virtue which shrinks (3rd part, aphorism 3 of the
passage): "I am my own forerunner amongst this people, and the song of the rooster
announces my arrival in the dark alleys" (Kim translation, Badiou). So you see, the
Event arrives, and if it comes, is it a magnification? For Nietzsche, the philosopher
is his own precursor, i.e. both his coming, the arriving of the Event that breaks world
history in two, but also the song of the rooster announcing this arrival and thus
anticipating his Act. The status of experimental philosophy in Nietzsche's sense is
that of being his own precursor, i.e. being the anticipation of the Event that is what
guides us to Nietzsche's definition of the Event itself, of the Philosophical Act: in
anticipatory experiment the most radical nihilism, bringing in a break, a cut, an
absolute rupture, the acquiescence, the Dionysian affirmation. And philosophy is
philosophy of this event, insofar as it is the Event itself and the song of the rooster
who announces it-- it is thus its own anticipation. Such is the characterization of the

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Philosophical Act. But there is one thing to immediately point out, which is
evidently the underlying relation in all of this in the question and contemplation of
the French Revolution.

Question on the Revolution

The Philosophical Event can also be conceived as breaking into 2 world
histories in a radical experience of nihilism which was itself anticipated as an Act
and which anticipates the assertion that it is the most extreme nihilism-- is this not
a revolutionary form of philosophy, or the Philosophical Act as a revolution in the
strict sense?
I believe this. I think Nietzsche is an exemplary thought of the Philosophical
Act of the time, or in the element of revolutions. Or even that the revolution is what
measures philosophy. And the revolution is always still the French Revolution for
Nietzsche. There is a point to note that quite essential, that the large systematic
features of the 19th century were related to the French Revolution in the element of
a stabilizing balance. Whether it is Hegel, the first great attempt at synthesis of this
type, or August Comte who is the second. This is the Franco-German filtering of the
question. In the two cases, the philosophical problem is namely what proposition in
thought could be done to restore the appropriable foundations of the world
fractured by the revolution. Whatever its degree of appreciation or judgment on the
revolution, it apprehends the revolution from what philosophy must offer as the
firm ground of the new age. So we can say that there is an element of restoration,
not in the sense of restoring the front, but in establishing stability of The Action to
the extent of revolutionary hyphenation, but from everything in the imitation of this
caesura. This is not revolutionary per se, but it's in stock of the revolution, a
systematic proposition in the founding thought of a new order.
And so it seems to me that Nietzsche is a thinker who maintains a completely
different relation to revolution. His question is not at all to stabilize things after the
revolution or to take the counter-position, or to advocate the new age of thinking

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beyond the revolution, etc ... In fact, I would argue that Nietzsche maintains in the
revolution a relation of rivalry, i.e. that his problem is to show that the Philosophical
Act as he sees fit is the true radicality, the revolution is in reality only the semblance.
And this is a completely new relation, a relation which does not balance or
incorporate the thought of the historical and political revolutionary rupture, but is
related to a supposed paradigm, the revolutionary paradigm, which it reverses or
remove, not at all because it is revolutionary, but because it is not, in the eyes of
Nietzsche. It must be understood that the contra-revolutionary aspect of the
Nietzschean text, which is obvious, is a dimension of depreciation of the
revolutionary dimension of the French Revolution, which, for Nietzsche, was well
below what it claimed to be or announced, namely, exactly, breaking into two world
histories. Nietzsche's thesis is that the French Revolution did not break in two world
histories, for the basic reason that it remained Christian, i.e. that it remained
fundamentally in the element of old values. That is how we understand the many
contra- or anti-revolutionary texts of Nietzsche. I cite an example, in The Antichrist,
62: "Equality of souls before God," this false pretense, a pretense that offers all the
vile souls of rancor, this explosive concept, which ultimately has made revolution,
the modern idea and principle of decline of any social organization is Christian
dynamite." When looked at closely, the text is, indeed, very complicated: it begins
by saying that this was the equality of an explosive notion that this explosive notion
made revolution, and that the revolution was the principle of the decline of all social
organization, but ultimately, the final judgment is that this explosion, this dynamite,
remained steadfast in the space of the old values. It was only an internal explosion
of what it caused to explode - which focuses on the explosion "of Christian
dynamite." But the whole problem for Nietzsche is to find a sort of non-Christian
dynamite. Nietzsche is not at all contra-revolutionary in the sense that he would
defend the values of the restoration, of the old world, or of the stability against
revolutionary values, but rather that the French Revolution was not revolutionary

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for the reason that the explosion that it blew up the head of the ancient world was
the old world, for the dynamite forming a part of what there is. The whole problem
is to find a dynamite which is not in the evaluation of what there is, thus finding
another explosive. And then, Nietzsche will resume and compete with this idea of
the explosion, his problem being to find his own explosive concept. And his act, the
Philosophical Act, will also be explicitly modeled by an explosion. Formally, it will
be identical to the Revolutionary Act, except that the Revolutionary Act failed to
break into two world histories, because its explosion is a form of the world itself.
Thus, the French Revolution is not Revolution. Only the Nietzschean
revolution in the element of the Philosophical Act will be one, because it will result
in an unknown explosive. From this point of view, Sarah Kofman was quite justified
to call her book Explosion I, for indeed, what is at stake, in destiny, in terminal
Nietzsche is detection, construction, proposition of a previously nonexistent
explosive. In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche writes: "I conceive of philosophy as a terrifying
explosion that puts the entire world in jeopardy." One must not mistake it for a
maximalist definition of the philosopher. Nietzsche's problem is thus that of two
explosives, two dynamites, two revolutions, of two breaks, in two histories of world
history, given that the first explosion, the first dynamite, the first break, has only
fulfilled a further step in the nihilistic disfigurement of humanity. In short,
Nietzsche will not be reluctant to increase the explosive metaphors, for example, in
a letter to Franz Overbeck from October 18, 1888, in Turin, "[This time, as an old
soldier, I pull out my big guns]: I am afraid to shatter the history of humankind in
two." The mimetic revolutionary will offer up or indicate the methods of terror in its
revolutionary sense. Nietzsche is going to appear before his own court, a court that
is a revolutionary tribunal, when broken in two world histories, and before which
Nietzsche is going to make the names of the old order appear. We’ve already seen
the statement: "I will have to shoot all the anti-Semites", which was already a first
clearing, and then, to Meta von Salis, one is closer to the edge of the notes of

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madness, January 3, 1889 in Turin: "I just took possession of my property, I throw
the pope in prison and I will shoot Wilhelm, Bismarck and Stöcker. The Crucified."
The determination of Fouquier Tinville from Nietzscheanism leaves no shadow of a
doubt.
At this point, one could argue that the Philosophical Act in Nietzsche's sense
is ultimately a mimetic process under the strict sense of the revolutionary act, which,
little by little, despite the efforts of Nietzsche to keep distance it takes, least formally,
the system of main attributes:
- Metaphorical aspect of the radical break
- Explosive stylistic and dynamite-like
- The implacable figure and simultaneous legitimacy of Terror
The hypothesis could thus be: Was Nietzsche the singular case of a
philosopher - use the name you want - a thinker, entering into mimetic rivalry with
the historical and political revolutionary theme, of such a sort that he would have
determined the Philosophical Act from the formal attributes of the revolutionary
act? If we support this hypothesis, we would say that there would finally be a loss
in Nietzsche, from the singularity of the Philosophical Act, and such that it would
be made of nets or in the image, or taken in mimetic rivalry from a relation of rivalry
with the theme of his century, as a theme of the revolution. Many things are going
in this meaning, and would allow us to argue that Nietzsche is an attempt that is
both captive and desperate to saturate the Philosophical Act from all mimetically
generated attributes from what we can moreover despise, and which in an
exemplary fashion is at the end of ends, the French Revolution.

Complications on Eternity
Nonetheless, there are a number of major complications that disrupt this
simple structure, and which would determine the Philosophical Act in Nietzsche
with a mimetic of revolutionary configuration. Why? Well, because in the idea of a
radical rupture: breaking world history in two, is superimposed by another topic

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that's a little quirky, which is that of timelessness almost conquered by the reverse
of the explosion, by indifference and distance. I would definitely argue that the
system of the Philosophical Act in Nietzsche is this superimposition itself: the
superimposition of the theme of the absolute break and the theme of timeless
distance, which requires the solitude of indifference.
Let's take Case of Wagner, and you'll see how these formulas become
ambiguous and subtle (still in 1888), with the Foreword, "What requires a
philosopher, first and last, from himself?" One would expect: to be strong enough to
break the history of humankind in two sections. But Nietzsche writes, "To triumph
in himself from his time, to be timeless."
I'm not saying that this statement is exactly contradictory to the other; I'm
saying it is superimposed on the other manifestly, by a clearly shifted prescription
This is not to say that where Nietzsche says that one must overcome one's time in
oneself, and be timeless, and one statement where he said that the philosopher must
break the histories of the world in two, there is a formal contradiction - the rest is
the location of the formal contradiction which in Nietzsche is of no interest. The logic
of "against" is not the logic of contradiction. I will only say it is a superimposition,
another theme which we can conceive almost musically, as if two quite
heterogeneous themes were superimposed in a transitional sequence. He will also
states in the Twilight of the Idols as a maxim for philosophy: what the philosopher
must do, and what is it that he wants to do (himself, Nietzsche): "Creating objects
upon which time would break its teeth, tender in form and substance, to a little
immortality." I would say that the superimposition operates between a principle of
rupture, where the space is maximal, and the theme of timelessness or immortality
is a gain in the work - i.e. "to create objects upon which time would break its teeth "-
i.e., we shall see it in the element of Eternal Return. However, there is this
superimposition: "I think it extraordinarily readable in this book ad in this book is
the Antichrist, taking it more heavily, less sampling. We must realize that the

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Antichrist is an absolutely crucial book in Nietzsche's eyes, and is not a book among
others.

On the Anti-Christ
Let's recall some elements that are now very well-known in the history of the
non-existent book which has long been called Will to Power, and on which,
Heidegger, continues to share in building, while denying its existence in his
interpretation. A book which Deleuze continues to refer to in his book on Nietzsche.
There has been a tremendous existent tenacity of this non-existent book. Today, we
know quite well how things have happened. I'll tell it to you in two words, for it is
better to know them. Nietzsche has had a time, indeed, the project of writing a
summarizing book which would be called The Will to Power. However, from 1887 in
1888, this title is explicitly abandoned in favor of another that is Reversal of all Values.
Thus, now, what we'll focus is The Act of breaking in two world histories. This is
The Reversal or Transvaluation of All Values. The first chapter or almost the
introduction of this supposed or proposed book, is called Antichrist, and ultimately
it seems that Nietzsche believes that Antichrist is the right thing, since it itself is the
result of this labyrinthine process, which at one point was virtually called Will to
Power because of the transvaluation of all values, and which is called The Antichrist,
and is ultimately where we find nothing besides debris.
The Antichrist holds the subtitle "Chastisement of Christianity," and so
Chastisement is a specific literary genre. And it begins with an introduction that
outlines what is required by the reader to understand the Antichrist. Once again, we
have from Nietzsche a description of the reader: What is expected from the reader?
This is a persistent question in Nietzsche's text. We read in the Prologue that for the
reader to open the book, once again, he must "...Be exercised to feel as if he is above
the wretched chatter of contemporary politics and national egoism. He must have
become indifferent ... "So what is required for access to this book, in a sense, focuses

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itself on The Act of radical break in two in the history of humanity. It is a principle
of indifference. And at exactly the same time, Nietzsche wrote in a letter: "I will
commit the oddly solitary act of the inversion of all values." There, in the triumphant
and programmatic vision of breaking into two world histories, and in the mimetic
revolutionary it detains, we see there is obviously superimposed another plan that
is the system of loneliness and indifference, as what is required to be in order to
understand and participate in this Act. Any part of the things that I will try to retain,
concerns understanding this superimposition. How does an act that is so obviously
a mimetic revolution also be determined as an indifferent solitude? I think if that we
can address and resolve this question, it stands withina Nietzschean exhibition itself.
It is in this that the point of The Act will deliver its most intimate sense.
Another way to phrase this question is to say, why the hell does The
Antichrist end with a law? A letter? Finally, this proposition which announces the
radical act break of world history in two is given in a project of the word against
Christianity, which is, of course, deposited before any meeting, in Nietzsche himself,
such that those meeting are those who recognize that there is Nietzsche himself. I
have always thought of the disappointment one feels - in any case what I think, let's
not go into what one feels- about the end of the Communist Manifesto of Marx, where
we find the final project. It begins with the monumental history of the class struggle,
the workers who have only to lose their chains and a world to win - then after the
program (in a very ironic tone): reducing labor time ... etc... There is disappointment.
But really, I think that between the Antichrist and the letter against
Christianity at the end of one side, and programmatic final reforms of Marx's
Communist Manifesto, I sense a mimetic analogy, if I may say. We will not have the
time to comment now, but after there was just the Antichrist, which is strictly in the
eyes of Nietzsche, the concentration of new explosives that one has found (this is
non-Christian dynamite!), the book ends with a law. But when you must leap over
something, it is not a law you'll find. Between the logic of dynamite and the logic of

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the law, the pairing is not clear, nor is it between the preaching of the Communist
Revolution in the Manifesto and the government program at the end. The
connection is not evident in the two cases. I read to you this abbreviated law against
Christianity, enacted the day of salvation, the first day of the first year (September
30, 1888 of the false calendar).

War Against Vice: Christianity as Vice

Article 1: Anything against nature is vicious. The most vicious sort of human is the
priest.
Article 2: Any participation in a divine service is an affront to common decency. It
will be harder for Protestants than Catholics, harder for liberal Protestants than towards
those of strict obedience. Being a Christian is more criminal all the more we approach science.
The criminal of criminals is thus the philosopher.
Article 3: The place worthy of execration where Christianity has hatched her eggs
from basilicas, will be razed. This chastised place on earth will inspire horror for generations
to come. Venomous snakes will be bred on top of it.
Article 4: Preaching chastity is a public incitation against nature. Despising sexual
life, defiling the notion of impurity-- such is the real sin against the holy spirit of life.
Article 5: Eating at the same table that excludes a priest: one is excommunicated by
those of honest society. The priest is our Chandalah - he must be quarantined, starved, and
banished in the worst of all deserts.
Article 6: One will give "holy" history the name it deserves, that of chastised history.
One will use the words "God," "Messiah," "Redeemer," "Saint" as insults and to designate
criminals.
Article 7: All else follows. Well, this is where we’ll pick it up next time!

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Third Course – Arch-Politics (GrossePolitik)

Reminders to All
The Philosophical Act that Nietzsche argues for, especially in 1888, which is
our way into the Nietzschean project, is an absolute rupture; pure Event. So
philosophy, in the sense that Nietzsche understands this word, is capable of
producing a break in two of the history of humanity and in bringing about a fully
affirmative novelty, with regard to the interpretation of the old world, or of old
values. Contrary to what is contended for by Heidegger, this Philosophical Act is
not one of overcoming nihilism. The determination of The Act is not a type of
overcoming, but a kind of rupture. As Nietzsche himself declares, "I am preparing
an Event that in all likelihood will break the history of the world into two sections."
I have also pointed out the evident aspect of mimetic rivalry with revolution,
particularly with the French Revolution. Mimetic rivalry means that in the
determination of his Act, Nietzsche is at once in a relation of fascination and formal
rivalry with the revolutionary theme as precisely the story broken in two, and also
in the relation of revulsion and denial that consists in the belief that the revolution
was not what it was announced to be, i.e. a breaking in two of the history of
mankind. It is in this sense that we can say that the Nietzschean Act -- I introduce
here a word I will back a variety of ways - can be designated as an arch-political
conception of philosophy. By "arch-political concept", I don't mean a theme that is
above all traditional, about a foundation of politics in the element of philosophy, or
even a determination of the essence of the political in its revolutionary
determination. By arch-political, one should rather understand a tearing of
everything that is foundational, and, much more, in everything concerning ethics,
i.e. regarding everything that would be about, let’s say, a philosophical monitoring
of politics. However, one must understand a determination of the Philosophical Act
itself. This Act, in fulfilling the break in the history of mankind, is determined as

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"political" in a principal and radical sense that politics itself does not support. It is
the Act itself which will be the rupture in the history under the opacity of a proper
name which is "Nietzsche" himself, recalling what I said about the difference that
should be noted between Nietzsche as subject or author banished from his project,
and "Nietzsche" as a categorical proper name, i.e. as an organizing proper name in
the inside of the device thought within thought itself. Thus in the opacity of this
proper name: "Nietzsche," philosophy is an arch-politics. It creates the break in two
of the history of humanity.
However, I’d like, here, to introduce a clarification. The fact that the
Philosophical Act is arch-political designates both an unprecedented expansion of
power and the capacity of politics, on one hand, and on the other hand, the
dissolution of any politics, in a sense of the word that is not arch-political. So
Nietzsche will sometimes state that his act cancels any politics, so that it itself is the
supereminence of the political. For example, in the draft of the letter to Georg
Brandes that we read, he says, "We have just entered high politics; even the most
high." This is the side I call supra-political or radically political. Then, in the draft of
a letter to William II, he writes: "[The concept of politics has completely dissolved in
a war between minds. All the images of power were shattered] - There will be wars
as there never were before." So we have a kind of constituent oscillation in
determining the arch-political act between the idea of a radical extension of politics
itself, and a move that dissolves the effectiveness of politics. Note that these two
texts are drafts, and that none were sent. Indeed, in arch-politics, there is something
that is essentially unaddressed, because the arch-political is the same torment of the
Nietzschean act in its improbable relation to politics. That said, the rough side in all
its terminations of this oscillation between the supra-political and the dissolution of
the political, this Event-like arch-political coexistence of greatness and dissolution,
goes against Heideggerian hermeneutics on this question. Heidegger, like
Nietzsche, admitting that under the immediate name of politics, only modern

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nihilism is presented at the last resort, a point on which there is no disagreement

between the one and the other. Nietzsche will also have the particular lucidity of
temporarily assigning nihilism as the Actual content of the word politics, in
Germans.
The German use of "political" [Grossepolitik] designates, for Nietzsche, a
crossing out of any affirmative event; an erasure or failure, but, more precisely, the
redaction or collection, or concealment of any effective Eventality. This is effectively
German. For example, in Antichrist, aphorism 61: "The Reformation, Leibniz and the
alleged German philosophy, "the wars of liberation," the German Reich--every time
the word was written in vain about something that already existed, something
irreplaceable.” In the general system of Nietzschean namings, the German word is
actually the word written in vain "about something that is irreplaceable." One can
say that the political, in its ordinary meaning, i.e. for Nietzsche in its German sense,
is precisely the erasure or concealment of the irreplaceable, i.e. its dimension of
imposed denial in any Event-like affirmation. On this point, the German sense falls
apart! Heidegger and Nietzsche converge in determining that the political is a failure
of Eventality. But Nietzsche is not going to suggest overcoming or address this
situation. He will be excepted from any dialectical treatment of this provision, for
the Nietzschean act could additionally be defined as follows: it is the will to
reaffirm the irreplaceable, not in the form of a contra or reversal, but in the form
of a dissolving excess - which will be sustained in the dimension of political excess,
in excess of itself, i.e. the political as supra-political, "dissolving" designating that
this excess is properly and simultaneously the dissolution of all politics. And it is
this dissolving excess which is by itself the reaffirmation of the irreplaceable, which
the current politics has erased. Heidegger, on Nietzsche, wrote: "The anti-
metaphysical and inversion of metaphysics, and also the defense of metaphysics
practiced until then, form a single conspiracy by which the befallen omission has
been conveyed for a while, from the lacking remains of Being itself."

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Thus, for Nietzsche, Heidegger states that the inversion of metaphysics, the
return of all values, the anti-metaphysical, is fundamentally originally, or co-
originally, in the same element as metaphysics, i.e. perpetuated by the history of the
being of concealment "from the lacking remains of being." Now, in this description,
I think there's a point of misunderstanding, which is that the Nietzschean act is not
substantially in the form of the "Anti1." Despite the explicit metaphor of the reversal
or return, despite the "anti" present in the Antichrist, the agonistic and antagonistic
form of the anti is not in the most profound, singular form of Nietzsche's
representation of The Act. The Act is not in the form of the anti, nor in that of the
opposite, or even in that of defense. The Act is a rupture which reaffirms the
irreplaceable without having to replace it, i.e. the reaffirmation of the irreplaceable
is supra-political, and the dissolution of the political is not in the form of
replacement, but in the form of the reaffirmation of what is already there, but erased
and obliterated by the political in its German sense. The Nietzschean act will break
into two the history of humanity, where politics has erased the existent break. It is
obviously in the sense that the gesture is made and held as the element of Eternal
Return, because the rupture is already there, such that because it is obliterated by
politics, it constitutes the site. And we can say that the irreplaceable break is for the
Nietzschean act, the site of the Event. The Event is situated in an already obliterated
location which makes the reaffirmation of its irreplaceable character not required to
pass through nor succeed, by replacement. That's why we can say the following– a
point which Deleuze correctly insists. Nietzschean arch-political act is in the form of
a crapshoot.
The Crapshoot of Nietzsche and Mallarme

1
Translator Comment: We noted the non-binary or non-dualistic structure of stark
opposition applies to Against in “Dionysus Against the Crucified” as well as Anti in “Anti-
Christ”. But it also applies, as I mentioned to the anti- of Anti-philosophy as a form of truth
in flux or creation.

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The crapshoot is really comes to mind as an image or denotation for what is

not only in the form of the anti, a reversal or replacement, but in the form of the
reaffirmation of the irreplaceable. Deleuze rigorously addresses the question of
Mallarmé’s crapshoot, just as you would report in Nietzsche and Philosophy, Chapter
1, § 11. One can simply summarize the characteristics of the Nietzschean dice in
Deleuze, a crapshoot which is, in one sense, The Act itself.
- The roll of the dice is unique: it is not a stroke of probability, i.e. a tendential
following of the crapshoot, which would tend toward an average (mean) or a
statistical result. It is at once exactly as it was at one time, that Nietzsche will reaffirm
the irreplaceable break in two of the history of the world.
The crapshoot affirms randomness: it is both an affirmation and
reaffirmation of chance, and therefore it is a necessity, i.e. the need is none other
than the affirmative element of chance, and this is why the gesture of the dancer will
utilize a number, or as Mallarmé declares, "the only number that cannot be another."
The roll of the dice is an inhuman gesture in the form of a will. From this
point of view, arguing that the Nietzschean act is in the form of a crapshoot that is
also an inhuman gesture, which constitute the two faces of chance and of necessity
which he affirms, will make Nietzsche escape the subjective prescription or
prescription through the metaphysical form of the subject, which Heidegger tries to
keep captive in its fated correlation in Descartes. The fact that the roll of the dice is
an inhuman act, such as the chance of being affirmed as necessity, and finally
coming to reaffirm the irreplaceable, means that Nietzsche, as we have already
noted, can also state the two disjointed formulas we mentioned, which we will now
assemble. One the one hand: "I'm always left up to chance" and on the other, "I am
a destiny," formulas that mean in plain language from Deleuze's analysis of
Nietzsche, which seems to me absolutely founded: "I am a crapshoot," i.e. I am the
very act of a crapshoot by which the obliterated irreplaceable will be haphazardly
reaffirmed, and history broken into two. This is also why Nietzsche, as we

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specifically quoted from this passage, says he is "not a man", which does not directly
or immediately signify that he is the Superhuman (Übermensch), but that the non-
Being of a man is an intrinsic condition of the inhuman act which forms the
crapshoot. Nietzsche writes, exactly, that "It is a prejudice that I am a man," i.e. a
prejudice on the Nietzsche who is not "Nietzsche." There is always this essential
operation of properly representing that "Nietzsche" is an opaque proper name for
The Act of naturally distinguishing from the Nietzsche who by reasonable prejudice,
we can indeed state is human.
Parenthesis: On this point, Deleuze formally resembles Mallarmé. It is
obvious, but at the same time a profound resemblance. Deleuze's text carefully
addresses both the Nietzschean and Mallarmean crapshoots. In Nietzsche and
Philosophy, Deleuze is quite violent against Mallarmé. He will vary a bit on this
later on. But there he considers the interpretation of Mallarmé's crapshoot as the
proper nihilistic interpretation of the Nietzschean crapshoot, or a nihilistic recovery.
I quote Deleuze: "Mallarmé is the crapshoot that is reviewed by nihilism, interpreted
in the perspectives of bad conscience and ressentiment." You can well imagine that
this statement shocks me! That Mallarmé is assigned to the "outlooks of bad
conscience and ressentiment" is something that strikes me as quite rude, and I would
argue, but not right away, for the opposite view. But what does the opposite view
signify? We will not say that it's a good conscience or acquiescence. The opposite
view is the following, with regard to the Nietzschean crapshoot: Mallarmé is the
crapshoot that is fully exempt from the crazy impasse of his will (for we will see that
the trace of will remains in what I will call the circle of the Nietzschean act) to be
poetically conceived as the pure ”il y a”. In other words, Mallarmé will not take up
The Act itself under his own name, but will poetically assume the “il y a” of the Act.
And we must distinguish the crazy effectiveness where Nietzsche himself has finally
arrived, instead of The Act, and the Mallarmean gesture which incidentally is
neither philosophical nor anti-philosophical, but purely and fully poetic, by which

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the “il y a” of the crapshoot will be delivered, without pretending that its
effectiveness is questioned, i.e. without pretending that its effectivity would be
delivered there, i.e. without pretending that this “il y a” of the crapshoot is the
breaking into two of the history of the world. In other words, Mallarmé says, there
is The Act, or there is the possibility to affirm chance, and this statement will result,
in fact, in "the only number that cannot be another", i.e. the constellation, but the
Event itself will be left in the suspense of the “il y a”. Mallarmé's offers the poem of
Eventality that arrives to the place of what Nietzsche offers or supposes, and which
we must say, is the madness of an arch-political act. Let's also say that the poem of
Eventality replaces the arch-political determination of The Act. To this we will later
return.
That being said, it remains that the Nietzschean act, in my opinion, doesn't
have much to do with the metaphysics of a reversal of the metaphysical will. This is
another logic that is situated, as far as it is the crapshoot or breaking into two of the
history of mankind. We say that the Nietzschean act, on the side of chance, will
dissolve any politics, and will with regard to the affirmation of chance, be destined
to establish politics in its irreplaceable grandeur. You can see that in the two-sided
act of the pure crapshoot, we can reread this seemingly ambiguous determination
between the dissolution of the political establishment of its greatness. In fact, to
reference Mallarmé, as far as chance is involved, it will have to do with the
dissolution of all politics. However, as far as the affirmation of chance, it will, on the
contrary, have to do with its irreplaceable greatness.
Act, Superimposition of the Rupture, and Eternity

However, once all this recalled, I would say that for Nietzsche, The Act also
has a subtractive dimension from itself. Basically, so far we have given it the inherent
logic: in the assumption that The Act takes place, we see its determination. But there
is a purely subtractive dimension, which is that Nietzsche has to endure that The

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Act has never occurred in its general space, which is, as we know, the history of
mankind. And here we enter extraordinarily tight quibbles which prove that The
Act took place, i.e. What is the test of the probation of The Act? What is the sign of
recognition of the effectiveness of the arch-political act? the roll of the dice? It is both
the question of what signals his very being, and also, it must be said, the question of
his witness, or his potential witness. Can, and should it be designated by the same
opacity of the name of "Nietzsche" to testify to The Act, that this name names or
nicknames? In contrast to the first determination that we just mentioned, which is
the emphatic or arch-political effectiveness of The Act, Nietzsche will also argue that
The Act is lonely and silent, and that in this silence and solitude, we enter the
indecipherable problem from its effectiveness or the testimony of its reality. We
mentioned last time in the letter, "I will commit...", always this "I will," always this
difference of The Act, which is imminent, but the inevitability is still distant, so that
the statements, "I'll commit the strangely solitary act from the inversion of all values,"
and in the prologue of the Antichrist": "One must have become indifferent" to both The
Act and to testifying. Solitude, silence, indifference, and ultimately timelessness." What will
be drawn in this other figure is superimposed in the form of the first act - this solitary
figure, silent, unattested, and indifferent - it's timelessness that initially appears to
contradict the same time of The Act, namely of breaking the history of the world in
two. Nietzsche will say in the foreword to the Case of Wagner:
"What does a philosopher require first and last of himself? to triumph in himself
from his time, to be timeless. "And in the prologue of the Antichrist: "... To strive to
feel himself above the wretched chatter of contemporary politics ...". The question
then is the following: how can the break in two of world history be attested to by the
timeless? How does the explosive Event (we spoke last time of Nietzsche as the
seeker of a non-Christian dynamite in relation to the Revolution, including the
French one, which is still the Christian dynamite, how does the non-Christian
explosive Event, the one who has found the un-Christian dynamite and is at the

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heart of the explosion, can he be above what he will ruin everything except for what
is given, including the break? This is what I call the superimposition. It seems that
the immediate definition of The Act as a break in two of world history, which assigns
to philosophy the task of arch-politics (GrossePolitik), is indeed superimposed with
another definition, another determination, which affects The Act of silence of
timelessness, and in an element of invisibility, or latency, or difference, which is
absolutely of a different structure than the shining or proclaimed historicity of the
first figure. And I would like to find the key of this superimposition, and by that,
sink us further into the paradox of Nietzsche's determination of philosophy.

Chastisement of Christianity
For me, the superimposition is related to The Act, insofar as it is the arch-
political act of philosophy, necessarily has a declaratory nature, i.e. that in its essence
- and here it is received on two edges of the superimposition - the Philosophical Act
is a statement: something comes to be said, and what is declared as such will, and
should break the history of the world in two. But what is declared, this Act? What is
uttered? We've already seen that Zarathustra is always seen as his own precursor,
or declares himself as such, that in some way, what is declared is precisely the
imminence of the deed. This is a first version. So The Act as statement expresses
itself as a coming. Zarathustra will explicitly say that he is the rooster who precedes
his coming. Here it is advised from the happening, and is finally something of that
order. But you see that the first possibility is circular, because it establishes the
Philosophical Act in antecedence to self. And like this figure is recognizable as
Nietzsche, it is unsatisfactory, including himself. We must therefore arrive to "what
is said in the philosophical statement as an act?" Apparently, seemingly, the content
of the statement is the judgment of the old world and its old values. And we know
the generic name of the old world and its old values, Christianity. So the content of

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what is said is the judgment of Christianity, so that The Act as statement is

descriptively, and almost phenomenologically, first as a verdict, i.e. the philosopher
as an act is presented as a verdict of the order of the old world, the old values
subsumed under the generic name of Christianity. This is exactly how the
conclusion of the Antichrist is presented. I recall that for the final Nietzsche, the
Antichrist, the book or pamphlet which bears the name Antichrist is in a sense The
Act itself, since the last time I had recounted the story that leads from the project of
the will to power to the project of the transvaluation of all values, in the preparing
for its first part which is Anti-Christ.
The surrounding correspondence indicates that in the eyes of Nietzsche, the
Antichrist forms the declaration itself which is in a certain sense The Act itself. But
how does the Antichrist conclude? With this peroration: "I come to my conclusion
and now I pronounce my verdict. I condemn Christianity, I raise against the
Christian church the most terrible accusation an accuser has ever delivered. It is for
me the worst conceivable corruption, she has knowingly wished to fulfill the worst
possible corruption. The corruption of the Christian Church has spared nothing, it
has made of all value non-value, of all truth a lie, of all sincerity, baseness. "Such is
the verdict. The Act finally seems to in the public dimension of the verdict or
statement, because Nietzsche adds a little further, a point which in my opinion is
very important, in the same aphorism, 62: "This eternal indictment of Christianity I
want to display on the walls, wherever there are walls - For this reason, I have letters
that would make the blind see... ". The arch-political in terms of the Antichrist is the
public proclamation of public execration or verdict. The availability of cursing or
verdict on all the walls. So we can say that The Act in its first or descriptive
determination is the judgment of the old world brought to the attention of a generic
public, because "all the walls" signifies that the address is universal to whomever -
"on all the walls."

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We shall note two things, which are a sort of problematic hesitation of the
determination of The Act as a publication of the verdict:
1st: "... I raise against the Christian church the most terrible accusation an
accuser has ever raised." The Act is not only the verdict, the prosecution or
execration but they can be certified as the worst ones that have been brought against
them. This point is consubstantial. The verdict against Christianity and against the
old world, must be able to be attested as the most terrible judgment that ever
occurred. We will return to this point, where we will find the necessary dimension
of excess, i.e. that the accusation is not the substance of The Act, insofar as it is the
accusation in arch-politics, i.e. a separate and surpassing charge with regard to all
those that have previously been brought upon the Christian church.
2nd: "This eternal indictment of Christianity", where we find that The Act
is still in the form of a reaffirmation, i.e. that The Act has always taken place, and
Nietzsche is the reaffirmation that is both hazardous and fated, as is any affirmation
in the form of a crapshoot.
But I would say that in remembering all this, namely that the Philosophical
Act would eventually bring a radical judgment on the old world, and publicly
proclaim the eternal execration, I feel that the dice have not really been thrown, i.e.
that what really was there, and which I understand in its radicality and stretching,
it seems to me, rather, to be once-more virtual form of the crapshoot, the real dice
roll. The form seems to me to still be retained, or, let's say, the loathing, the verdict,
seem to be the form of the crapshoot, rather than his gesture or launch. I would
compare it to the Mallarmean moment of the crapshoot, where the dice are shaken
in a closed fist. You see that in the Nietzschean fist which is clenched from
execration, from the vituperation of Christianity. But what will be said here, the
stellar number that will come out of there, the fated gesture of what chance of this
reaffirmation will be destined, we have not yet deciphered. We're still at the
moment, as Mallarmé says, where the teacher hesitates ancestrally "not to open the

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clenched hand across the useless head." There it is. And then, I believe it should be
said that in its Nietzschean form, the statement is still captive in the circle.
It bears the execration of old values so that it assigns philosophy to a radical
break, but it doesn’t carry the kind that it should be the statement itself which is the
only active content of this chastisement. In other words, affirmative element of the
verdict, this affirmative element that we view as the other side of the break in two
of the world's history, is in fact the intensity of the verdict itself. This is why it is so
important that Nietzsche can state this is the most terrible judgment ever delivered
against Christianity. We can say that The Active validity of the declaration is to exist
as a statement. Nietzsche himself is ultimately still the only affirmative dimension
of The Act, and it makes him arrive in person to occupy the board. And I think that's
why, in Nietzsche's writing available at this time, the Antichrist and Ecce Homo are
coupled and are absolutely a unit of proposition, for how does Ecce Homo begin?
Like this: "Providing that I must soon address the most serious challenge humanity
has ever received, it seems to me indispensable to say who I am." "Anticipating": We
always find the "I will," "soon," immediately, and "it'll be". "We are always on the
edge of The Act. And the person I am comes later as an integral part of the
declaratory approval. A little further, Nietzsche will make this heartbreaking
statement: "Listen to me, because I am such and such." It is as if between reporting
a loathing of Christianity, killing the old world, and committing The Act itself, i.e.
The Active power of the statement, there Cs still the irreducible question of the
witness. Witness, Public Hearing - someone - there must be someone. And there is
someone in the sense of one who understands, who speaks in the statement. It is not
the statement itself that is concerned, for it is legible, it is there. So the deed is explicit
as far as it is a declaration, which declares, but it does not suffice to say so, and it
still takes someone to know who it is. So I would say that the question of the public
or the question of someone, or the question of the other, let's call it what you wish,
ultimately intervenes in Nietzsche's motivation, between the declaration and The

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Active dimension of the declaration, and thus between The Act and himself. The
question of the public, the question of someone, does not consist of linking the
content of the statement, but it is in relating to the person who declares. This is the
circle of The Act as declaration, that the subject of enunciation is himself, and has
stated that the declaratory statement is addressed as a dual statement. And thus any
statement that is presented as an arch-political declaration in the Nietzschean sense,
is twofold: One must incessantly which the statement also says: Who states it? and
the statement by itself has no power by itself of stating who says it.
It takes a redoubling of a second declaration by which the person I am is
stated, but of course, it is absolutely required for this 2nd declaration to be heard.
Approval of who I am is no longer suspended in the intelligibility of utterances, and
it is addressed or non-existent; it is heard or not, and it is why Nietzsche's cry, "Listen
to me because I am such and such," involves The Act itself in its effectiveness. It is
not possible that the Philosophical Act in the sense of Nietzsche taking place, if the
person I am is not heard and if the second statement does not come in the result of
his address to validate the first statement where we find a theme that I had
introduced from the start, which is that an acknowledgment is required. Recognition
is required, and this recognition is the point, and not the fact that the declaration
must be recognized, but that for there to be a declaration, it is required for the person
who declared to have been recognized. The recognition of Nietzsche may only have
an Event-like form: it will arrive. So, one wonders whether this recognition of who
is not finally the Event itself, the Event in its irreducible emergence, the real breaking
point in the history of humankind. Is it not ultimately definitive, not ultimately the
loathing of Christianity, which is, if one might say, a critical result, but the person
who declares? and the intensity of which states? that is actually recognized? And
how can it be recognized? This is where Nietzsche is at the wheel, because Ecce
Homo is written to earn or to extort recognition. But in reality, it is clear that this is
what is presupposed, because why must the focus be upon it? Especially if it is not

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exactly so, that person makes the statement? But the person who makes the
statement should, in turn, be identified so that the declaration works, and thus an
unconditional recognition is sought: Nietzsche must be recognized. The recognition
of Nietzsche may have only an Evental figure: it will arrive. This is what Nietzsche
finishes by saying early in the Prologue of the Antichrist, "Perhaps my reader is not
yet born." But if the reader is not yet born, and the birth of the reader is actually the
real Event.
The real Event, the real emergence, the real innovation is not so much that
there is a declaration of abhorrence of the old world, but that someone arrives, who
says, "Nietzsche has taken place," Who speaks, and recognizes that "Nietzsche" has
taken place? In other words, one can say that the recognition is Event-like because,
in its lawlessness, it is incalculable. It cannot extort, and it is not the product of the
facts of declaration. And to what Nietzsche's entire project is thus suspended, is that
someone comes up who says: there is Nietzsche, there was Nietzsche, and Nietzsche
has been, or here we see the statement such as it hangs over the irreducible identity
of Nietzsche. In the meantime, what shall we do? Because we see that there is an
expectation, an expectation that Nietzsche states as a deferred or unresolved
suspense of the possibility of the declaratory act.
However, in the meantime, we will occupy the land by the law, precisely
because the element of recognition is lawless. This is why, as we said last time, there
is this amazing thing, where the execration against Christianity is presented as law
against Christianity. So here is the question: what is a law? One will respond with a
very general definition of the law: a law is what comes to be when recognition has
not taken place, i.e. when there is one that could not be delivered by the other. This
is properly the generic definition of the law, while the other does not deliver the
“whom,” when there should have been a law which closes the awaiting, perhaps
indefinitely, of the recognition of the whom. We can also say: the law is when no one
recognizes who I am, and it is necessary that the anonymous distribution is made in

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the element of the law. And it is in the lucidity of this point that Nietzsche, in
awaiting the reader who can state that Nietzsche took place, will formulate a law
against Christianity. It is with this law that we left off the last time. We will review
it in the light of all this, punctuating the peculiarities and problems it raises.

Anti-Christ’s Law Against Christianity

I recall here the title: Law against Christianity.
- Law: The Law definitely seems to contradict The Act, i.e. contradict Eventness,
because if the history of the world is broken in two, there is certainly no need for the
law against Christianity. This seems self-evident, but the law has, in fact, closing the
temporary absence of the conditions of The Act, which is the lack of recognition of
"Nietzsche".
- Contra: The contra would also seem to contradict the affirmative essence of
The Act, because the essence of The Act such that Nietzsche determined is not anti;
it's not a reversal, not agonistic or antagonistic. It is an affirmative breaking, or what
I call a dissolving excess. I remind you that the definition of philosophy by
"Nietzsche" is the following: "[Philosophy to be achieved] by a Dionysian
acquiescence to the world without removing, excluding, and selecting anything”
(posthumous fragment from Spring 1888). This is the philosophy on the affirmative
side of his act. So there is a paradox of the contra. Christianity: Christianity is the
generic name of old nihilistic values. We cannot take it any differently. But what will
interfere in the text of the law, then, is that Christianity will not work in the text of
the law as the generic name of old nihilistic values, but in a rather practical religious
sense. This is a problem to which we will return, but I point in passing: there is a
decisive question of names in Nietzsche, or a double form. This is an ambiguous
name:

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- In its generic sense, Christianity is the name of nihilistic values, or it is the

name of Becoming nihilistic from the evaluation, i.e. the historical name of the will
to nothing.
- In another sense, Christianity is a singular configuration, a singular
Becoming of form of the priest. It's not quite the same thing, because the law against
Christianity will be to some extent a law against the priest more than a law against
the will to nothing. What for? Because it is a law, specifically, and not The Act. The
Act itself will break from the will to nothing. The law which is finally The Act in the
default of The Act or which is that is still inactive, the law will instead target the
concrete form of religion, i.e. the equipment of the priest. So much for the title.
Then, "enacted in the day of salvation, the first day of year one (September
30, 1888 of the false calendar)." There, I do not believe it, since we last spoke at
length, simply emphasizing what I have called the revolutionary mimetic. This law
is fully embedded in the mimetic conventional decrees, including the foundation of
the new calendar year and the new first year, which Nietzsche founded. That said,
the problem is whether you can open a time by a law. This law was enacted in the
day of salvation, the first day of year one, and you can clearly see the circle: What
determines this day as the first day of year one? It is precisely that it is the day of the
enactment of the law and nothing else - nothing else attests it except that we are on
the first day of year one, except that it is precisely on this day that the law was
enacted. There is thus a fairly clear circle, which is that the dating of the law is
nothing other than the effect of the law itself. The law can be said to date itself as
original. And there again, this is obviously because the law takes the place of the
event, that it is the substitution of the still awaited event, and can be the basis of its
own date or the Event that relates it to its own date.
Then we have the subtitle: "War on vice: the vice is Christianity." Again, one
must note that vice is apparently not quite beyond good and evil, for if it were, we
would not proclaim that Christianity is vice. It should be said that there is an element

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of pure and simple commutation [switching]: what was sacred is vicious, and what
was vicious is sacred; or what was affirmative is negative, and what was negative is
affirmative. But this switching element is not at all homogeneous to the idea of
breaking the history of the world in two. If we must complete only a permutation or
a reversal of each term, we have in fact reached it, in a raising or a combination. So
the fact that we have: The all-out war on vice, or the vice being Christianity--what
does it express? Well, expressing that we are again prior to the Event itself, i.e. that
we are in the negative declaration, but not in what this declaration establishes as the
power of The Act. Let's quickly examine these 7 items, one after the other, i.e. the
statement itself in its concentrated form:
Article 1: "Anything against Nature is vicious. The most vicious species of
human is priest: he teaches against Nature. Against the priest one has no reason,
one has hard labor.” Let’s pass over this quickly. I said the bulk of it, i.e. that the
law will move towards The Actual form of the priest, and not just to judgment or
the rupture of the generic thing, .i.e the will to nothing. It will be in a natural
normativity, "viciously against all nature." So there is of course an unspecified
normativity. We will be in doublets of Nature and contra-Nature, vice and no vice.
And we will adopt the terrorist mimetic. Last time, I had already given you
examples to tell you how the mimetic revolutionary would assume the form of terror
in statements such as: "I will shoot all anti-Semites." Here is the promulgation of a
decree condemning the priest to forced labor. The fact that there is no argument -
we will return to the question of reasoning and proof, a central articulation to
Nietzsche - he refers to the determining statement in Nietzsche that: "What needs
to be proved is not worth much. "It is therefore not surprising that against the priest,
there is no need to prove his vicious character that goes against nature. There is
forced labor for that.
Article 2: "Any participation in divine service is an affront to common
decency. It will be harder for Protestants than Catholics, harder for liberal

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Protestants than for Protestants of strict obedience. Being Christian is even more
criminal than the one closest to science. The criminal of criminals is consequently
the philosopher."
The recovery of the concept of indecency is in line with the recovery of vice and of
everything else. One is in the face of inversion. I will come back to this question of
the reversal of names. Then comes a dimension that leads gradually away from the
philosopher, in the idealistic sense of the term; accompanied by a settling of accounts
with the Germans. As for the philosopher, it seems that for him the hard labor would
barely suffice, although the text makes no reference anywhere, I will come back to it
under pain of death. Unlike Plato in Book X of the Republic, when he addresses the
question of the Sophists, Nietzsche, when he addresses the question of the
philosopher, does not brandish the death penalty - we make him act. However, "the
criminal of criminals is consequently the philosopher," i.e., Article 2 designates what
I would later develop under the name of anti-Nietzschean philosophy. We have to
distinguish the proper mode in which Nietzsche is an anti-philosopher, under a
singular category. You know that it is the general strategy of this seminar to deploy
the constituent figures of anti-philosophy in this century. And it is certain that
Nietzsche is the first founder of modern anti-philosophy, contemporary, because the
first great modern anti-philosopher is Pascal, with whom Nietzsche is quite
fraternally related, quite essentially, in a manner that is quite severe and complex.
We have here a first determination of what is meant by anti-philosophy in
Nietzsche, who himself declares, moreover, which he himself declares living
thought, so that it is, indeed, from religion, i.e. from nihilism. From this point of
view, anti-philosophy is primarily what is made visible, i.e. it is placing the religious
element in visibility, such that philosophy disposes it in a form that is dissolved, or
absent from itself.
What is meant by “philosophy” in Nietzsche’s anti-philosophy, is
specifically religion disguised as science in its broad sense: religion disguised as

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rationality. Philosophy is actually disguised or covered by the rags of the scientism

[scientific religion]. So, and this is a very important point--it is indistinguishable
religion, or religion in an element that is not itself. And from Plato, we can define
historical philosophy, not as a service of religion, not as something that is just like
religion--no, not exactly like a disguised religion, which would be too graphic--but
as religion that is in such a manner rendered indistinguishable from what it is not;
religion parasitically housed in something that at first is heterogeneous to it. To take
an image that is absolutely contemporary, philosophy is like a virus, i.e., it is in a
state of invisibility in an organism, as a parasite; where identity is no longer
decipherable, but borrowed. In the eyes of Nietzsche, philosophy is the religion in
the state of the virus. It is housed in an apparent homogeneity in the living organism
thought, then it is, indeed, religion, i.e. it is nihilism. From this point of view, the
anti-philosophy is first making visible, i.e. it is increasing the visibility of the
religious element as the philosophy has dissolved form, or lack itself. It is in this
sense that Nietzsche always called himself the greatest psychologist of Christianity,
i.e. someone who knows how to discern Christianity where it is indistinguishable.
Here we see philosophy in its first Nietzschean sense, descriptive, and anti-
philosophical. And then, actually, when it was discerned, we will decide that
"criminal criminals, is consequently the philosopher."
Article 3: "The site worthy of execration where Christianity has hatched her eggs
from basilicas, will be demolished. This chastised place on earth will inspire
horror for generations to come. Venomous snakes will be brought forth."
I will make two comments on Article 3. Is "this chastised place" Jerusalem,
or is it Rome? I do not know. In any case, it will be brought down, but there has been
an initial destruction of the temple in Jerusalem ... There is really the question of
where "Christianity has hatched her eggs from basilicas". It is an obscure point, a
question that is not entirely clear to me: the Christian who broods over eggs.

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The second point I wanted to make is that obviously one is also there in the
revolutionary mimetic: mowing symbols, hammering the shields, removing the
tombs of kings and scattering the bones is strictly the idea of the mimetic
revolutionary. Now, this specifically contradicts a passage where Zarathustra
criticizes the revolutionaries of engaging in something as ridiculous as
overthrowing statues. Where he even takes this as an example of the futility of
political revolutions, in the non-arch-political sense. Now in the law, precisely
because it is only a law in the failure of the Event, here is where the revolutionary
mimetic takes over, and "Nietzsche" surrenders himself as well to something that is
completely the reversal of statues or, say, the destruction of symbols. We will now
see that this point is not only condemned by Zarathustra as characterizing the
frivolity of political revolutions, but also that Nietzsche supports the view that this
will strengthen the thesis that one has destroyed the symbol, i.e. that the Church is
constantly regenerated by the persecutions of this kind; that any symbolic
persecution is still an essential revitalization of its device. It is therefore quite curious
to see that not only is there a contradiction, but a change of device. I would see for
myself the sign of mimetic instability of the Nietzschean relation between the
Philosophical Act such as he sees the revolutionary paradigm, which for him
remains the French Revolution.
Article 4: "One is excluded by eating at the same table as a priest;
excommunicated by those of honest society. The priest is our Chandala, and he
must be quarantined, starved, and banished to the worst deserts."
Let’s return to the priest. What strikes me in Article 5 is its relative
moderation, so that when one considers that in the eyes of Nietzsche it has to do
with carrying the most radical and terrible accusation ever brought against
Christianity. But honestly, in this fifth section, next to the anti-Christian texts of the
French Revolution, it is not a big deal, we should say. Because if it has to do with the
priest and the banishment of the priest, it is certain that the French Revolution in its

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anti-clerical wing, which has not shrunk from exile, the guillotine, and systematic
persecution, is of a violence regarding where there was finally Nietzschean
bonhomie: eating at the same table as a priest is not good, not honest company, we
will quarantine him, good, after he hardens a little: starve him, banish him to the
worst deserts, but it feels great that the metaphor of the thing remains partly in the
metaphor of who wants to make an outrageous statement rather than a murdering
one. However, the adequate murdering statements in the form of the priest, were
found in the literature of Father Duchesne, and moreover not just in this newspaper
published by Hébert from 1790-1794. Regarding Marat and others, we have very
little. It was therefore a weakened revolutionary mimetic which lies in a small
scandal and refers to what? This may be anecdotal, but it must be remembered,
referring to the extreme kindness of Nietzsche. In fact, in reading Nietzsche
carefully, and I spoke earlier of the inner sanctity of Nietzsche, there is this man,
including the movement by which he is exposed more and more to the folly of his
act, a great kindness. And every invective was conquered by "Nietzsche" on the
goodness of Nietzsche. Each fury is the fury which disposes of a depth that is never
exhausted of basic goodness. And there, I feel this kindness, when one must really
decide, there is finally a retention of the mere statement in the moment where its
logic would be of establishing a murderer as a stated. But the Nietzschean statement
never fails to be a murdering statement even when it is in the apparent glorification
of cruelty.
Article 5: "One will give the “sacred” "the name it deserves, that of
chastised history. One will use the words, "God," "Messiah," "Redeemer," and
“holy” as insults and designations for criminals.”
So "a kind of messiah, dirty redeemer, pig of God." This is the tradition of
the chastisement. We've always used those words there in exclamation and insult.
Finally, Nietzsche is situated there in the classical nominal ambivalence between
sacred names and excremental names, which are always in relations of commutation

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or of identity, so that God is both what we pray to, and a horrible thing we will
exclaim: “Name of God, what has he done (or: what have I done)! Here, Nietzsche
stands in this thread, i.e. in the ambiguity of names. He simply suggests handling
the ambiguity of names unilaterally, i.e. to switch once and for all, every sacred
name in its excremental form.
Article 6: "All else follows."
So this is truly the enigma of the law against Christianity, i.e. what is the rest
follows from the general system of his arguments? I tend to think that everything
which follows is the Event itself, i.e. the same thing. These are not the consequences
of the law, but only the execution of articles 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 would result ... what, if
anywhere else? Everything else follows from it, and it is the silent Event by which
the law ceases to be law. What may arise from the rest as a law is the Event as a non-
law, or the Event incised from the law, or the Event as the effectivity where the law
only gives a law. So what follows from all that is the taking place of all that the law
leaves in absolute suspense. Or we can say in other words: what is The Actual
coming of the first day of the first year. We saw earlier that the fact of whether we
are on the first day of first year cannot be wagered without a circle around the
enactment of the law. Year 1 must occur: Year 1 is his coming. And maybe when it
will arrive, it will arrive with the law and everything else that follows. But there,
nothing came, nothing came but the declaration, which is not in itself the stated act.
So I would say that "everything else follows," i.e. that Article 7 is the event-like
Article event, which states that the effectiveness of all that requires an arrival. We
need Year 1 to arrive. But precisely the year I as it would arrive, or as it will have
come, is simply what is left of the law. We can summarize all of this in a relatively
stable form: in Nietzsche's conception of the Philosophical Act, we ought to
consider: 1st Point: The statement. What is announced cannot be the chastising the
old world. I remind you that this is the subtitle “Antichrist”: chastising Christianity.
What is declared is the chastising.

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2nd Point: Who makes the statement? This chastising only acts under the
condition of identifying someone. It is necessary to have someone who announces,
which is in turn said. But the “whom” that states cannot validly be declared except
by another. There is thus an anonymous third party, who must decide whether the
statement has been declared. And anyone who identifies him, Nietzsche himself,
walking in Turin, like the one that makes the statement, Nietzsche finishes by seeing
him everywhere, even in walking in four seasons reserving their ripest fruit. The
story is admirable. There reads this essential point that he who declares must in turn
be declared by the other. And as Nietzsche awaits the other in another such tension,
in such a need, that he sees in the ordinary gesture of anyone around him.
These first two points provide the declaratory slope of The Act, i.e. the sum of
statements of imprecation against the old world and of the eventual resolution of
the question: Who is making the statement, insofar as it involves a third party? The
third is perhaps not born as Nietzsche himself puts it, but to whom one stated
everything that could be said for there to be recognition in Ecce Homo. The
declaratory slope of The Act is the coupling in the work of Nietzsche of Antichrist
and of Ecce Homo. The Antichrist is the chastising itself, and thus the immediate
content of the declaration. But of whom is Ecce Homo the record? It is not the
recognition of someone, as it requires the other, but at least it's the record of whom.
- 3rd point: the Event is not yet formed. But we are still antecedent to The
Act itself: the Event escapes again, as in Article 7 of the Law against Christianity.
But how to show innumerable clauses such as: "I will", "it is for the sake of", "I will
soon," "I make" ... etc, i.e. what makes The Act even remotely from the declaration
of The Act. So in this triplet there is
- A term consisting of: chastisement
- A term of basis: what will it declare? The element of recognition
- A real point that is deferred: the event-like dimension of The Act.
Once more, we can say that there is

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- A declaration
- Recognition of its intensity
- Its taking place
This I believe, is in the most radical sincerity and commitment reaching madness,
and thus in its purest test, the device of any arch-politics in the sense that I have
named, i.e. that any provision that assigns the political to the principled preparation
of a radical Event or which assigns the political to thinking, i.e. to philosophy. So if
we also understand arch-politics, we can say that its inescapable device is that of the
triplet of a declaration of recognition and a point of even-like leakage. Once again,
we can say that the arch-political articulates a law without managing to prescribe
The Act. And this articulation will draw a particular representation of the event. As
it escapes, the Event will be returned or recaptured in a singular theory of the event,
which will be there to give reason from its breakaway. So I would say that the device
of the arch-political in the form of the triplet in the statement of the law, the curse
from which, and the unattested and unattestable Event, will eventually produce in
self-legitimation an unattestable form itself of the event. The approach is in saying
that ultimately, every Event is actually unattestable and that's why the Event-al form
of arch-politics is never attested. In other words, the validation of the statement is
fundamentally invisible. Or that its taking place is no stroke of recognition, i.e. that
taking place is itself, in one sense, indistinguishable from not taking place. What in
Nietzsche, will take the very special, following form: the Eventis par excellence that
which is silent. The silence will be the Nietzschean metaphor of the always
unattestable nature of the event. We find it everywhere in "Nietzsche," but we find
it concentrated in the song of Zarathustra (2nd part) entitled "The great events." It is
in the parable of the hellhound that Zarathustra meets the threshold of hell.

The Hellhound and the Silent Event

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Who is the hellhound? The hellhound is the popular revolted event, i.e. the
plebeian form of the event, if you would like its revolutionary classic form. The
hellhound, says Zarathustra, is the "demon of revolt and the dregs." It's the belch of
uprising, before which the bourgeois tremble. Zarathustra will also say that it is "the
ventriloquist of the earth", so that it is the land itself speaking of his apparent
uprising, the earth as she is sick of man, as Zarathustra spoke. But the sick earth of
the man, showing in rage this human disease itself: it is the dog of fire. Here's how
Zarathustra’s invective against the hellhound goes: "You hear yourself screaming,
throwing dust in your eyes. You are the biggest braggarts there are, and you would
acknowledge at its deepest the art of being placed in the boiling mire [...] "Freedom!
"It is s the word you like to yell between yourselves: but I stopped believing in the
great events that are accompanied by yells and smoke. And believe me, I beg of you,
dear din of Hell, the larger events do not surprise us in our loudest hours, but in the
hour of silence. It's not around the inventors of new uproar, but the inventors of new
values that the entire world revolves, but it gravitates in silence. And you can admit
that very well! Once you have cleared your racket and your smoke, you will always
see that not much has happened! Whether a city was petrified or a statue lay
overturned in the mud! "
Two Comments on the First Passage:
Any opposition on the question of the Event is between noise and silence.
The hellhound is the symbol of what Nietzsche calls the big event, as he points out
himself with noise and smoke. This is the Event as its arriving is signaled from itself:
din and smoke mean that the Event is there in the phenomenon itself. In what
Zarathustra will oppose his own form of the event, which is silent, i.e. is not "the
invention of new uproar," but which in the statement of new values is indicated by
a world that "gravitates in silence. "The point to be argued for will be that no external
or phenomenal sign attests to the Event itself in the conception made by Zarathustra,
and which he expressly opposes, breaking the mimetics, in the revolutionary uproar

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as a self-proclamation or self-reporting of Eventness or the rupture. That’s the first

remark.
The second has to do with the “inventors of new values.” "It's not around the
inventors of new noise, but around the inventors of new values the entire world
revolves, but it gravitates in silence ..." This means that the inventor of new values,
opposed by the revolutionary plebeian, will not be signaled in his arriving. In other
words, nothing in the world that is worldly, is going to announce his arrival, strictly
speaking, but what will be the "cock" of his own arriving arises from itself. Once
again, we find the singular figure of the circle which is antecedent to itself.
Zarathustra is strictly one who heralds the coming of Zarathustra. And that is why
all around, the world can be silent.
Finally, in light of what we saw in the law against Christianity, the whole
fabric of brute will to destroy the symbols and persecute the priest, we find the
opposite position. This is the third point, namely that, apparently, it is precisely the
characteristic of plebeian revolution: "That it matters that a village was petrified or
a statue lying overturned in the mud!" After all, one could say, that what matters in
this case that one demolishes the places where Christianity has hatched her eggs.
Especially since Zarathustra also continues, "And as for the demolition of statues,
this is what I will tell them: there is no greater folly than in throwing salt in the sea,
and statues into the mud. The statue lies in the mire of our contempt, but his law
only wishes to be reborn from our livelier and more beautiful contempt. It will rise
more divine, more attractive, having suffered, and in truth, it will make you grateful
for having thrown them to the ground, destroyers of statues! But here is the advice
I give to churches and to everything that is weakened by age and poor in virtue:
Would you reverse so that you could come back to life and that virtue would be
restored to you.”
Here we have a very striking paradox, which is that the reversal of all values,
Nietzschean par excellence, is stated here by Zarathustra to be the deepest wish of the

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Church itself. We must specifically give old values the guidance of being
overturned, because they will be reborn more glorious and more alive than they
were before. Zarathustra is perfectly aware that it is useless to enact a law against
Christianity. There have been many attempts, from laws against it, but Christianity
has always found virtue and regeneration under the order of these laws. Here we
find the extraordinary indecision of that Nietzschean act, which is taken or so to
speak torn between mimetic revolutionary in its respective declaration, which is the
reversal of statues and idols, and the law of persecution, and then on its opposite
side, in announcing, but in silence, the Event that has always escaped or been
exposed, caught in a side that is quite the contrary, which is that there is no point in
enacting the law of execration or in destroying the building or the statue, for that is
the reversal - but the reversal is, ultimately, always strengthening. From this point
of view, Nietzsche's consciousness is not at all, as in Heidegger, at its deepest; that
of Zarathustra, and it is not at all that of a reversal of metaphysics, for Zarathustra
knows quite well that what is reversed is always, in fact reborn, i.e. that any reversal
is a regeneration. He knows very well that the program of the reversal of
metaphysics is, as Heidegger deduced, a fulfillment of metaphysics, that the
overthrow of nihilism is nihilism separated from his own essence, and consequently
nihilism unleashed. Zarathustra does not say anything else; he says: all reversal is
an uplifting, all persecution is a rebirth. But in this case, what is The Act? Because
what we read in the statement of the Antichrist is precisely encased in that structure.

So we must necessarily think that the destructive doubling of the negative

statement, of the decree of abolition which is the Antichrist by something else, is
required. Something must be said, otherwise or elsewhere, the Event itself as not
being in essence the imprecating statement, i.e. the overthrow of statues into the
mire. Where it is argued that the Antichrist is not ultimately Christ himself, i.e. the
ultimate regeneration of Christ in the form of his modern reversal? In the form that

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Nietzsche assumes under the signature of "Antichrist"? This problem is really the
same one we had met at a different stage of development, when we found that
Nietzsche indifferently signed the letters of madness “Dionysus” or “The
Crucified,” which were the two sides of the break in two of world history. And we
have said, how is it that the proper name "Nietzsche" might overlook or rename the
two sides at once, Dionysus and the Crucified? And now we discover this question
in another form: what is there besides the Antichrist? What is going to double the
Antichrist so that it will be Dionysus? Or we can say, and this is the question that
will govern our resuming of this seminar, the big question that we should address
to "Nietzsche," beyond what we have seen so far, is the question: Where is Dionysus?
And we will see that this is really the question of the labyrinth. And then we will
remember that Nietzsche has said he is the only one who understood Ariadne
because he was predestined to the labyrinth. Here we’ll stop!

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Fourth Course: On Creation of Being

Happy New Year’s 1993, all students and faculty, if there's any sense in
beginning this year under the banner of "good." In Nietzschean terms, this is
problematic, in any case, since there is no "good." But even in non-Nietzschean
terms, this phenomenon makes such a judgment difficult, and it remains for us to
ask what is really a “good year”... In any case, as far as we are concerned, and what
concerns you all, let’s say that I hope that the proper modalities of our inscription in
this space and time are the ones you'd like. I recall that in this seminar on Nietzsche,
we are pursuing a strategy that focuses on three entangled goals:
- First, determining the very status of speech in Nietzsche, which opens
with the question of philosophy itself. Specifically, this question will lead us to the
class of anti-philosophy, a category which in its contemporary form is originally
Lacanian, but which I intend to deal with more broadly as an intra-philosophical
category itself. We are not able to do it here, but in short, we can conclude on the
true status of discourse in Nietzsche, where his statement falls under anti-
philosophy, provided that the whole problem, then, is in situating anti-philosophy
in terms of what we should call philosophy.
- Second, we must realize in what sense the century was Nietzschean, or
could claim to be, or in what sense we could claim that it had been so. This more
historicizing objective of evaluation will take the form of examining the anti-
Platonism of Nietzsche.
- Third, indeed, chiefly, it will have much to do with determining
Nietzsche as the vector for the contemporary possible relationship between
philosophy and art, and through this relation, determining what is the setting of
philosophy under the condition of art in terms which are not a suture (stitching
together), or an identification. These are our goals.
I recall that we began by examining the anti-Philosophical Act in Nietzsche,
not precisely from the discursive Nietzschean configuration, but from the immanent

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determination of the philosophical and/or anti-Philosophical Act, such that

Nietzsche represents it. And as we have to find names, we said that the
philosophical or anti-Philosophical Act for Nietzsche must be conceived as an arch-
political act, whose maxim is breaking in two world histories by the favorable
resources of thought itself. On this point, we have said enough, and I just want to
add something that is both a parenthesis and anticipation on the status of the word
“politics” in arch-politics (Grossepolitik).

Nietzsche and Politics

Last year, we had studied this question extensively, but I cannot presume to
know what was said on the question of what politics enables us to understand in
philosophy, for in philosophy, a simply immediate definition, or an empirical one,
is insufficient. It has to do with knowing what in philosophy is traced or re-traced,
under a condition that is affected, by the word "political". I remind you, very
fleetingly, of what we had said- namely that the word politics can basically be taken
in two senses of what concerns us here.
- First of all, you can understand from “political” the modes of the thought of
sovereignty, and in this case the word is placed under the order of the State. The
relation of the political to philosophy is staged by the manner in which the question
of the state is retraced from within philosophy. This is the direction that gives
wholesale political philosophy, and I have argued, for reasons I cannot recall here,
that political philosophy is really an abdication of philosophy concerning the order
of the State.
- Second, the other meaning of the word "political" which is, in my opinion,
something under which philosophy can be authentically under the condition of politics, is in
conceiving politics as a process of truth of intrinsic infinity from collective situations.
Thus, politics is a faithful, Event-like procedure which produces some truths about
collective situations of seizures through their infinity. In this case, we are not

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referring to the structure of the state as a form of the structure of sovereignty, but to
an immanent Eventin the process of truth, which, on the contrary, is recorded in the
collective the distance to the state, i.e. the ability or the possibility of a distance to
the state where the thought of intrinsic infinity of collective situations is enabled.
All this is quite brief, but serves to indicate the deep ambivalence of the word
“political” between the form of sovereignty, on one hand, and on the other, the
singular procedure which produces some truths about the intrinsic infinity of
collective situations.
The question, then, is knowing in what sense Nietzsche himself takes up
politics or, at least, we ourselves take up politics, when we say that the Nietzschean
Philosophical Act is supra-political. With this, what strikes me is an obvious
ambivalence in Nietzsche, which in a sense replicates the ambivalence of the word
“political” itself.
- There is a very interesting text, a posthumous fragment from Spring 1888,
entitled by Nietzsche himself --entitled in the strong sense, because the note gives
the title in the middle of the page and the name of the author below, as if it were a
reproduction of an extant book, as far obviously nothing like this exists. So we find
this page in full: A Tractatus Politicus of Frederick Nietzsche. Where we naturally
find the fact that for Nietzsche, "Nietzsche" is a category, not just his name, and it is
the name and more than the name. Here we have a political treaty. But what is it?
Well, in the program that traces Nietzsche, it is explicitly a genealogy of sovereignty.
In this case, this is the genealogy of the sovereignty of virtue, but the title "Tractatus
Politicus" makes it clear that in the eyes of Nietzsche, the name of politics deserves
a genealogy of forms of sovereignty. So we could say that Nietzsche takes politics in
the first sense, i.e. in the sense where politics of the Real is the idea of sovereignty.
- However, this is "balanced out" by another fragment which is also from
Spring 1888, and reads of a radical release from the State i.e. the idea that the State
cannot precisely be the center of gravity of thought, or of the arch-political act. I

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quote: "Whatever a man does in the service of the State is contrary to its nature." [...]
Still, everything that they learn for the future service of the State is contrary to its
nature." From this point of view, politics seems to switch to its other possible
identification, where there is no politics, and a fortiori, arch-politics, in an essential
untying under the figure of the State, not only in the order of acting, but also that of
knowing. All that a man learns, in the target of the State, causes an essential
contradiction to nature, and, given the Nietzschean value of the word nature, it
equally means that what we do in the service of the State or what we learn for the
service of the state is outside any form of authentic thought.
To decide this question of politics in Nietzsche's sense, and from his
ambivalence between sovereignty, on one hand, and a radical distance from The
Actual form of the sovereignty of the State, on the other--we must set in place the
ambiguity of the word "nature" or "life".

Ambiguity of the Word “Life”

We have already spoken of the ambiguity that this requires. We must always
remember, and we will often return to this point because it is essential - that life is
the foundation of all inevaluable evaluation. The essential attribute of life, but
ultimately of nature, and - as we shall see - what takes place of Being, is inevaluable
Being. And the inevaluable is what forms the basis of any evaluation. It is this
inevaluable dimension of nature which sustains the ambiguity of the word "politics"
[Politik]. This inevaluable depth for any evaluation is what suspends the evaluation
of the word "politics," because you can say that sovereignty in the sense of Nietzsche,
is the thing to which all intensity of vital power tends. Sovereignty is tendentiously
the phenomenon of the inevaluable depth. Sovereignty will always be assessable,
but it is in a sense the phenomenon of the inevaluable depth, because it is that to
which all intensity of vital power tends, i.e. all intensity of nature as such.

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This is why in Autumn 1887, Nietzsche set in place the following program,
which is quite significant for what concerns us here: "Instead of sociology, a doctrine
of formations of sovereignty." It is therefore true that politics, in thought, may
designate a doctrine of formations of sovereignty, i.e. a doctrine of types of
intensification of vital power. But in another sense, and here we pay the price, so to
speak, of the inevaluable: sovereignty is still reactive. It is both The Activation of
vital power (life power), but as such it is reactive. And, in particular, in the modality
of the state, it does violence to the vital new assertion, i.e. something in the process
of intensification.
So there is a balance or indecision that the word "political" will express word
or carry, between the fact that
- On the one hand, sovereignty is to share the phenomenon of an inevaluable depth
which is life, or nature.
- On the other, sovereignty such that it allows itself to be evaluated, i.e. as far as it is
an established sovereignty, i.e. an evaluable one, as a phenomenon, has an
undeniably reactive essence with regard to everything that is in a view of
intensification and where intensification can only constitute power against power,
against an established sovereignty.
Arch-politics will always be understood in this ambiguity, which will also
be, as we saw already, the ambiguity of The Act itself, i.e. of the arch-political act.
Thus, to supplement what we have already said about The Act, one last thing I want
to emphasize is that the arch-political act, which is the same thing as the anti-
philosophical or Philosophical Act, is not conceived by Nietzsche as destined to
establish a new sovereignty. It is certain that the “il y a” of these Nietzschean texts
is deeply ambiguous and contradictory as ever in appearance.
However, concerning the essential movement of thought, I believe that we
must truly understand that when it speaks of the history of the world being broken
in two, unlike the revolutionary scheme, where the “il y a”, furthermore an

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imitation, it has nothing to do with taking over a sovereignty to another, or replacing

a reactive sovereignty through active sovereignty, which would be a simplified
version of the Philosophical Act, according to Nietzsche. This Act is not the creator
of a new sovereignty, and I would say, despite this, from absolutely contrary
statements of Nietzsche himself, that are strongly taken up by Heidegger-- that the
essence of The Act is really not the introduction of new values: the reversal of all
valuesdoesn't have the essence of establishing new values, just as it has no essence
of replacing the sovereignty of Christianity or of the priest, with another form of
established sovereignty. In reality, what the arch-political act must create is the
capacity to affirm the world.
And the ability to affirm the world doesn't have a phenomenon of a novel
sovereignty. Finally, in contrast to the ambiguity of the word politics, between an
evaluation of the forms of sovereignty, on one hand, and the other distance with
regard to any sovereignty, on the other-- especially in light of the State, the arch-
political act is the delivering of an immanent affirmative capacity so any virtual
sovereignty. This is what Nietzsche will call, "My new path to the yes." The central
problem is the question of the yes. Under what conditions can someone say yes? Yes
to what? Saying yes to the world, i.e. saying yes to the “il y a”, establishing the “il y
a”, yes to the “il y a”. Or we can say, that in the same passage, what it has to do with
establishing, is "the form of stating the Dionysian yes to the world, as such." Finally:
arch-politics (Grossepolitik) as a determination of the Nietzschean Philosophical Act,
should not be taken up on the side of sovereignty. What has taken place on the side
of sovereignty, is the destructive evaluation of existing sovereignties, which is why
it takes the place of sociology: "Instead of sociology, a doctrine of sovereignty."
However, sociology is what accounts for the order of things2.

2
Note from the Translator: Here the reader might find or especially appreciate reading Foucault’s
Order of Things, originally translated Les Mots et les Choses [literally, Words and Things]

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And what Nietzsche wants to say, is that instead of a positivist sociology, we

need a sociology of the evaluation of formations of sovereignty; thus, we need an
interpretive sociology. Nietzsche thus proposes, in the space of more established
sovereignties, that we should replace the analytical description with a protocol of
evaluation, which concerns established sovereignties. As for the program of The Act,
in my opinion, it is not the substitution of one sovereignty by another, in my opinion.
Rather, The Act is a new order of an affirmation of the world, where The Act is at
stake. The statement will work over the entire space of the forms of intensification,
and thus over the entire space of virtual or potential sovereignty. This is why it is a
"Dionysian yes to the world as it is," paradoxically. So you see that The Act does not
really change the world, but also in that it is not taken up - except in its mimetic
form, where it is in competition with the revolutionary order- in the revolutionary
order, because it is the world as it is, and it will not be otherwise, save for its
affirmative evaluation being rendered fully possible in the future, where the yes will
be possible.
I want to note one thing that suddenly struck my attention. At the bottom of
this possibility of the yes, is a question that crosses all time, every scale from the 19th
to 20th century. I'll simply note another clue in a non-Nietzschean context. It is at
the end of Ulysses, by Joyce: Molly Bloom's monologue in the depth is entirely
biased towards the ultimate yes. And if all goes as this gigantic building what
Ulysses was in the fate of so, i.e. in the end figure of yes. As if the literary plot,
prosodic, was the machination which arises the unlikely possibility of full yes. When
you read Molly Bloom's monologue, one sees that it truly has to do with reclaiming
the dimension of the yes and it is the totality of the experience, as such. It is not a
transformation of this experience, but it is a re-entry of this experience into a full yes.
After all, one could say that the peroration of Joyce's Ulysses has a Nietzschean
aspect from the site of The Act, i.e. the point that makes it possible- the full yes - the
very genesis of The Act.

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We can phrase it another way: the destructive aspect of Nietzscheanism,

which is a morphology of sovereignty and a setting of the pieces of Christianity
through its interpretation, since Christianity is the general name of formations of
reactive sovereignty, well this setting in place of destructive parts can only result in
the multiple composition of affirmation. It cannot be replaced by another
composition, but will deliver a state of effects, i.e. in a multiple state, a world that
will be reaffirmed. We can also say, the debris of old values is what forms the
assertion, i.e., we will not substitute new values within the meaning of old ones.
Consequently, what we will affirm or reaffirm consists of a mundane multiple, or
the many, the very thing which is nonetheless the debris of old values. For
Nietzsche, there is nothing new in the multiple, or many. The many, i.e. the “il y a”
in its multiple Becoming, is identical to itself - it is also one of the meanings of the
Eternal Return - and this identity suggests a new Dionysian yes through the form of
the debris, reconstructed from itself; not in the dramatized form of another world,
or of another sovereignty.
Dionysian Dithyrambs
I believe that this passage from the summer of 1888 will also be re-articulated
in Dionysian Dithyrambs: "Debris of stars, from this debris I have built a universe." It
is the maxim of what is at stake in the affirmative act: "Debris of stars," which reigned
so superbly in the sky of men, and which are the old values in the state of debris-
one has philosophized enough with a hammer, so that there are no more stars, or
debris - but the building or composing of a universe is made of this debris, and it
hasn't happened any other way. It is the affirmation of debris as debris. The
composition of the new universe is the possibility of saying yes to the debris of the
old world, in the sense of the debris of the old world giving us the world itself. And
the ruins of the world as far as it is the world, have to do with affirming or
reaffirming the Dionysian yes. I believe that this is why Nietzsche tends to find a

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metaphor for The Act, in the leap. The image of the leap that goes along with the
image of the dance, constitutes the most essential imagery of Nietzsche.
The leap, why a leap? because ultimately, if The Act, through Dionysian
“yes,” is to affirm or reaffirm the entire world as it is, i.e. such that it is in the debris,
since its very Being is legible only in the debris--if The Act is beyond the break and
the debris of saying yes to what is already broken, then The Act is merely a bounce
or jump over an obstacle that life itself has created. The Act will present itself as
bounding on or in the debris so that one is, indeed, beyond, but this beyond is not
the beyond, and the universe is not built or rebuilt except from the point of debris.
We can say that The Act is the vital power crossing itself. This is indicated by the
jump. The old values and their debris are nothing more than the instance of vital
power, and it is given as the formation of sovereignty, and includes the formation
of reactive sovereignty. This is what created and invented, because there's nothing
else. And the "yes" of the break of this creation, is a sort of bounding of life beyond
the obstacle that the vital power itself has created in breaking this barrier. Therefore
we can say - and I agree with it quite profoundly - the Philosophical Act as an
Eventof thought is an immanent excess. That exceeds the form of old values, but this
excess is the interior of what it exceeds. It's not negativity, a Hegelian passing,
because what is said in the jump signifies that it jumps over itself, over its own
shadow. And jumping over the shadow, or debris - it's the same - it gives an
irreducibly new instance of affirmation.
I see it everywhere, but another fragment of Dionysian Dithyrambs deserves
to be fixed, for it is particularly dense and meaningful: "This supreme obstacle, this
dispensed thought, which has created? That's life itself which has created its
supreme obstacle. Now, it leaps with both its feet over its thought.
Two Brief Notes on the Text
- "The supreme obstacle": expended thought is obviously the institution of reactive
sovereignty, which has several names. Let's view the one we took up so far,

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Christianity, as a generic name. And what has created this barrier, and created for
the arch-political act an obstacle of this particular policy that is the formation of
sovereignty? Well, it is life itself which has created this ultimate obstacle.
- And "now", i.e. in the moment of The Act, life is going to have to jump over its
thought. The Act is a thought jumping with both feet beyond its thought. That's
what I call immanent excess. The Act is given by figure jumping over itself in the
immanence of thought as vital creation. That's what I wanted to say about the
configurations of The Act.

The Circle
At last, I recall that the Nietzschean arch-political act is caught in a circle. We
have long insisted this, so I will just summarize by saying that for The Act to occur,
i.e. for this immanent excess to occur, it must be declared, announced - there is no
alternative or evidence of its occurrence except for its announcement - but this
announcement is supposed, i.e. it is assumed by the inevitable and necessary
character of The Act. We could even say: this proclamation of the radical
Eventwhich should break the history of the world in two, is only the anticipatory
appointment of this Eventas not having taken place. I cannot return to it because it
is completely the figure of Zarathustra, who is the form of the antecedence to
himself. Zarathustra is the precursor of himself, or, as Nietzsche says in another
passage, someone who presents himself as "the shadow of that which is to come."
The figure of Zarathustra is in some sense the very form of the circle, and
this is why in other places, his animal is the serpent. But the generic problem which
is sustained in this circularity of the Nietzschean act, is a problem that is completely
fundamental, which, in my own words, is the problem of the relation between the
Eventand its appointment.
I would definitely say that this question is properly that of an erasure of
Nietzsche's thought, and that this is the true figure that designates Zarathustra.

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Because obviously, as an Event, whatever it may be, has no Being except in its
disappearance --- and that's what sets it up as the excess of its very being - it is not
held by its naming. The possibility that the Event is represented in a situation or in
the antecedence of what continues to be beyond the Event-like supplementation,
requires the operation of a name. We can say that the future of the Event is
suspended in its name. There is always the question of knowing from whence, and
how, this naming proceeds, which is extraordinarily problematic, and presupposes
both circularity and stopping this circularity. I cannot detail here this problem that
I've concerned myself with, so to speak, but I would simply note that in Nietzsche,
the fundamental problem is that there is always an antecedence of naming.
In Nietzsche, everything happens as if the naming were to precede the Event,
and as if simultaneously, there was a misunderstanding or an essential lack of
decidability between the Event and its name. It's not simply the fact that the Event
is traced away by its name, but of what becomes the undecidable question of
whether we are dealing with the Event or its name. In my opinion it's the heart of
the Nietzschean paradox, and in my assumption, as you know, it's what we call the
madness of Nietzsche, and it involves arriving to the place of severing the circle: of
expending one's person to the point where the circle can open. Nietzsche's madness
is indeed a cutting, but a cut that is only divided from itself - "Nietzsche" Nietzsche's
break - in a break that is demented and finally muted. But it was really because
Nietzsche comes under his proper name and under his own body, to the point where
the circle must be broken, and hence the name of the Event, and the Event will
depart at the cost of his own madness. I remember how it was said that "Nietzsche"
created the world, because, ultimately, the proper mode in which it is possible to
announce that we will break world history in two, i.e. the proper mode in which we
can announce a restatement of the world, i.e. the proper mode in which we can
announce a reaffirmation of the world, ultimately, in the fact that we have already
created it, and that the circle is processed into madness as follows: I have a right to

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recreate the world, because I have created it. It is here, which is the circle in
simultaneous creation and recreation, but also passes the cutting in two, since one
who has created the world can reaffirm it. Let's note that from this point of view,
Nietzsche's madness is the Eternal Return itself, i.e. its effectiveness- namely the
proper mode in which one whose act is to reaffirm the world must be the one who
has said. Reaffirmation must eventually return to the first affirmation, which is The
Act by which the history of the world is broken into two is to be legitimized under
the name "Nietzsche", concerning the "Nietzsche" who has already created the
world.

The World and Language: Historicized Sophistry, Anti-Theatrical and Poetic

In fact, under these conditions that we have just mentioned, the Nietzschean
arch-political act assumes in its means, methods, arguments, and prose, two core
provisions:
-One with respect to the world, the other with respect to language. We
cannot engage in this business, i.e. in the nominating speech of this Act, in the
possibility of appointing The Act under the name of "Nietzsche" under stringent
conditions, which concern both the world and language.

a) The World
The world should not be the place of truths and opinions, but it should be
the place of types. This is the axial thesis concerning the world. The world is a
network of types of sayings, or types of what is in the power of uttering, and it is
such that "Nietzsche" could be the proper name of a type, an ultimate type where
the world will be ultimately broken in two and reaffirmed: "Debris of stars" and
"built from the universe." Where an entire doctrine, which is the most famous part
of Nietzsche, and what we shall discuss the least, is the Nietzschean typology,
Nietzschean genealogy; the doctrine of the composition of sovereignty, the question

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of distribution between active forces and reactive forces, so that the entire
descriptive Nietzschean protocol on which, however, it is less necessary to expound
than the relation, if I may say so--in Deleuze, which is excellent in all respects.
For now, I wish to emphasize a point. The heart of the question is the
following, for Nietzsche. A statement can be evaluated only from the power of
utterance. This central maxim says that if you wish to evaluate a historically existing
statement, you can only do so by identifying the kind of power that is exempted
from the statement. Consequently, the key statement in Nietzsche's anti-
philosophical polemic, is that there is no protocol of an intrinsic evaluation of
statements whatsoever. Any evaluation of statements implies the identification of
the type of statement that supports it, and therefore the kind of uttering power
engaged with therein. A statement is always the summarizing of an investment of
power, and the type of investment of power in any multiple in question can be
evaluated based on the statement. Or we can even say that the standard of speaking,
whatever it said, always returns to its strength against another instance of speaking.
From this point of view, the form of evaluation is inherently controversial. The
metaphor of war is going to cover this: the problem of war is the very place where
philosophy situates the problem of truth. Replacing an intrinsic principle of
evaluation of statements under the name of truth or any other equivalent name, is
replaced by a principle of an evaluation of the power of utterance, which is itself
always given as an antagonistic figure. It cannot let herself be captured in isolation:
any power asserts itself or is contraposed by another power, and what it measures
is always a relation of power. Thus: the description of a type of utterance will always
be the description of a relation, i.e. of a historical figure of a relation of power. It is
from this point of view that I would say that Nietzsche's typology is a generalized
sophistry. One will understand that by sophistry, any doctrine which considers that
it does not exist from the intrinsic evaluation of statements; i.e. any doctrine which
refers to any evaluation of a statement of a kind of power that supports it. There we

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have it. I do not want to deal right off with the question of Nietzsche's relation to
sophistry, which is a complex question, since it is the question regulated by the
relation between anti-philosophy and sophistry. I just wanted to say that genealogy,
or typology are widespread sophistry. Moreover, we will return to the explicit
homage that Nietzsche pays to sophistry, in testifying to it very well. Nietzsche did
not hesitate to say that sophistry was the only healthy part of Greek philosophy in
Plato's time, because it affirmed that the evaluation of the statements did not
specifically hold a shared or shareable place, but it always referred to polemical
structures of evaluations of power. Let's say, that concerning the law of the world,
which is also the law of Becoming or the law of history, Nietzschean genealogy,
which is the doctrine of formations of sovereignty or the typology of types of power,
is a historicized sophistry.
It is sophistry, in that it argues that the system of evaluating statements
should be taken in the relation of power.
It is historicized, because it has to do with the genealogy of these types, i.e.,
any type is grasped by fate or the history of its relation to types of art.

b) Language
On the side of language, too, it is clear that language cannot be the site where
evaluations are shared. It may not be the place of argument or exposition of the
statement under the law of the other, precisely because there is no law of the other,
so there is no intrinsic evaluation of statements, wherever they are located.
Language is basically the resource of the power of affirmation. It is structured in the
declaratory act, or in the attestation what language is capable of doing. The question
of language is the question of power, and not at all the question of its
appropriateness. And where language is capable, we know there's always a poetic
investigation in its principle. This is the poem that supports the proper question of
the power of language. So, language will be pulled toward its artistic side. And there

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we touch upon a very important point in Nietzsche's conception of art as a reserved

superabundance, or as gratitude.
What language has in charge when it is the language of assessment, is not
the correct or adequate validation of the statement. Rather, it is the delivering of a
capacity of language to be overabundant in relation to itself, i.e. to be in overcapacity
with regard to what it appeared previously to be capable. The language of
assessment will necessarily be a creative language. But it cannot be an available
language, because it is a language which invents, and which donates to the space of
war from this invention, and donates as one shoots from a weapon. It is in this sense
that we must hear the words of Nietzsche, for example in the Case of Wagner: "All art
that is truly beautiful, all art that is great, has as its essence gratitude." In Nietzsche,
what is opposed to the idea of accuracy, is the idea of gratitude. The idea of exact
language is replaced by that of generous language, and of language which shows
what it is capable, which generously distributes this capacity. That is why it is also
a language that refers to its artistic type because it is art, "really great" art, whose
essence is gratitude. Obviously, it would be a pretty good definition of the poem,
than of saying: the poem is language as gratitude, or the demonstration of the
gratitude of language, not in its accuracy, but merely from its gratitude. In this sense,
the essence of the language of assessment, and ultimately of the Philosophical Act,
is related to the poem. Let's say that the Nietzschean style, which is an integral part
of his thought for all the reasons I just mentioned, is a kind of poetic polemic. It is
poetic because its essence must be its overabundance and gratitude. It is polemic,
because this Act of power is always misused by another power.
Here's a parenthetical point of considerable importance, which we'll discuss:
From this point of view, Nietzsche's style has a conspicuous opponent: theater. In
Nietzsche's eyes, language as gratitude is properly what is opposed to language as
representation. And, whether it's right or wrong, what forms, for Nietzsche, the
language of representation, is theater. One can say that there is a Nietzschean

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polarity on the question of language, which is distributed on the side of polemical

gratitude, where the last resort is the poem, and on the other side, the captive
language of representation and of histrionics, which is entirely given in the form of
theatre. I quote from the Case of Wagner: "But we must not tire of claiming what is
theatre, in the face of Wagnerians: always a subject of art, always something
secondary, swollen and warped." And I quote only one of these statements, of which
there are many. Nietzsche (who began with the Birth of Tragedy by showing that
the origin of tragedy was musical) continued to argue against theatricality and
against the theater. But if this polemic against the theater has multiple meanings,
here we can take it in the sense that for Nietzsche, theater is the ingratitude of
language. It goes as far as the poem is gratitude, and theater is ingratitude-- because
it is language, the poem, and finally, also, music; as far as the poem is also music as
the resource of language, which remains in the theater of representation captives,
captive in a demonstration in exteriority. I leave aside the question of knowing if
Nietzsche really captures the essence of theater. I don't think he does, but the fact
remains that things are well distributed.
. To summarize, we can say that the speech of Nietzsche, where we are no
longer in his act, is the composition of a historicized sophistry and anti-theatrical
poetics. The layout of this combination is quite complex: historicized sophistry is the
fate of the world, the anti-theatrical poetics, the fate of the language. These are the
springs by which Nietzsche comes to dispose of himself after his own creation, the
springs through which he tries to leap from thought and life over himself, the jump
above himself, which is the essence of the antecedence of The Act. All this will
weave our system of questions for what will follow, and I will state it in the form of
four questions which will then be ours.

4 Questions Addressed to Friedrich Nietzsche

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The first question: Is everything arch-political necessarily a sophistry in

its critical media? There, does it have to do with a Nietzschean singularity?
Here, is it a Nietzschean singularity, which is the singularity of his genealogy, of his
typology, of his device in the structure of power, or can we state more generally that
it is the arch-political project, i.e. the project to break world history in two, whatever
its origin or legitimacy, which, in its criticisms, i.e. in the protocol of description that
he makes from the old world; is necessarily sophistry? In taking sophistry in the
sense I just used, it is the evaluation of a statement in the power structure of the
utterance.
2nd question: Is all Grossepolitik necessarily a poetics with its affirmative
resources?
Second generalization that we will consider: is it all about radical change obtained
by means of thought is necessarily a poetic in its affirmative resources? Or, again, is
this just a Nietzschean singularity? One can, if you like, pick one or the other of these
two questions by saying: Are historicized sophistry and anti-theatrical poetry really
a summary of Nietzsche's style, which is also the style of thought itself in its
effectiveness, or is what it means, beyond Nietzsche, but through him, a feature of
any proposed arch-political nature, i.e. of any structure which would assign to
thought the function of a radical break or overriding of an end?
- 3rd question: Is everything arch-political necessarily a hatred of the
theater?
A more singular question, and even more important, that after all, there is a Platonic
hatred of theater. Moreover, as we will see [MISSING WORDS] and in many others,
Nietzsche's anti-Platonism is ambiguous, i.e. there is a latent anti-Platonism in
Nietzsche, where theatre is one of the parsers. But that's not the only one, and
Heidegger grows very far in that direction. There are some Heideggerian statements
which explicitly state that no one has ever been as Platonic as Nietzsche. Without
going to this slightly aggressive provision from Heidegger, we can address the

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question quite accurately of knowing whether any project of thought which he

structures with the idea of an overriding or an end, of a radical change, or an
absolute closure, is necessarily a medium of the hatred of theatre? And what does
this tell us about theater - what will it achieve, there, finally- this unfortunate
theater? It's still striking to see that the controversy against theater is large enough
in the eyes of Nietzsche that he spends much of the year in The Act or in madness,
which are one and the same. The Case of Wagner, and Nietzsche against Wagner are
written, first and foremost, against theater. This is essential, and not at all derived.

- 4th question: What does Arch-politics ask of art?

In a sense, this question summarizes the first three. What features of art found here
are charged, or invested in the element of the arch-political? To illustrate this point,
what is the meaning of statements like this: "At any time that man rejoices, it is
always the same in his joy. He rejoices as an artist, he enjoys himself as far as power,
and lies are power [...] Art and nothing but art. It is the great enabler of life." The
arch-political asks from art to bring it to the point where "At any moment that man
rejoices, it is always the same in his joy, and he rejoices as an artist, he enjoys himself
as far as power," but you see that these two statements are equivalent, and
synonyms, since "lying is power," but the lie is art itself, because art is another name
for lies, and we will return to this point. Finally comes the maxim: "Art and nothing
but art," as "the great mother of possibilities in life." What should art be in order to
support such a requisition? That is the fourth question, which summarizes all the
others. What should art be, so that philosophy or anti-philosophy can state "Art,
nothing but art"? Or we can say: when you know what the word "life" means for
Nietzsche, imagine what he could mean by "the great enabler of life"--not simply
what intensifies it, but what in a sense makes it possible, in consonance with another
biographical text where Nietzsche said that without music, life is not worth living.
So there is a requisition of emphatic art, because there is such a question of knowing

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what there is of art for us to ask him that, which results in our question: What does
arch-politics ask from art? Really the question is: what must art be if it can endure
or bear such questions? These are the 4 main headings under which we will
continue, but I will address them from a distance before covering them again.

Question of Being in 6 Propositions

Because art is given as "the great enabler of life", since the maxim is this
general point that says that "art and nothing but art," since ultimately, these 4
questions have to do with knowing what constitute the world and language, nothing
less than that--for the investigation of anti-philosophy, we will take the most strictly
philosophical basis of the anti-philosophical relation of Nietzsche in the supreme
question par excellence, namely the question of being.
Let's devise these four particular questions from a typological philosophical
investigation, which is typologically philosophical in the manner of Nietzschean
anti-philosophy, namely: What is the relation of anti-philosophy in Nietzsche to the
philosophical question par excellence, that he himself claims to be the ultimate
question-- in particular, the question of Being. I will set forth some propositions.
There is no question of conducting a course on Nietzschean ontology, but there is
some sense in posing some propositions assigned to our own strategy.

a) First proposition: in Nietzsche, the “il y a” is the name for Becoming, or of life.
If I may say so, this first proposition is obviously empirically verbatim: life
or Becoming is initially nothing other than the names of the “il y a”. They must be
taken in the same direction before making them play their roles in their pre-given
connotations or meanings. Prior to biological Being, on one hand, and dynamics, on
the other, life or Becoming are the Nietzschean names of the “il y a”. One thing we
have already said, but which is truly important that one must return in a detailed
fashion, that these names - life, and Becoming-- are only correlates in meaning: these

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are not the names of a meaning, but they are the names of the “il y a”, as such. It is
not a meaning for it is exempt from the assessment: any sense is an assessment, or
the “il y a” as such is inevaluable. From this fact, the “il y a”, named as Becoming or
life, is, therefore, strictly speaking, meaningless. Finally, with respect to any overly
metaphorical interpretations of life or of Becoming, in the nudity of the thing, it
returns to the pure”il y a”.
Let's mark this decisive point of departure with a fragment from the
beginning of 1888, which we will repeatedly utilize, because it is quite central, in my
opinion: "It is necessary the Becoming appears to be justified at any time (or
inevaluable, which returns to the Same)." Let us remember that the full justification,
which is the foundation of the problem of the Dionysian yes, and thus the question
of The Act, and what is the "Becoming that is justified any time," is itself suspended
from this in that Becoming is inevaluable. At this point, what proves to be a capital
point, goes back to what I said earlier, on the yes not being an evaluation. The
Dionysian yes is not a form of sovereignty, of meaning, or any evaluation of
meaning is a power against another power, because the yes to the world as it is, is
the yes to Becoming, i.e. the yes to its justification "at any instant" which, precisely,
simply signifies that Becoming is inevaluable. Consequently, the ability to say yes,
that it has to do with delivering, is the yes to the inevaluable, i.e. not to the yes of
meaning, but the yes of what lacks meaning.
Let us remember that as long as the “il y a” is named under the sign of
Becoming or life, and it is what must be "justified at any time" by the Dionysian yes,
the Nietzschean affirmation is not a form of sovereignty because it is not a form of
meaning, and it is, in reality, a yes to what is exempted from meaning. The
inevaluable is thus exempted from meaning, but also a non-meaning, for the
inevaluable has no value of meaning, nor value of non-meaning, i.e. it no longer has
the value of negativity. Thus inevaluable, the yes to the “il y a” as far as it is under
the name of Becoming, or of life, and such that it remains exempted from the

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opposition of meaning and of non-meaning, whether it is from the view of the

inevaluable or in its own creation that there is meaning, or non-meaning.
I’ll quote Nietzsche, because one must truly reinforce this point without
which everything else crumbles. The same fragment from early 1888 reads:
"Becoming is of equal value at any time. The sum of its value remains equal to itself.
In other words, it has no value because it lacks anything according to what it would
be evaluable, and in relation to what the word "value" would make sense. "All value
in the world" is inevaluable. Consequently, philosophical pessimism is one of
several comical things. " It is a passage where the words become intricate: value,
sense, nonsense, taken in seemingly complex equations.
This text is taken in metaphors of equality and of summations, etc., but they
are only metaphors, which ultimately make this text clear, telling us that: If we
accept Becoming, or life, as the name of the “il y a”, we must pay the following price
that the “il y a” has no value, because any value depends on an assessment and thus
there is a localized”il y a” that is singular, particular, and not the “il y a” as such, for
the word value has no meaning. We note, moreover, that saying, "The word 'value
has no meaning in terms of”il y a”", as any meaning is itself an evaluation, also
means that there is no value of value. The fact that the “il y a” is inevaluable also
returns to say that what the “il y a” has created, specifically, from evaluations, does
not fall within itself, so that there is no value of value, and there are only evaluations,
and no meaning of”il y a”. In particular, there is no destined meaning except what
the total evaluation of the world could do according to his destiny, or a destined
form related to the historical sense of Being. Nietzsche polemicizes tirelessly against
all these intentions or pro-tentions excluded by Nietzsche, from the moment where
the “il y a” is inevaluable, and thus meaningless and where finally the meaning itself
has no meaning, or the value has no value (which is the same thing). Here we find
the statements that have a very important destiny; where we find, mutatis mutandis,
as in Lacan, in the proposition that "there is no meta-language" or "there is no Other

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of the Other, what is in the particular configuration in Nietzsche that will say that
"there is no meaning of meaning." In fact, "God is dead" means first of all that there
is no meaning of meaning, and also that the total world is inevaluable. All these
statements are equivalent.
2nd emphasis: Why is it "philosophical pessimism [which] is among the
comic things"? Well, because it claims that the nonsense in the world is of value. It
evaluates the world as nonsense. But to say that "Philosophical pessimism is a comic
thing," signifies something quite important. Saying that the world is nonsense is
actually an assessment, and therefore assumes the measurable world, while its
inevaluability exempts the world in the opposition of sense and nonsense. So we can
say that pessimism is engaged in this particular comedy, which is that coming closer
to where the “il y a” is exempted from meaning, this exemption results in a meaning,
which is the meaning of nonsense, i.e. the meaning of pessimism. The pessimist is
one who makes sense of the fact that there is no meaning. The pessimist is funny,
because if we believe that there is meaning, it's not too comical to say: I like, or
dislike this meaning, and the pessimism will say that this meaning is unpleasant.
On the contrary, when we say that there is no meaning, continuing to wallow in the
fact that this nonsense does not make sense, one, like Schopenhauer, becomes a
comedic character. Schopenhauer is the scenic exhibition of comic pessimism. Is this
comedy theatrical? This is the obvious question we can ask. The question that we
may perhaps reconsider, in knowing in what sense Nietzsche takes up "comic," is a
very interesting question, since the metaphor of laughter is essential: "The gods are
laughing to death" [Zarathustra] from what we believe of them.
And in a sense, the ascetic reaction formation is almost defined by hostility
to laughter, the condemnation of those who laugh. But at the same time, I must tell
you that when one reads Nietzsche at length, one does not have the impression that
he really laughs, but that really there's a quite violent irony in Nietzsche, while not
a lot of humor about himself or others. The question of knowing what is the comical

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when it is assigned in a unilateral fashion to the form of irony, is a very interesting

question, and includes in its intersection with the question, of what comical theater,
for example, is - humor, irony, laughter, comic repetition, there are affiliations of
positions, where we know quite well that these are positions on Being itself.
Nietzsche was not wrong to say that the question of laughter is a question that is
extremely serious, if I may say. But in Nietzsche, one often has the impression that
the seriousness of the question might very well override the importance that it
attaches to itself though laughter. In any case, it is appropriate to laugh at
philosophical pessimism for all the reasons I've just mentioned.
On the first proposition of Nietzschean ontology, I would like to comment
upon my own account. There is an element of this doctrine with which I feel a deep
enough agreement, which is at its heart a situation of Being in the world, the pure
”il y a”, does itself no sense, i.e. that the question of meaning is impertinent to the
regard of the “il y a”. This Nietzschean statement seems to me quite important and
necessary to share. On one hand, we can say that it is the agreement on the fact that
"God is dead" or the agreement on the fact that there is no meaning of meaning, or
no Other of the Other, but it can also be said like this: we don't give meaning to the
fact that the “il y a” lacks meaning, and thus we will evade the “il y a” in the
opposition of meaning and non-meaning. I believe that the “il y a” has a very
significant Nietzschean verdict and it is there that we are contemporaries. On the
other hand, the conscience that Nietzsche draws upon and which seems quite
sensible to me, is that the Event, the supplement, and not only the “il y a” , but the
emerging, and fate, should never be thought of as a form of conscience, and the
emerging must absolutely be thought as independent from all conscience of
emerging. On Becoming, Nietzsche says so, still in this fragment from the beginning
of 1888: "We must deny a global awareness of Becoming, a God, in order not to relate
to the Eventfrom the point of view of a being who is both sentient and conscious."
In my opinion this statement is quite important, for if it says that if one wishes to

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grasp the Eventas such, i.e. to think of Eventality as the Event, or to refer to emerging
as emergence, then we must not refer to it from the perspective of a conscious being,
i.e. you should never assume a subject. This also means that if there is a subject of
the “il y a”, it will be under the condition of the Event, but vice versa will also be
true. The subject itself will be Event-like, and not structural. It's never necessary to
presuppose a subject. It isn't possible to save the pure Eventality from what arrives,
except to evade the preexistence of a subject. Which would be the conscience or
sentience of this Event. And what Nietzsche adds, quite justifiably, is that in order
not to suppose a subject of the Eventin any Event, one must first deny that Becoming
belongs to the category of meaning, we must neutralize the “il y a” in terms of the
question of meaning or value, i.e. to pose that the “il y a” is inevaluable. You see the
connection that is to my eyes very strong, which is established between a position
regarding the “il y a” or pure Being, which evades the “il y a” with regard to the
question of meaning, and the preservation of Eventality of the Event, i.e. the ability
to relate to emerging as it is. There is a connection between the two: we can both
originate the subject in the Event, and not the reverse, if previously, and only if we
neutralize the question of meaning and Being. This connection that Nietzsche
indicates quite clearly, seems ontologically decisive to me. For the idea of a thought
of Eventality of the Eventis suspended in what Being evades from the question of
meaning.
So not only do I demonstrate my profound agreement, but I see in it a very
great Nietzschean depth, a great Nietzschean modernity. On the contrary, the
question that arises is that of an innocence of names. Assuming that there is such,
why is there life, why Becoming? The question returns despite everything. I
neutralized it as much as possible, but ultimately, in full settlement, we always end
up asking: Why are these words still there, and not others? After all, one could say
that the “il y a”, the Event, the exemption of sense, are things we are not obliged to
name as "life" or "Becoming," for when you say that Becoming has to be justified at

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every moment and it is inevaluable, one could say that its dimension of Becoming is
henceforth crossed out, because: what does it become, if the assessment is always
the same, precisely as far as it evaluates the inevaluable? So why Becoming, if
ultimately, every moment is equivalent to any other - because as far as it is the
instant of an”il y a”, is it inevaluable? However, you can only introduce the
difference in the evaluation. If the “il y a” is inevaluable, strictly speaking, it does
not become, because whatever is thought from Becoming, requires thinking of the
difference. And if any difference is a differential assessment, then the “il y a” as far
as it is inevaluable, strictly speaking, does not become. So you may say: yes, it's such
that Becoming does not become. But then, how do we stabilize the fact that
Nietzsche will still appoint life and Becoming as the inevaluable”il y a”? In other
words, name that life and Becoming-- was that not in fact, sly, an evaluation? Even
at the point of the inevaluable, saying that one should name this inevaluable "life"
is, in reality, an evaluation i.e. evaluated through latent categories, which will finally
be living against the inert, creation against the Same, diversity against unity, etc. ...
After all, calling the “il y a” "life" and "Becoming" is perhaps a differential
assessment, that is altogether hidden. This is the process that could be conducted on
this point in Nietzsche.
To be fair, I think Nietzsche is well aware of this, and that's what is precisely
corrected by the doctrine of Eternal Return. It is precisely this potential evaluation
of the words "life" and "Becoming, which are found to switch back in their neutrality,
by the doctrine of Eternal Return, which will in effect, tell us that Becoming does not
become. The doctrine of Eternal Return will, in fact, tell us that what is affirmed is
also reaffirmed, or that the “il y a” can both be said to come, or come back. This
superposition of coming and return, of the turn and return, is finally what retains
the “il y a” in the inevaluable, because the “il y a” will remain inevaluable, including
under the names of life and of Becoming, as soon as under the name of thought of
the Eternal Return, one will know that the affirmation of the “il y a” is also a

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reaffirmation, and that what has become is also the Same or what will return. We
know that the word life, as far as the ontological essential name, which designates
both the inevaluable depth of the plurality of evaluations: the world, and also, under
the law of the Eternal Return, the principle of the Same. This is the inevaluable depth
of moving assessments, but it is also the principle of the Same, or the principle of the
identity of the inevaluable. From this point of view, I do not think I will not develop
it at length, because it is very complex - that Heidegger is right to say that in
Nietzsche, the will to power is the name of a state of being, and that the Eternal
Return is the name of Being, for it is indeed the massive interpretative schema of
Heidegger, with regard to Nietzsche. The investigation is that, on one hand, there is
a tension, often considered an absolute paradox in Nietzsche, where the will to
power appears as a system of dynamic intensifications, and on the other hand, an
Eternal Return, which seems to be a principle of identity. Heidegger rightly remarks
that the problem is not a reconciliation, but that the registrations are different. What
is thought as the will to power is a state of being as such, while what the thought or
attempts to be under the Eternal Return is to be, in this sense, the Eternal Return as
forgotten or erased Being, where a manifested state of Being will be named the will
to power. Heidegger's dialectic is more sophisticated, but the investigation is part of
it. I myself would not say this. I would say the Eternal Return and will to power, if
one refuses this word, which in my view, is not so important that one speaks of it in
Nietzsche, finally, whatever it takes. But let's say, concerning the Eternal Return and
evaluations, I would prefer the Eternal Return and a multiplicity of evaluations
which are names under which an exemption of the meaning of life balances or
stands. The Eternal Return and plurality of evaluations, or intensifications,
constitute a system of double namings, which ultimately hold that life is exempted
from the question of meaning, for to say that, we must, really correct what life
possesses from dynamic intensifications or of plurality underlying the Eternal
Return, which indicates the inevaluable as a form of the Same. We must therefore

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speak at once of the turn, and Eternal Return, or the coming and the return, and is
that which constitutes the Nietzschean thought of Being, not in a distribution
between thought and Being, but rather having to do with the device of the will to
power and of the Eternal Return, which alone can constitute the thought of Being,
which for Nietzsche is his removal from the question of meaning, and inevaluable
Being.
That is the real question with Heidegger, for with Heidegger, at the last
resort, Being is fated to be affected or affectable by meaning: there is a fated meaning
of Being, whether it was meaning ruled or governed by the forgetting of this
meaning. But for Nietzsche, there is none of it. It is a central point. And, basically,
the seemingly paradoxical balance between Eternal Return of the Same, on one
hand, and the metaphor of vital intensification, on the other, and the antagonistic or
polemical plurality of evaluations, is clarified if we see that it is only the double
naming whereby the exemption in the sense of vital origin-icity tries to be
maintained in its equilibrium. One could also say that Nietzsche's problem is that
"life" is a name for the circularity of the same and the Other, i.e. that the “il y a” is
not decidable on the question of knowing this or that. One can say that the Eternal
Return on the side of the same, the will to power on the side of the Other, is true
because the will to power is embodied in the many types that are always connected
to each other. But in the end, what matters is that the inevaluable, at bottom, is
neither the same nor different, and it is indeterminable which one it is.

So this is the direction toward which the Heraclitean depth leans in

Nietzsche, because what is essential in its relation, which is also explicit, in
Heraclitus, is precisely that the thought of Being in Heraclitus does some of the same
things through the recognition of a exemption of meaningful configurations of the
depth itself - which in Heraclitus is represented by the metaphor of fire. However,
mutatis mutandis, what Heraclitus calls the fire is quite close to what Nietzsche calls

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life, if you take his device in its ontological nakedness. For example, Heraclitus, in
Fragment 30, states: "This world, all the same, fashioned by no God, no man, but
eternally it was, it is, and will always be living fire" (Badiou translation, translated
by Kim). This fragment is absolutely Nietzschean, and Nietzsche recognizes that
Heraclitus and the Sophists are its essential Greek reference. The “il y a” is in the
balance of identity and alterity (Otherness), such that this balance is undecidable,
because in the end, in order to decide, we'd need some sense, and there is none of it.
It is properly this balance, which Nietzsche calls "life," and Heraclitus "fire." That is
the first proposition concerning Nietzschean ontology.

b) Second proposition: Being is a fictitious designation: We must not name

the “il y a”.
We have seen that under very complicated conditions, that we must name
the “il y a” as "Becoming" or "life", but it is not appropriate to name it thus. One
could almost say that Being is a bad name for Being. Or even that the “il y a” does
not have to be presented in the form of Being. Here we enter the typology because
Nietzsche's thesis is that naming the “il y a” Being or a state of being, is an
evaluation. Earlier, I asked the question: to what extent is life not an evaluation?
Answer: one only does that by introducing, at the least, the Eternal Return. By
contra, it is sure that for Nietzsche, naming the “il y a” a state of being or Being, is a
reactive evaluation. It begs the question (if it doesn't beg naming Being the “il y a”),
and this is because we know who is interested in naming it as well. Who? Not good
people! It begs the question of who, genealogically, has an interest in naming Being
or a state of being the pure power of”il y a”. Of course, when Nietzsche states: one
must not name Being the “il y a”, we also understand that it is no longer required to
name Non-Being: if Being is a bad name, non-Being is also a bad name for the “il y
a”. You must very well understand this logic of names. Whenever a name is
discredited, the contradictory name that it is also, it is in such a sense that Nietzsche's

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thought is not dialectic. It never has to do with greeting a name with the
contradictory naming. As soon as you say that Being is a bad name, because,
ultimately, it is a name that supports the interests of reactive power, you may also
say that naming it non-Being is no longer good, either. So we have to name it
something other than the coupling of Being and non-Being, which is also quite
Heraclitean. Fragment 49a reads: "We are and are not" (translated by Badiou,
rendered by Kim). Saying, "We are and we are not" means in any case, that the
question is not there. Saying that "We are and we are not," Heraclitus states that
Being or non-Being is in no manner the relevant name of the question, since in light
of the “il y a”, one can say all the better: "We are and we are not," a statement which,
in some sense, leaves the question of the “il y a” in nominal suspense. This is exactly
the position of Nietzsche.
A fragment from early 1888 reads, "In general, one must admit being
nothing, because then Becoming loses its value [which, in light of all that has been
said, is an extraordinarily twisted phrase]. Consequently, it remains for us to ask
how the illusion of being was born." In other words, if we call the “il y a” state of
being, it loses its value to Becoming. There, everyone jumps- you should all jump,
of course, in saying that: one will say that Becoming is inevaluable. But this is what
Nietzsche means, i.e. that if one names the “il y a”, one loses this particular value to
Becoming, which is precisely inevaluable, i.e. when we make an assessment. We
should understand the sentence as thus: Whoever appoints a state of being to”il y
a”, who admits the “il y a” of a state of being, there is something here or there that
exempts Becoming from the fact that it is inevaluable. He enters the particular form
of the evaluation, which is why Nietzsche connects immediately-otherwise we
would not understand why he continues thus: "Consequently, it remains to ask how
the illusion of being has been born." And the passage is perfectly consistent if
understood this way: "Whoever calls the “il y a” from the name of Being conducts an

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evaluation, and one has thus the right to ask who evaluates. So what is the point of the
ontological evaluation of the “il y a”."
One can also say, that in Twilight of the Idols: "Being is a drama devoid of
sense." While this is true it is also an evaluation-- an assessment about life. And like
all drama, we must immediately ask what is name of the will that drives it. As soon
as one enters a fictitious naming, it is an evaluation, where this type should be
sought. However, a key point is that the diagnosis of Nietzsche is that the type to
want to be invested in calling or being he is there a type of reactive want, i.e. it is to
oppose yes to Becoming, i.e. the yes to no meaning, or withdrawal of meaning. You
see the trickery: at the start, philosophy which has chosen Parmenides - a name
opposed to Heraclitus – calls Being the “il y a”, which is in no way engaged in an
innocent operation. It has conducted an evaluation, it has engaged the “il y a” in the
evaluation. However, the “il y a” is inevaluable, and consequently this evaluation is
concerned, and relates to a certain type: the Parmenidean philosopher is originally
a guy who assigns the name of Being on the “il y a”, and the will which is invested
there is a reactive desire, because giving the “il y a” the name of Being, and engaging
in the deception of Being and of non-Being is a reactive evaluation, i.e. an evaluation
which prohibits the Dionysian yes from being fulfilled, since the "yes" assumes that
Becoming is inevaluable.
Thus if we call ontology the fact of giving the name of Being to”il y a”,
ontology is a reactive drama, an assumption made originally by philosophy against
the Dionysian Yes, i.e. against the yes to the inevaluable, the yes to what does not
make sense, or, as Nietzsche says, in a remarkable sentence: "This hypothesis is a
source of all the calumnies against the world." This is the form of the second
proposition that elucidates the first. If we call the “il y a” “Becoming” or “life,” one
at least preserves, under complex conditions, the possibility of the Dionysian yes.
Whereas if we give the name of Being to”il y a”, and consequently engage in
dialectical trickery of Being and of non-Being, one has already evaluated one has

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fictitiously claimed to assess the inevitable. And one has thus authorized-- and
philosophy is this authorization-- "all the calumnies with regard to the world."
Calumny simply taken as the form of reserving the right to evaluate something not
as Being from the moment you've assessed the “il y a” in terms of being. Therefore,
you are in the matrix "of all the calumnies against the world," which is always to say
that this is never so, and really should not be, and it is unfortunate that it is so, etc...
And this is the logic of the phenomenon against essence, of appearance against the
truth, etc... Thus the matrix of all the slanders to the world, i.e. the impossibility or
prohibition placed upon the Dionysian yes to the full world as it is, is ultimately
rooted in the philosophical first appointment, which has chosen to annex the “il y
a” in the name of Being. So then -I'll leave it there for now - I think we will touch
upon a constituent element of what I will later call anti-philosophy, in its generic
sense.
Anti-philosophy always has to do with which statement philosophy is
responsible for from the depreciation of “il y a”. That the “il y a” was evaluated
philosophically such that its depreciation is now possible. Anti-philosophy this
position on philosophy, which made philosophy responsible for the overall system
of depreciation and consequently also the impossibility of affirmative, the
affirmative in the radical sense, Nietzsche will speak of the Dionysian yes. Or once
again, that philosophy is primarily responsible due to the difficulty of the “yes.” You
can find this crucial anti-philosophical matrix in all the major anti-philosophers. For
example, Lacan states that ontology ought to be called hauntology, a haunting of the
home.
Yet Nietzsche does not say anything different from Lacan on this particular
point, namely that there is a haunting in the fact that philosophy has named Being
the “il y a”, that this operation originally engaging in philosophy is what, in
departing from it, makes it difficult today, for us to say yes to the world. But if I
name Pascal as another notorious anti-philosopher to whom Nietzschean never

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ceases to send friendly greetings, he does not say anything else. Pascal said that
ultimately the philosophy obfuscates the yes to God and whom, encumbers a "God
of the philosophers and scholars," forbids us from seeing that the whole problem is
in saying yes to “the God of Isaac and Jacob.” And that is an anti-philosophical nodal
disposition. There we are. Well, we'll leave it here!

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Fifth Course - The State, The New Idol

In order to begin tonight’s meeting, I would like to return just briefly to a
small question I addressed last time, the point regarding the arch-political
designation I have adopted to describe the Nietzschean act. About this qualification,
you know that the content is the announcement of a radical rupture in the history of
the world. I wondered in what sense it has failed, at least in the first approximation,
to occupy politics and that this is meant when we say that politics via the
Nietzschean gesture is a gesture that is arch-political.
I remember the exact nature of the question: Basically it is the type of
conjunction or disjunction posited between politics and the State. Either politics is
conceived as structured by the question of the State or authority, or it is ordered by
another principle, which requires a distance from the statist principle or from
sovereignty. I told you that we can discern a hesitation in Nietzsche on this point,
or, in any case, a complexity of Nietzsche, as one side is essential, with him: what he
calls a doctrine of the sovereignty of formation and that the question of dominance
is a central question in Nietzsche's genealogy, so that from that angle, you would
think that Nietzsche inclined towards a connection between political sovereignty
and, therefore, to state metaphorically, a statist vision of politics. But, on the other
hand, there was a determined distance taken with respect to the State, and the thesis
also dealing with the service of the State, that that knowledge without rule or order
of the state are reactive dispositions. So you could say that one finds, again, in
Nietzsche, the whole complexity of the meaning of the word politics, taken or torn
between its assignment to the question of sovereignty, and its assignment to the
question of emancipation. On this point, I have, as is my rule here, and I believe I
said why, based itself on the final Nietzschean texts of 1888, and even the so-called
notes of madness, since I maintain that this is the place to go in Nietzsche. However,
on reflection, I think we cannot let go of what, after all, is the most explicit text on

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the question of the State, namely the singing of the first part of Thus Spoke
Zarathustra: from the New Idol. I will thus complete what had been told from a review
of this song.
The new idol is precisely the State. When Zarathustra began to argue against
the new idol, and to set forth the imperative, "Turn away from the new idol" it
expressly talks about the State, and this text of the new idol , is a text of a violent
anti-statism, which could allow us for a long time to talk about Nietzschean
anarchism. In this sense, and despite the doctrine of formations of sovereignty, a
Nietzschean anarchism connected to violence and anti-State imprecation. That's
where we found the formula has become almost commonplace, as found early in the
text: "The State is the coldest of cold monsters," a formula that General de Gaulle liked
to quote - and many others, a great number of them. Certainly coldness and
monstrosity are, in the Nietzschean metaphor, grave imputations. From what we
can ask what are the arguments in the text of Nietzsche on the State, we can emerge
from this metaphorical imprecation against the coldest of cold monsters, as decisive
insights into the relation of Nietzsche to the question of the State, and from there,
clarify the meaning of politics in the sense of arch-politics. I would like to take a few,
and thus make readable the text, which lie all of Zarathustra's texts, are by
themselves an enigmatic part.
a) 1st Thesis: Disjunction Between People and the State
The first essential thesis is that the State, in Nietzsche's eyes, cannot claim to be a
follower of the people. This is a thesis of disjunction between what is designated by
the people and of what the State can legitimately avail itself to. Specifically, one
could say that there is no possible state representation of a people. The State can't
present itself as a figuration of the people, and consequently is, indeed the theme
underlying the whole text. The State is still strictly a de-figuration of the people.
There is an essential disfiguring element in the State. In this sense, the State is not a
figure where the people can be stated. Obviously, this can be taken in many senses,

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but it is also, incidentally, a criticism of any representative theory of the State: the
State is never justified in being declared representative in the sense that it would be
a figuration that is representative of the people. The fundamental reasons that
Nietzsche puts forward to support this essential thesis that the state is never a
possible representation of a people are the following to Nietzsche's eyes:
- A people is always a creation. This is the term he uses. A people is precisely not a
state in the basic sense of the word: it is not a state of affairs, but a creation, and
therefore, it is a dimension of invention that names the people and which is lost or
obliterated in the statist figure. All people, Nietzsche will say, fall under what was
proposed to them in the self-invention of oneself as faith and as love. Faith and love.
"These are creators who have formed people and who have hung faith and love over
the people: this is how they have served life." The two words that designate the
people as creation. From this point of view, it is important to signal it, as will be seen
by contraposition to the State, which is that a people is always a disinterested
creation, i.e. a creation that goes for itself. Therefore: a people must be taken in the
dimension of creating and inventing. Energy in which this invention is deployed
under faith and love. And it is appropriate for itself or an evaluation of oneself, not
structured by anything other than itself.
- By against a State, Nietzsche will say, it's the order of the trap. The State is a trap to
the crowd. And what will be opposed from the point of view of the maxim of the
State in faith and love, is as Nietzsche will state, the sword and interest. "But they
are destructive, those who set traps in large numbers and who call this a State. They
hang over them a sword and a hundred appetites. "The proposition in creation of a
people of a type of faith and love is in affirmation of self, while the State is a "trap to
the crowd," thus tense in this creation itself, where propositions are of the structure
of the sword, and thus the structure of violence, and the expansion of interest: a
capture of interest. If we recapitulate, we can say: a people is a disinterested creation,
while a State is a capture of interest; that's for the axial thesis.

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b) Second thesis: Death of God, Death of the State

The second thesis is genealogical: it asks why the State exists. Why this trap set for
popular creation in its disinterested form, which submits or filters it into the network
of interests? In short, why does the State arrive, however? What is the power that
sustains it, even if it is a reactive power?
Nietzsche will respond - and in this sense he makes it a modern sense: it is indeed
the modern State - the State that profits from its victory the victory over the gods,
which is why he names it the new idol. The state is the idol of replacement, in the
element or the horizon of the death of God. And the energy it captures is this tired
energy, already partially divested or residual, compared to what has been
committed against the fighting or the theme of God: "You guess the state winners of
the God of old. You are tired of the struggle, and now your weariness began serving
the new idol. "So: the modern state as a new idol, i.e. as an evaluation, i.e., as
subjectivity, it is not simply the construction or state apparatus, because what
interests Nietzsche is why would he have a rally or idolatry of the state? Why was
there submission to the State? So it's the State as subjectivity or as a wish that
interests him. Well, the key to this question is that the defeated will, which the State
draws its power from the idol, is that weariness which has won minds beyond or
after the victory over the God of old. So it must be understood that the maxim "God
is dead", if we take the point of view of the will that sustains it, i.e. the fight which
authorized or made it possible, is the very thing which the State takes the
opportunity of its trap. The State is built on the fatigue of anti-religious struggle, i.e.
on the Eventof the death of God or in its form of weariness. Basically, the State is
what comes after every victory and fatigue following any victory: "The State you can
presume vanquishers of God of the past" and it is you who have built the reactive
authority. As a result, the maxim "God is dead" will be brought to its affirmative
power so that we can indeed also say "the State is dead." The possibility of the

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statement "The state is dead" is the only one to complete, other than in a recovered,
and rebuilt weariness, the maxim "God is dead." This means that the need for
imprecation against the State is closely pegged to the Nietzschean logic of the
question of the death of God, where one can say that the State captures residual
energy.
c) Third Thesis: the State is Corruption
Third thesis - which after all may interest us today (January ‘93) - the State is
inherently corrupt. Corruption must be taken in the sense that the State is
intrinsically corruption, so to speak, and is essentially superfluous. You see how far
we are in the Nietzschean device in any functionalist vision of the State. From the
point of view of the subjective capturing by the State, there is an essential
superfluity, or in my jargon (which on this point intersects with Nietzsche's
intuition) that the state is as an outgrowth. Given any situation, the current situation
is still in a form of outgrowth. Basically, the Nietzschean idea of the superfluous
character of the State is quasi-ontological, designating that the State is, in light of the
affirmative position, always in a parasitic situation or is an outgrowth. This is
manifested or has its phenomenon in its essentially corrupt character, which simply
means that it is corruption from its affirmative force: "[All these extras] want access
to the throne: it is their madness - as if happiness was on the throne! Often it's the
mud upon the throne - and often it is the throne that is planted in the mud." Given
what the Nietzschean imperative will be, I quote, "Avoid falling into idolatry of the
superfluous." The muddy nature of State authority is the phenomenon of its excess
or superfluity. All this returning, ultimately, in the first line, in the fact that the
modern State is building on the capture of residual energy involved in the death of
God, and ultimately, that in any case, the State has no legitimacy to stand as a
representation of the will of a people.

d) Fourth thesis: the State changes art, science and philosophy into a

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cultural magma.
"Thus you see what is superfluous! They steal the works of the inventors and
the treasures of the wise: they call their spoils civilization - and everything becomes
their illness and setbacks!" There is in Nietzsche a general critique of culture in a
definition, after all implied, extremely interesting from culture, which is that culture
is the art (let's take it as paradigm, but it is also science , philosophy, wisdom) seized
by the State. But beware: culture is art seized by the state, understand the "always"
in subjectivity. This does not mean the art of the State, which also exists, but it is
secondary. It means the art practiced or apprehended in subjectivity from the point
of the New Idol, i.e. in subjective relation and tired desiring of the new idol, i.e. the
State.
From this point of view, the cultural - it is a mathematical proportion - is
opposed the artistic, but, in truth, to the scientific, philosophical. The cultural is
opposed to the artistic, just as, mutatis mutandis, the State is opposed to the people.
There is an equal proportion. Disjunction, the "non-relation which is presented
however as a relation between people and the State, in its analogue in its non-
relation which is presented as relation between art and culture: "Culture" is Bildung,
i.e. in the sense of cultivating cultural formation. I quote: "I see the superfluous! They
steal the works from inventors and the treasures of the wise: this robbery is what
they call their culture." This superfluity is the name Nietzsche attaches to the States
or to the statesmen. If we try to understand these things in the dimension of the will
or subjectivity, we say that culture refers, again, to the tired form of the state. Every
culture is fatigued, because fatigue only makes State appropriation subjectively
possible. Let us always remember that point. Originally, it is the general state
appropriation of residual energy invested in the death of God, but there is
affirmative will in art, this is its point of fatigue that it lets fly, steal, expose, where
it can have a robbery that is precisely and properly what constitutes the cultural
element. Note that, from this point of view, every State in the eyes of Nietzsche, is

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cultural, and conversely, every culture is statist. There is an essential correlation

between the figure of the State as a form of the new idol for a tired wanting, and
culture.
e) Fifth thesis: Humanity is always beyond the State. Finally, the fifth
thesis, which is the summation of all the others: Humanity is always beyond the
State. I give you the essential text, which also ends the song of the new idol: "Where
in the end of the State begins the man who is not superfluous. Where does the State
end, that song of necessity, the unique melody, which is irreplaceable, begins?
Where does the State end - don't you notice the rainbow and the bridges leading to
the Superhuman (Übermensch)?" What we must remember in this central passage
is a grand density that must be connected to the theme of Superhuman. Basically,
the text says: What is the Superhuman? This theme, permit me to say, of Nietzsche's
opinion, eh well Superhuman is a person, of course, but as an irreplaceable
affirmation. Superhuman is the human fit to be an invaluable affirmation. There
again, we have a logic that we have often deployed. No more than when one breaks
in two world histories, one will not succeed a good sovereignty with a bad one, and
no less the passage of the man to the Superhuman is the transition from one types
to another in the sense of a substitution. In reality, the Superhuman is the affirmation
of the human as "a unique melody, irreplaceable." And it is true that Nietzsche's
arch-political gesture announces the Superhuman, but precisely this should be taken
in the general logic of the arch-political gesture, which is the possibility of the yes.
The Superhuman is the man in capacity of the irreplaceable yes to himself. Good.
But what the text tells us is that the Superhuman is where the State ultimately ends.
"Where does the state end- don’t you see the rainbow and the bridges leading to the
Superhuman?"
1st remark: the idea of a State of the Superman is an absurd idea for
Nietzsche. There is especially no possible statist configuration of the Superhuman.
The text is absolutely clear: the condition of the Superhuman is to be where the State

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ends. The figure of the Superhuman is precisely what cannot exist anywhere else,
except under the State. It stands irreconcilably where the state ends and cannot be
held elsewhere, particularly in some figure whether the state. This first remark is
essential without going into the quibbles of the genealogical relation between
Nietzsche and Nazism, taken in their extensions, in any case, where there is an
absolutely certain point that it is really absurd, unthinkable in the eyes Nietzsche,
that there is a statist figure of the Superhuman. From what we can perhaps decide,
and that's where I was coming from, slicing or elucidating a little differently the
oscillation where I left off today, the oscillation between politics as genealogy of
sovereignty on one hand, and politics as irreducibly anti-statist, on the other, how
the political in Nietzsche can happen to hold two sets, i.e. to keep a rule
configurations of sovereignty as well as a distance, which you see is absolutely
radical in the very figure of the State.
One could say that what is at stake in the arch-political gesture, i.e. what
Nietzsche as a proper name offers to the century, is the idea of the human as the
formation of non-statist sovereignty. Formation of sovereignty because it is an order
of affirmation, so it is the height of The Active force, and thus is man himself as a
formation of sovereignty. Not a formation of sovereignty over man and over life,
and thus a formation of sovereignty over man and life, and thus a reactive formation
of sovereignty, but man himself as formation of a reactive sovereignty; man himself
as formation of non-statist sovereignty with the idea that man cannot be a formation
of sovereignty under the rule of the state - it's where the State ends, that this is
possible.
The name of the human as formation of non-State sovereignty is the
Superhuman, which intersects with the man in the capacity to say yes, but more
specifically the ability of man to say yes to himself, implying what is fully terminated
as the new idol, namely the State. Without dwelling upon this, I would just say that
man as formation of non-state sovereignty in the 19th century bears another name,

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which was the name of communism. In its generic sense - not in its contemporary
political sense - communism was originally designated the man as formation of
collective non-state sovereignty. Formation of sovereignty over nature, over needs,
and thus regulation of sovereignty from non-statist necessity. So we would say that
the Superhuman in Nietzsche names something- which in a completely different
device, a fully heterogeneous device -was named communism in its generic sense.
And the test of this century under a double naming, in truth, was to ask the question:
can there be a depth of non-state sovereignty? Can the human be defined as the
ability to himself be a formation of non-statist sovereignty? Can the human perhaps
be someone who de-statizes his own sovereignty? and this question has had the
name of communism, and also the name of the Superhuman. And on one other
hand, the 20th century was the test of these two names through a question, which is
ultimately more important than any empirical question, and that is the following
question: can we order the essence of human reality in the theme of a formation of
non-statist sovereignty? I just wanted to recall that this was undoubtedly the
purpose of Nietzsche. From this point of view it is also a central purpose of the entire
19th century, which is: "Can there be a generic human essence that can be designated
as a formation of sovereignty exempted from the figure the state?" That's to re-
eludicate the point of arch-politics, where one could perhaps say that in general - we
will revisit this point- that any arch-politics (which was called revolution) is a
gesture that puts into play the possibility of the human as the formation of a non-
statist sovereignty. I now return to the main course of events.

Nietzsche's Ontology in 6 Propositions

We were questioning the anti-philosophical determination of Nietzsche and the 4
main questions that we addressed to him:
- Are all arch-politics necessarily a sophistry in its media of criticism?
-Does any arch-political project necessarily poetic in its affirmative

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resources?
- Is everything arch-political necessarily a hatred of the theater?
- What does the arch-political ask of art?

We begin at the manner where he himself poses what is traditionally the organic
question of philosophy, i.e. the question of Being. We will interrogate ourselves with
all the required quotation marks about Nietzschean “ontology.” Finally, what is the
doctrine of the depth, or the absence of depth, or of a presentation in general, which
is in the work of the Nietzschean text? I have mentioned that I will utter them under
six propositions, and we will have examined the first two. I repeat them quite briefly.
a) The first proposition is that for Nietzsche, the “il y a”, what there is-
let’s call it Being in its absolute indeterminacy- the “il y a” has as its name,
Becoming or life. Becoming, life—it is, I repeat, a question of method - must be taken
as nothing other than the names of the “il y a”, whatever their nature or context,
otherwise. They must be taken first in immanence in Nietzsche, as the names
Nietzsche chooses to designate the “il y a”. We had fully developed the fact that
these names do not immediately correlate in meaning, i.e. that they are not defined
donors of meaning to the “il y a”, since all meaning is an evaluation, and life as far
as it is a name of the “il y a” is explicitly posed as inevaluable. If we built it in
Heideggerian terms, it looks exactly like this: a state of being in totality is
meaningless. A state of being in totality is properly what Nietzsche names the total
life. Therefore, a state of being in totality has no meaning where in the Nietzschean
lexicon, life is inevaluable. You see that the first proposition begins to build in a
relatively complex way on the “il y a” which remains completely undetermined: the
names of the “il y a”: Becoming or life, and the question of meaning.
b) Second proposition, negative, is: Being is a bad designation for the “il y a”.
Again, Nietzsche will build the legitimacy of the naming of the “il y a” by life or
Becoming, among other things, by the process in legitimacy for other namings. He

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would instruct the process in illegitimacy of the naming of the “il y a” in the form of
Being or beings. The couple itself is fired here: the “il y a” does not have to be
presented in the form of Being or beings. Being is a dramatic description: "Being is
a drama devoid of meaning," is mentioned in Twilight of the Idols, but what is
important is that once you identify a dramatic or inadequate designation, one has to
wonder - such is the great Nietzschean procedure - who has an interest in this
naming? Who has an interest in naming Being or a being the power of the “il y a”?
This point is made in its historical singularity. It turns out that since Parmenides, a
number of people have appointed Being or a state of being the power of the “il y a”
and not Becoming or life. We then ask what purpose they pursued, and what was
their interest in this affair. Nietzsche will conclude with a reactive interest, i.e. that
any designation of the “il y a” under the name of Being is a ban on the yes in the “il
y a” itself, i.e. in Nietzsche's terms, a ban on Becoming and life. But basically, it is a
ban on the yes to the “il y a”. Thus: naming Being or a state of being has no
innocence, but consists in engaging in philosophical machinery, machinery that will
dominate the philosophical space, which is a machine of prohibition, of obliteration
or the incapacity concerning the yes to the “il y a”, which is actually a yes to
Becoming, yes to life. And I remind you the formula among others by Nietzsche:
"This hypothesis of a state of being is the source of all the calumnies against the
world." I noticed, in passing, that there we entered more accurate characterizations
of anti-philosophy, as anti-philosophy is going to be a category that we will submit
to in the test of our survey on Nietzsche. One can say that what declares anti-
philosophy is that philosophy ensures its control by its ontological depreciation of
the phenomenon of the “il y a”, and this is initially already contained in the selection
of words Being and a state of being. So there is a Parmenidean depreciation of the
power of the “il y a” in its nominal assignment in Being. Here, we have a process
intrinsic to the ontological program as such. The difference from Heidegger is that
this critical depreciation there was involved from Parmenides, and therefore there

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is, properly speaking, no innocent form of pre-Socratics in Nietzsche. It's not true
that in the pre-Socratics taken together, there was an authentic thought of Being that
would have been forgotten or obliterated. From Parmenides, the battle between
philosophy and anti-philosophy is engaged: there is knowledge, so to speak, from
philosophy and anti-philosophy: the philosopher is Parmenides, anti-philosopher is
Heraclitus. The coupling of Parmenides and Heraclitus is for Nietzsche the original
coupling of philosophy and anti-philosophy, which is given in its inaugural form in
the choice of names, in the very act of its naming. Name the “il y a” under the sign
of being committed since Parmenides philosophy as derogatory control of power of
the “il y a”. On the contrary, naming the “il y a” in its form of Becoming, as
Heraclitus does, is preserving the possibility of the yes, preserving the possibility of
the Dionysian affirmation.
c) Third proposition: Logic is dependent on the reactive doctrine of Being.
We are entering the area of what might be called Nietzschean anti-epistemology. In
the eyes of Nietzsche, logic, properly speaking, is dependent on the naming of the
“il y a” under the sign of Being. From this point of view, logic is a philosophical
creation: the option which consists of originally mutilating the power of the “il y a”
in naming it Being or a being is what founds the space of possibility of logic. The
logic is created by the first reactive option of philosophical control that enslaves the
power of the “il y a” to ontological naming. I quote a fragment from Fall 1887. "Logic
(such as geometry and arithmetic) is valid only for dramatic truths that we have
created. Logic is the attempt to understand the real world according to an order of
Being posed by us." The text is very explicit.

2 Remarks:
- 1st remark: Logic is dependent on the order of Being. There is no logic
except under the onto-logical option itself. In short, one could say that all logic is
Parmenidean, i.e. it assumes or supports the naming of the “il y a” as Being. The

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logic simply seeks to capture in the real world this order of Being that we have posed
in the essentially reactive gesture. A consequence that we can take from this point,
is that obviously it is not possible to use logic, in such a sense that one takes it, for
The Act or the arch-political Nietzschean gesture. Logic is originally corrupted by
the ontological option. It is therefore disqualified as a remedy for the anti-
philosophical Nietzschean act. I say this because the recurring theme of Nietzschean
irrationalism is a very complex question. In fact, we have many opportunities to see
the position of Nietzsche that is not situated between reason and irrationalism There
are also texts that exalt, for example, the classical rationalist coldness in Nietzsche.
The question is not there. The central question is: Is logic such that we inherit it in
its historical device, appropriable to the philosophical or anti-Philosophical Act, in
the Nietzschean act? What Nietzsche will say is that there is an essential
inappropriateness, which has nothing to do with the debate on rationality or non-
rationality, but is tied to the condition of the possibility of logic, i.e. its genealogy:
What is at stake is the ontological option underlying all logic. Ontological option
which may be summarized under the species of the naming of the “il y a” in the
form of Being. From the view where logic is a calculation of this order, logic is an
ontological calculation. Logic is never an ontological calculation. So if the goal is to
reclaim the affirmative, i.e. the possibility of man as formation of non-state
sovereignty, it cannot be done, and this is not even a question of evaluation, but of
necessity, making it in the element of logic. One will thus treat logic as what it is, i.e.
not at all a medium or instrument of the arch-political act, which it cannot be, but as
a pure and simple theory of signs or calculation, adequate for the dramatic thesis of
Being or a state of being. Thus we will both define, circumscribe and demonstrate
the rationale. After all, we will say yes to everything that there is, and we will also
say yes to logic. So irrationality should not be taken in the sense of a name qualifying
logic itself, because one will say yes from another point than itself, naturally. One
will say this yes that is not allowed, i.e. that one will say to him the yes as it is a

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theory adequate to calculate the order of Being. In Twilight of the Idols, it says very
clearly: "A theory of signs as logic and this applied logic which is mathematics: in
reality it is never present, not even as a problem." This is the logic that makes the
reality, i.e. the “il y a” is out of the state that is presented there, even as a problem,
for it is in reality a calculation of a preformed ontology already decided at the level
of the primary names that are Being and a state of being, names distributed to the
“il y a”. Finally, Nietzsche position on the question of logic is that logic has no reason
of Being than the theory of adequate signs in the dramatic theory of a state of being,
than in this register where one must understand that in reality, i.e. the “il y a” itself
is never present in the title of a problem, and that consequently, logic and be
anything but an adequate means of the arch-political act, which does not mean that
it is nothing, or even that it is not useful, recognizable, even essential, in the field or
in its own domain, namely the theory of signs under the prescription of the
ontological original choice in favor of Being. That's the first point.
2nd remark: the second point I want to make, apparently more technical, but
very important in my opinion, is that Nietzsche consistently identifies logic and
mathematics.
The quoted texts say this: "Logic (such as geometry and arithmetic)" i.e. the
example of what is here called logic is directly mathematics: geometry and
arithmetic. And "a theory of signs as logic and this applied logic, which are
mathematics ..." marks a difference between the two, but ultimately, this is all in the
same bag: there is an essential identification of logic and mathematics.
Consequently, for Nietzsche, mathematics itself is actually an ontological
calculation. By this we mean a calculation of the ontological option of a Parmenidean
type, i.e. obliteration of the “il y a” under the name of Being. I think it is there in this
constraint of identification, so to speak, of logic and mathematics, a whole chain of
inferences that characterizes the anti-philosophical subjectivity in general, and thus
beyond Nietzsche. I unfold it as follows:

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1st- The Anti-philosophical subjectivity always envelopes a depreciation of logic.

I stress the point that this depreciation is relative. This is not the rationalism
/ irrationalism debate. This depreciation is that logic is inappropriate to act. I
remember there was in anti-philosophy or in arch-politics a focus on The Act. The
depreciation will gladly take the shape of the view that logic is just that, a theory of
signs without primordial ontological option.

2nd- The anti-philosophical position identifies logics and mathematics

This second point connects to the first from within the first depreciation and
according to reasons, which if they unfolded, would lead us very far. This means
that anti-philosophical subjectivity will have a tendency to treat mathematics itself
as a pure theory of signs, and not just, say, logical formalism. From this point of
view, I would say that there is an organic bond between anti-philosophy and theory
commonly known as logicism. Any anti-philosophy surrounds a logicism, i.e. what
has been heard in the debates at the turn of the century: namely a thesis which is to
argue that the essence of mathematics is logic. Logicism argues that there is
continuity and a foundational possibility transitive, between logic and mathematics.
So that mathematics is reducible to the logical form or mathematics is logic. That's
logicism, in that it recognizes no real discontinuity at any point, between what is
discussed in a logical grammar and discussed in mathematics. From inside the
depreciation of logic, in the name of The Act, where there is in any anti-philosophy,
there is the ingestion of a thesis or complicity of a logicist thesis that is quite striking
in Nietzsche, which will identify mathematics and logic.

3rd: The ultimate goal of the anti-philosophical position is to state that

mathematics doesn’t think, i.e. that it is not a thought.
This is explicitly stated by Nietzsche: "... In them [logic and mathematics],
reality is never present, even as a problem," which means that we are not dealing

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with a system of thought, but merely a theory of signs. All this leads to the thesis
that mathematics should not be regarded as a thought, but as a formal grammar.
And you see that this requires the logicist identification between logic itself
considered as an ontological sub-option, and mathematics.
4th: Thus there is a complicity of logicism (i.e. of the thesis that mathematics thinks
nothing) with sophistry (i.e. the thesis that language, in its way, is not prescriptive
truths).
However, in the fourth chain of this inference, there is, in my opinion a
recurrent complicity of logicism with sophistry. I would argue that we will take here
- what will become a crucial point in this investigation - a point of complicity or
indirect homogeneity between anti-philosophy and sophistry. This point goes
through a logicist conception of mathematics, i.e. a view that mathematics is not a
thought. Why does this indirect complicity between anti-philosophy and sophistry
occupy a strategic position? Answer: because the question of whether or not
mathematics is a thought or not is originally a fundamental question debated
between philosophy and sophistry. It's a question that is, almost factually, but also
originally, is paradigmatic and ultimately the question of whether there is thinking
or not, of truth or not, and it is so, of course, at least due to the controversy between
Plato and the Sophists. The question of whether mathematics thinks, or if it is
nothing but grammar, or a rhetoric of formal signs, but signs anyway, this is from
the beginning a question that draws a line in front, and at the same time, a line of
relation as a mirror between philosophical disposition established by Platonism and
sophist resistance, and sophist dispute, on the same point. And this case passes up
until today, when the debate is completely reconstituted from a manner that is
completely active throughout the history of successive philosophical options. I
would just say this, since we will find this problematic, that there is in anti-
philosophical subjectivity- that we will gradually appoint, construct, edify (this is
the purpose of this survey on Nietzsche, then Wittgenstein) - there is in this anti-

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philosophical subjectivity an element, which for any other reason, takes the sophist
party on this question, i.e. upon the question of knowing whether or not
mathematics thinks. This is a point to be absolutely noticed. This, again, does not
transform the anti-philosophical opposition into sophistry, not at all. Why? Because
in the anti-philosophical position, the key is the question of The Act, and the thesis
that there can be a radical act is absolutely non-sophist by itself. It is even in a certain
sense the very opposite of all that sophistry plans because the Nietzschean thesis of
a radical rupture is in the order of thought, of the advent of a Dionysian yes, which
has nothing to do with sophistry. And yet, and yet, in this essential disjunction, there
is this point of recurrent complicity of an inevitable depreciation of mathematics as
thought, and its grammarian relegation, so one sees there is a grammarian relegation
of mathematics considered non-thought. It will be a task to understand this point: is
mathematics a thought or not? I think it's a good question to ask. And finding a good
question, is not bad. This concludes the third proposition on the relation of
Nietzschean "ontology" and logic.

d) Fourth proposition: There are nothing but relations

The fourth proposition concerning Nietzschean ontology is some sense a
consequence of the first two statements, but we must give them their autonomy - I
will introduce in the following manner before announcing them: how to avoid from
falling back into the ontological naming [substance ontology, Aristotle]? This is the
great danger that will regulate the extraordinarily complex relationship of anti-
philosophy to philosophy beyond the fact that, as you know, the anti-philosopher
Nietzsche declared that the philosopher is the biggest criminal. But of this one is, so
to speak, warned. Beyond this warning, regulating the relationship is complex such
that Nietzsche did not have the means to shoot all philosophers. The point is how
anti-philosophy, which states that the name of the “il y a” is life or Becoming, will
withstand the original pressure exerted by the ontological option? Let's call the

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ontological option the naming of the “il y a” under the name of Being. The only line
of tenacious resistance in the ontological option is holding absolutely that the “il y
a” is without Being. It must be taken faithfully, and it's very difficult, that a state of
being, Being, are mere dramas. Or even that nothing is, not in the sense of nihilism,
but the meaning of subtraction of the “il y a” in the designation of Being. So how is
one to argue that there is nothing, which is not in the form of the presentation? Well
we will have to engage in the idea that there are only relations. Since there is no
Being, under the generic name of life or Becoming, there is no entity involved in
these relations. There is strictly nothing but relations, relations or relations of power.
The fourth proposition will say this: there are only relations of power. The “il y a”
is nothing but the fact that there are only relations without related entity, i.e. there
are only relations of relations, otherwise it would introduce an atomistic base
between which there would be relations. But no, there are only relations of relations,
and the investigation of the “il y a” can only be done as an investigation of types of
relations, provided that a relation is always a relation of relations.
There are a number of texts on this question, and most of all, this question is
very well investigated by Deleuze, but I'll quote you a fragment from 1888: "The
world is essentially a world of relationships. It may have occasionally seen a
different aspect from each point. “Its being" is essentially different at each point, it
weighs on every point, every point resists it, and in any case, all this does not align
perfectly. The amount of power determines what has to be the other amount of
power, in what form and with what violence and necessity it resists."
The first sentence gives the bulk formula. The following formulas are very intricate
because this central text is complicated like all nodal texts of Nietzsche. This text
tries to keep the thread of a thought that would be faithful to the fact that the “il y
a” is not named as Being. Nietzsche does not conceal the extreme difficulty of this
point, because in accordance with its analysis, there has been a long hegemony of
the ontological option, we have been trained, so we see Being everywhere, even

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when the “il y a” is precisely incapable of receiving this name. In other words if you
wish to change the names - calling life what it was called to be, and then, step by
step, calling relations of what has been called an entity, and then determining the
same and the other from the point of power relations—one must engage with a
resistance of thought that is extraordinarily difficult. Changing names is an
operation, which is also an act of resistance of thought to the ontological option. This
resistance is always are difficult, threatening, conflicted, etc. ... "The world is
essentially a world of relationships" is what he is saying. But if uttering it abstractly
is a thing, keeping this statement, considering this statement is another very difficult
thing. Finally, Nietzsche will spread it in two main points:
- First, this forbidden utterance will determine a totality, so there will be no
Being of the world. If we take seriously the fact that "the world is essentially a world
of relationships," we must conclude that there is no being in the world. Or even that
the world is its presentation, but is not presented, i.e. that "all that is not absolutely
consistent" because there is no presentation in Being of the world. So the first axiom:
There is no Being of the world.
- Second maxim: Any relation is a relation of relation, which is stated as: "The
amount of power determines what Being in another quantity of power," and of
course, the other amount of power will also determine what has to be the first
amount of power. This is specified in a relation that does not let itself be measured
as a relation of relations. You would not enter an entity engaged in the relation. The
only Being which is attested is what the relation determines as its relation or what it
relates. The two great maxims are:
- There is no Being of the world: there are only aspects, but aspects taken in
a more “ontological” sense than phenomenal, i.e. there are only weighed ones (a
preferable image to that of the aspect), different and situated where there is no
connection, so there is no Being presented in the world, and it is so necessarily.
-The relation is the relation of relations in the form of weighed thoughts

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which are always localized. This will certainly recall something in those that follow,
elsewhere, which I do in my seminar on Saturday, because in fact you could say that,
for Nietzsche, provided there is a thought of Being, but of Being not taken in the
sense of the ontological option, let’s say as long as there was a thought of the “il y
a”, that this thought has two essential characteristics: the thought of the “il y a” in
Nietzsche does not give anything. It is originally de-totalized. The point that is most
difficult to see is that this is not a weakness: there is no impotence in grasping the
form in totality of the “il y a”. It is the “il y a” itself which has the being of never
being given other than in a de-totalized manner. This is a very good example of what
is in a power of the option of thought. If you think that Being is not given in totality
as you think we do not have access to totality – that it is refused, eludes us, that it is
hidden - you are in reality in the ontological option. You would not escape the
ontological option than if you asked that the de-totalized character of the
presentation is organic to the presentation itself, and has nothing to do with an
inability of the subject, forgetting the subject, or a historical destiny of the subject, or
from the human reality, or of thought, of Dasein, whatever. In Nietzsche, we are
dealing with a de-totalization which is given on the side of the donation, i.e. that
nothing is presented in the form of the whole. Or we can say: there are wholes of
data in the instance of de-totalization. And, again, this is not a limit, in the critical
sense of thought. It is not that we have no access or that the constitution of our reason
makes us unable, as if we could not decide. No. It is the essence of the “il y a” of not
fitting: "All that is added does not absolutely match." The absolute is precisely the
mismatch. It follows that any evaluations of relations are local. The text says so: "the
amount of power determines what has to be the other amount of power," but an
amount of power that is here always a particular amount of power. So any
evaluation is local, since it is the essence of the “il y a” is given without alignment.
What will also be said is that there is only local truth, i.e. we have a localizing
topology of truth. We will return to this axial question of truth for Nietzsche. But if

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you look at his writings on the subject, extraordinarily bushy texts, which give the
immediate impression that all is said and otherwise, but that actually a common
thread, namely what Nietzsche polemicizes against, is against a concept of truth
subordinate to the primary ontological option, i.e. subjected to the idea that the
name of the “il y a” is Being. If the name of the “il y a” is Being, then there follows a
class of truth against what Nietzsche will polemicize relentlessly, because it is
necessarily matched to the idea of a total donation or all even when it is presented
as particular or fragmentary truth. By against, Nietzsche will support the idea that
there is a possible local protocol of something that he can also call truth, in another
ontological option, i.e. a truth exempt from the requirement of Being, which names
the “il y a” as life, Becoming, or in other words a truth that admits that it's not
absolutely consistent, but yet maintains that there is no truth at all. Simply, it is the
essence of truth to be locatable. It will always be genealogical and historicized, and
concern types. All truth will be located in a typology. So we can say, although this
is not at all Nietzsche’s words, that we are dealing with a typological conception of
truth: the point is finding its place. There is no truth outside the place. You see that
this is in part a polemic against transcendence, rear-worlds, God, etc ... but all this is
the machine in Nietzschean vapor, the elementary. In depth, it means that even
when this statement is given as a localized truth, if you are under the ontological
requirement, in reality there is a conception outside truth, outside the place of
transcendence, religion etc ... It is only a possible form, perhaps the dominant one,
but the decisive point is: does one have or not have a topology which filters and
situates the question of truths? And in Nietzsche, this topology is also a typology,
i.e. every place is also a type. There will only be truths with regard to these places
and these types.
I revisit what I mentioned at the start: at the part most faithful to my seminar
on Saturday, the remark that I will make will be esoteric for some of you, but no
matter- this signifies that the Nietzschean device on the question of truth is more

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categorical than holistic. The requirement of the universe is most under the sign of
a particular doctrine which is called the theory of categories, but it is not under the
registration of the device with which you are most familiar, which is that of the
theory of wholes. There you will find the two ideas that there are of the mismatched
universe, on one hand, and on the other, the real question of the truth is always local,
or typological (this it the problem of its place).
That was the 4th proposition, in its simple form: there is nothing but
relations.

e) Fifth proposition: Lack of an Adequate Language

I state it: the media of thinking cannot be sought on the side of an adequate
language.
This is obviously a generalization of statement 3 that said: Logic is under an
ontological option, and thus cannot be used to act. More generally, we will say to
The Act and thought cannot serve the ideal of appropriate language, i.e. the idea
that there would be an adequate language for The Act. It is also critical to any theory
of adequacy, including the meaning of the Aristotelian definition of truth. The
purpose of thought cannot be the adequacy, in particular it cannot be the attempt of
determining an adequate language. A fragment from 1888 reads: "Asking for an
adequate mode of expression is absurd. It is inherent in the nature of a language, a
way of expression, to not express a simple relationship [Nietzsche continues with
this kind of bounding of thought in which we will begin to be broken.] The notion
of "truth" is devoid of any meaning."
This begins to form a little knot [node] of all previous statements, converging
towards the question of means, including language, of the anti-Philosophical Act. In
any case, they will not be of the order of suitability. "Seeking an appropriate mode
of expression is absurd." Nothing is adequate for The Act, and even the demand for
an adequacy of The Act in language, has no sense. Why? Because it is "inherent in

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the nature of a language [...] by only expressing a simple relationship." This must be
understood in two senses:
- First, because there are only relations, so language is itself always a relation
of relations, and it makes the relation of a relation in taking the relation in its
equivocation: it brings a report.
- Second: because a language is also delocalized, i.e. it is also in a topological
and typological prescription, it will thus express a unique relationship, which will
be taken in a specific relationship. Language, does not overlook the network of
relations.
Let’s also understand that we cannot hope that language will align what does
not match. Language itself is inconsistent, and there is no linguistic alignment.
Language itself is taken in its localizations of relation, from relations which held it,
and it is in no way unifying overlooking what is given as mismatched or unrelated.
That's why we must understand that it is inherent to the nature of a language [...] to
not express a simple relationship. "The notion of 'truth' is devoid of any meaning."
"Truth" in quotes always refers to truth in the global prescription of a tenable
assumption of totality. And it is devoid of any meaning precisely because there is
no mode of adequate expression. So there isn’t even a possible place for truth, in this
Language is not such a place. One says: if there is truth, yes, let’s say it, language is
consistent with the thing, or the relation, yes, but the problem is that there is no
language--the language itself is inconsistent. There will be mismatched languages
or heterogeneous modes of expression taken from relations of relations. What is here
eliminated is the idea of a linguistic pact on the theme of truth. There is no possible
linguistic pact: language is not permitted to set a consensus. It is not a consensual
possible recourse. If you want, it is not what is in front of the heterogeneity of
experience as a possible consensual horizon. Nietzsche's view of language is as
equally mismatched or inadequate as the rest. That's why "demanding an adequate
mode of expression is absurd" and thus the Philosophical Act is not under the rule

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of the adequacy or under the rule of the mode of the matching or contractual
expression. The linguistic operation is itself an operation of power, and thus it is
itself a relation of relations in the determinations of power. Which brings us to the
sixth proposition.
6) Sixth Proposition: Intense Drama as a Resource for Thought
If the media of thought are not on the side of an adequate language, where
are they? Well, the media of thinking will be that of an intense drama, or dramatic
intensification. They will be presented as the dramatic intensifications which are
themselves typed, i.e. taken in the mismatched network of sites or of types. Again,
later, we will ask the question, as we did earlier about the history of mathematics or
logic, which eventually led us to the complicity of anti-philosophy and sophistry -
we ask the following question: is this thesis anti-philosophical in the broad sense,
i.e. is any anti-philosophy opposed to the doctrine of adequate language and enters
the logic of the medium of thought as always in the order of intense drama?
I am tempted to say yes, is it not so? Any anti-philosophy determines the theme of
appropriate language as if taken under an ontological option. The ultimate use of
the naming of the “il y a” as Being, when this naming was badly shaken or
overturned by history, id language, which is, in its misaligned or virtual form, the
last shelter of the ontological option. Such is already the Nietzschean construction.
Arguably, the centrality of the question of language in contemporary philosophy
since the beginning of the century would be interpreted in a Nietzschean fashion, as
a final burst of the ontological option, i.e. as the determination of the place where
perhaps Being finds its shelter , i.e. the place where the name of Being as far as it's a
dramatic name of the “il y a” ultimately finds its shelter: this would be language.
And that is why language would be the transcendental of our time. After the
destitution of forms of divine transcendence, of the constituent subject, etc....
Language would be the point where one finds shelter in its final form, and that
Nietzsche would say "nihilist," the primordial Parmenidean ontological option.

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After all, as the dead come to life, they need to have their revenge! Nietzsche was
interpreted by Heidegger.
One can only imagine or dream what would be the Nietzschean interpretation of
Heidegger. That would be without doubt what I would suggest is Nietzsche's
interpretation of Heidegger.
I think Nietzsche would say that Heidegger was the one who saw that this
original naming of the “il y a” under the form of Being was ill for a long time -
perhaps always - and it gives him a virtual shelter, or a shelter in a promise in the
resource of language itself taken ambiguously with the poem. And he would say
that it is not a coincidence that he, Heidegger, puts Parmenides and Heraclitus in
the same bag, which is an original error. Heidegger did not see that in fact,
originally, Heraclitus is the adverse ontological option, which gives and proposes
other names. So there would be a Nietzschean diagnosis in Heidegger, who would
oscillate between the subtleties of character slyly mismatched from the
Heideggerian view of language under the standard of the poem, to the inevitable
insults such as: "I shot Heidegger yesterday!" It would be deployed there in the gap.
But I think it would be of this structure. And the profound idea that I illustrate from
this fable is that, in fact, anti-philosophical option cannot enter, albeit in an
extraordinarily sophisticated form, in any hypothesis of appropriate language, i.e.
the language that is supposed to be adequate for the uncovering, a language that
would be of aletheia, a language that would be held in the open in the impossible
poem. It would be the last refuge of adequate language that Nietzsche would
uncover as still holding onto the first ontological option and putting away this
linguistic proposition.
However, this proposed anti-philosophy is a localized theory of intense
drama where it assumes that it is particular, i.e. that language is nothing but the
relation itself of relations, that it gives no shelter to any first adequacy - it is a
mismatched aggravation. It is what Nietzsche will often say in the metaphors of war,

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when he says, for example, to leave 'his heavy artillery," but that's the metaphor of
the discordant nature of language itself, which from this point of view, does not
bring peace, but war. There is a linguistic anti-pacifism in the Nietzschean option.
So I think it's a case for anti-philosophy, at the least for negative reasons. In my
opinion, any anti-philosophy rejects the hypothesis of adequate language in
whatever form it is given, ranging from the long chains of Cartesian reasons to
Heideggerian cryptopoetics. There may be a turning of tables, but it's always in the
eyes of Nietzsche, the insidious assumption of appropriate language, of linguistic
composition. So if we break from the linguistic composition, it will necessarily be
the order of intense localized drama, which could show that this is already the
subject, for example, of a Pascal: Pascal's relation to the question of the relation of
language, to the non-relation that is tries to relate. But if the means of thought are
those of intense drama, there is a point--it is true, they will in turn become
indistinguishable from those of art. We will have extreme ambiguity with what I just
said about Heidegger, precisely because art is also presented as the discipline of the
power of language and art itself is the internal demonstration in the language of the
power of language. However, in the decisions contrary to those of Heidegger, there
is in Nietzsche a promotion of the form of art as far as art is indistinguishable from
the intense order of drama in which anyone who refuses an adequate language for
the Philosophical Act is necessarily led, in such a sort to take adequate language.
Obviously, there is a certain thing, which is that it is necessary, otherwise we fall
back into the ontological option, that this art, which convenes there, analogically, is
not that of a representation. If it claimed to be that of a representation, one would
inevitably fall into the ontological figure, i.e. in the option of Being and imitation of
Being. The problematic consequently, of the means of thought, will be the means of
intense drama as long as it is in no sense theatrical, in taking theater as the paradigm
of representative intensification, where they will be the media of art non-
compromised with representation, i.e. as a radically non-theatrical art. And this is

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where the Nietzschean polemic against the theater will be disposed, not as an
accessory or second element, but as a central element. In fact, in this case, the
possibility of the media of thought are put at stake: can there exist an absolutely non-
theatrical intense drama? This is the problem. This is where the question of the
debate lies with Wagner, and Wagner's apparently exorbitant importance. I say
"exorbitant" because from one end to the other in Nietzsche's work, the question of
Wagner circulates as a true obsession, an emphatic obsession that is admirable at
first, but a destructive and hateful obsession at the end. Wagner is truly an essential
proper name of the Nietzschean device. But what is Wagner, the name Wagner? As
always, the real question in Nietzsche is the question of naming. What gives Wagner
his name? Why was Wagner the name for Nietzsche? It is merely a self, which is a
matter of philosophical, or anti-philosophical complication, which is extraordinary.
I'm not sure of coming to grips with the problem: for what was Wagner the name,
because it is the ambiguous name of the clear possibility of a non-intense theatrical
drama, while it is also the name of the corruption of this possibility. Wagner was the
name of a non-intense theatrical drama in the sense that we will take up theater,
again, as the essence of the performance. Wagner was the name of the possibility -
contemporary for Nietzsche - of a non-intense theatrical drama, while it was the
name of the theatrical corruption of this possibility. And thus it was the name of the
contrast of representation. That's terrible! It's terrible! If the inaugural paradigm of
the possibility of a non-theatrical intense drama proves itself to be a last resort where
there is further theatrical corruption, then the question of the means of thought is at
stake. We must understand these well, because this is why it's not a matter of a
paranoid like a Schreber who found Flechsig. It is a question of a completely
different order. If there is only Wagner, it indicates that indeed, intense drama is not
freed from theatricality, so we are still in the hand of the representation, and thus
still in the Parmenidean epoch, because the contrast of the representation is the
ontological option itself. That is why Nietzsche is struggling with the question: is

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there only Wagner, or is there something else, because Wagner was found to be both
the name of the possibility of a non-intense theatrical drama, and the name of its
corruption. Obviously, when he tells us: there is Bizet, one feels insecure! And when
he told us, there is also Offenbach, so here we are overwhelmed! Because if
ultimately the price to pay so that there would be media of thought is to find that
Offenbach is really great - "This is an asceticism" ... We will resume next time from
the point of this question as follows: we shall return a little later on the question of:
What does he mean by intense drama? We will specify this through the style of
Zarathustra. What does Nietzsche attempt in Zarathustra from the point of
language? Which will lead us to the question of the type of artist, because the
question: he has other things that Wagner is the question: what is the artist type?
What is the artist, since it appears that he can be at once the possibility of intense
non-theatrical drama, and also the possibility, indeed the necessity, of histrionics,
namely the revenge of representation - the theatrical in art. And through this
question, what is the artist as a type? We will deal with the media at the margins of
the true story of his dispute with Wagner: Nietzsche and Wagner. We will conclude
there!

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6th Course: Dialectics: On Creation and Void

Let take a look at what we might call the six main statements of Nietzschean
anti-philosophy, which all hinge on the essential conviction that at the heart of
things, there is The Act, i.e. an irreducible pause of the discursive device.
I make a parenthetical statement, perhaps concerning this belief that at the
heart of the apparatus of thought, there is a gesture or a radically irreducible or
heteronomous act of the discursive device that proves to be a characterization of any
anti-philosophical device, or any device that in philosophy inscribes this singular
form that we choose to call Anti-philosophy.
To give two other examples, we know that for Pascal, who is an exemplary
anti-philosopher, this Act is called the Wager, and is surrounded by the discursive
device, although it remains fully heterogeneous for him. And as for Kierkegaard,
another exemplary figure of anti-philosophy, we can say that The Act is called the
Alternative, or what is called "either ... or." For Nietzsche, as we have seen, The Act
has to be designated as a gesture even to break into two world histories, and is more
restrained in its transmutation, reversal, or transvaluation of all important values.
The six propositions of Nietzschean anti-philosophy must always be heard with the
fact in mind, the fact that they cluster around this kind of central source which is
The Act as such. Finally, before recalling them - I will only mention them- it is clear
that what we're here to ask is whether these statements of Nietzschean anti-
philosophy are statements of any anti-philosophy. This is what ultimately interests
us in this investigation.

Reminders: 6 Ontological, and Anti-philosophical Propositions of Nietzsche

I recapitulate on the six statements of Nietzschean anti-philosophy, which
are also statements on "Being":
1st statement: The name of “il y a” is life, this name is inevaluable, and,
consequently, one can also say that the pure “il y a” is chaos, since sense and/or

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nonsense arises from assessments of inevaluable life, and therefore the evaluation
of meaning refers to the inevaluable, i.e. to chaos.
2nd statement: Naming Being as”il y a” is a reactive naming. Otherwise said:
the ontological option, i.e. the choice of naming Being as “il y a”, challenges chaos,
and originally imposes a sense of being, which obliterates affirmation of”il y a”.
Note that anti-philosophy is first and foremost an anti-ontology.
3rd statement: Logic is the same as mathematics and two subsumed under
this identity are nothing but a consequence of ontological language.
4th statement: Since the “il y a” lacks Being, a thought, whatever it may be,
finds only the relations of power, without a specific depth or individuated entities
engaged in these relations. There is nothing but relations of power.
5th statement: The means of anti-philosophical thought cannot be under the
normative ideal of adequate language.
6th statement: The media of anti-philosophical thought are that of an intense
drama: they are thus the media of art as far as art is delivered from representation,
or art is not under theater as will to power, or under the will to power of the theater.
Everything is a power relation, and by virtue of being submitted to representation,
art is in fact what sustains or endures the will to power of the theater. I make note
of the well-known consequence that in the eyes of Nietzsche, who continues to be a
faithful disciple of Schopenhauer concerning this point, art that is most delivered
from representation is music, from which, of course, we have the absolutely central
question of Wagner.
This is the organic body of Nietzschean anti-philosophy at the stage where
we are, above all, under the jurisdiction of The Act. I would like to make a subjective
parenthesis by contra-posing six statements of Nietzschean anti-philosophy, which
could also be six statements of philosophy – for example, those of mine, if you will
- but in truth, it would probably be 6 contraposable statements as statements of
Nietzschean anti-philosophy that could take on any philosophical system not in the

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form of anti-philosophy. Again, I'm just quoting my contraposable statements, and

my intention is not to utilize them.

Alain Badiou’s 6 Ontological Philosophical Statements

1st statement: The name of “il y a” is multiplicity, or a Pure Multiple.
Parenthesis within a parenthesis: One problem with Deleuze's interpretation
of Nietzsche, and ultimately, one of the tensions of Deleuze's philosophy, is that
everything about it is to be equivalent to or make itself coincide with the designation
of Being in multiple and the designation of Being under the name of life. This is the
ontological option of Deleuze, which is Nietzschean, but original at the same time.
The point of creation is to ultimately keep the name of “il y a” in multiplicity while
arresting, so to speak, this designation by means of Nietzschean designation, which
leads Deleuze to a doctrine of the living character of the multiplicity as such.
Arguably the conceptual categories of Deleuze–-such as, perhaps, the central
concept of folding, is probably his densest –covering this arrest of multiplicity by
the vital Nietzschean designation, and structuring thought into account, in any
situation, in multiplicity as a living fold upon itself. End of this account.
The name of “il y a” is a multiplicity, which I would also complete with a
Lacanian expression: the concluding point that “il y a” as such is a void (le vide). And
the effectuation of the thought of the pure multiple, is mathematics itself as a
doctrine of historicized doctrine of multiples and the void. It would be contra-posed
to the 1st anti-philosophical statement. I should add, of course, that the latent process
would be done in the Nietzschean thesis, which is that naming the “il y a” “life”
instead of naming it just pure multiplicity, is already of the order of an
interpretation, i.e. it does not sufficiently balance out the designation of ”il y a”.
“Multiple” is taken here as the most radically offset designation with regard to the
interpretive field.
2nd statement: Naming the multiplicity of Being as “il y a” could be

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harmless if such a designation were split, i.e., if we were to separate Being and
truth from all continuity with meaning.
“You know that for Nietzsche, the designation of “il y a” with the name of
Being, is blasphemy against the world. One would not say that the designation of
“il y a” under the form of Being is the inevitable imposition of a meaning that
distorts or mutilates life. Rather we’ll say that the whole issue is the question of what
is the latent or explicit correlation between Being and meaning. The decisive point
is whether this nominal imposition invests the “il y a” from the presupposition of
meaning. If in its primary pairing, Being and truth are taken under a major or
uninterpretable discontinuity with the form of sense, we’ll say that this designation
could be innocuous. This is accomplished when one names Being as pure
multiplicity, for the pure multiple does not prejudice against or presuppose any
direction, provided that this multiple is woven from the void; otherwise the
imposition of a meaning, if it is woven from anything but the void, cannot be
avoided. I would speak of this in other terms to argue that it is not the ontological
option that is reactive, but rather the hermeneutical one. It is not the ontological
option as such which is reactive, for example, as such, in its Parmenidian form, let
alone in its Democritean one, but it is rather the hermeneutical option where the
requirement of the name Being is, in truth, the harbinger of meaning. And we agree
with Nietzsche that, one way or another, the hermeneutical option is organically
linked to the religious, if we take the definition that I always suggest for religion:
religion may be called any presupposition of a continuity between truth and
meaning. Or any notion that the truth must also be meaningful. This is what
constitutes religion. So we can say that this is not the ontological option that is
reactive, but the religious option, i.e. the ontological option under a latent or explicit
spiritual precondition which invests from meaning the ontological designation.

3rd statement: The logic is that philosophy itself traces the effect of mathematics.

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Under the “il y a” of mathematics, philosophy is, in fact, forced to re-trace

the logical layout in itself that it otherwise invents. One can even say that the
invention of logic is the intra-philosophical trace of the “il y a” of mathematics. This
of course assumes that mathematics and logic are originally unidentifiable, and thus
poses a non-logicist thesis.

4th statement: Since the “il y a” is of a pure multiplicity, there is no

relation.
The opposition is growing: nothing is related or can be related. The “il y a”
is not in the element of relation. It is thus an explicit contraposition, but for reasons
that are quite clear: it is the point where the significantly divergent effects of the
primordial designation of the “il y a” consequently turn out into terms of life or its
primary neutralized (offset) designation in terms of the pure multiple. These
divergents are consequently given in the fact that, strictly speaking, there is no
relation, and truly there is no relation, or the real is non-related. We can say that: the
relation is always a constitutive drama of knowledge. We will order the question of
knowledge in the drama of relations, and correspondingly argue that the truths
cover themselves due to pure multiplicity. They are not in any way apprehensions
of relations. Any truth makes a hole or tear in the relations of knowing.
I form another bracket, which is also an anticipation. You can say that for
Nietzsche, there is only power relation, so that truth rather does not mean anything
(and thus constitutes a whole section of Nietzsche's polemic), or always means that
what is established from the point of power relation, i.e. an injection of meaning
determined by a power relation. If we re-examine it from the vantage point of what
I am saying, it means that in reality, the Nietzschean doctrine of meaning is itself
held in the drama of relations of knowledge, i.e. that it is of the order of knowledge
and not the order of the truth. It could thus be argued that Nietzsche lacks the
element of the rift, of tearing or of discovery in the relations of knowledge, that the

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non-relation of “il y a” establishes in the element of truth.

The unrelated character of “il y a” is precisely what is always given in truth
in the form of the cut, tear or hole of a relation of knowledge. Yes, you could say
that, but as we shall see, Nietzsche's probity is a twist of its own device, for the whole
question of The Act in Nietzsche is still in the vicinity of such apprehension, i.e. The
Act itself is, ultimately, something other than a power relation and shows –this is
the extreme tension in which it is left to Nietzsche himself, since this Act is named
in his name –that which is here called truth, namely that which is only a tear or hole
in what is related or relatable, and which remains by itself unrelated.

5th statement: the Media of Philosophical Thought will superimpose, combine,

or articulate the ideal of appropriate language and that of intense drama.
It is a question that I do not attempt again here, but you can have an idea of it from
what has been said. Suppose that a truth is what makes it happen in tearing from a
relation of knowing the pure multiplicity of the ”il y a”. Let’s give it this definition.
Truth always proceeds in a particular genetic order, and it leaves the non-critical
relation of “il y a” to arrive, i.e. its multiplicity without relation or its essential
unbinding in a gash, a tearing of relations of knowledge. Let's say this is it, a truth,
so that if philosophy is thought of truth, i.e. if it is related to this category as its
central category, it will always be in the description of the edge of a hole that it will
try to think of. Or: it is the rift, but the rift can be given without the edges. Thus: it
will always be both a linguistic apprehension that takes knowledge, i.e. from the
relation by a certain bias: on the face or its torn edges of the relations, and at the
same time, it will attempt to restore the gap as such, so that the language of
philosophy is necessarily ambiguous, because it is a side effect or rather because it
is trying to think of an edge. It is this ambiguity that I describe by saying that
philosophy takes part in the standard of adequate language, a standard that falls
under the drama of relations of knowledge; to share in intense drama, i.e. from the

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language of The Act, or the gap, or speech without relations, i.e. of language that
does not befall the relation, but to non-relation. In my lexicon, one can say that
philosophy is the standard, combined with the matheme and the poem. That is, if
one summarizes the matheme as the ideal of appropriate language, i.e. the ideal of
integral transmission, which is also the ideal of formalization, and if the poem is
meant by the language that is precisely in resource of its own power, i.e. the
language that is given not from the relation or from knowledge but from an
unrelated intensity, which is, in my opinion, the obvious function of the poem,
whatever it may be, and moreover, its architecture. Ultimately, it will have to deliver
something which is exempt from the drama of the relation. That's why it seems to
me that the media of philosophical thought will superimpose and entangle
themselves in combinations, in alchemies which are each time singular, the norm of
proper language and the standard of intense drama.
6th statement. The element of drama in each intense philosophy is, in
truth, what is retraced in philosophy from its artistic status. One can speak, in a
sense, as if logic is what is retraced in philosophy from its mathematical condition.
We will say: indeed, the philosophy is still in the process of intense drama. This does
not mean that philosophy is an art, which is why I sometimes say that art is a drama,
because this operation only traces the inevitable orderly artistic status immanently
as a treatment of the truth as a limit or a hole. Which, of course, will not return
philosophy to artistic subjectivity, as is necessarily the case against the reference to
such artists in the Nietzschean device.
There you have it, now you have the 6 statements of anti-philosophy and 6
possible statements of philosophy. This being said, we will move backwards - on
towards Nietzsche.
The Act and Nihilism The element that will pivot our investigation of
Nietzsche will focus on the 6th statement, i.e. to the requisition by anti-philosophy
by means of intense drama, and will consequently guide us towards the question of

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art and the relation between art and philosophy.

A) Introduction The starting point is fundamentally very simple, and again
articulated in Nietzsche. Finally, only what I call intense drama, i.e. the language
grasped in its power and not in its appropriation, can capture the relationship or the
power relation. I recall that everything thinkable is about power relation. In a sense,
we can say that apprehending a power relation requires language as power. One
could even say that language as power is in turn a taxation of power or establishes
a relation of power with the relation that it apprehends. That is why the language of
control, whatever it is, is of the order of power, i.e. the order of order, the order of
command, but the command must be attested as linguistic power. It only allows
itself to be linguistic power. The question of knowledge is, what constitutes the
fundamental relationship that Nietzsche begins to grasp, and in which he will
structure the maximum concentration of the media or linguistic resources that are
his.
Good, everything is a power relation, and you know perfectly well that
Nietzsche describes quite a number of them. He genealogically and typologically
grasped a complete series of correlations of power relation: master discourse, the
discourse of the slave, the discourse of the artist, the discourse of the last men,
Zarathustra himself revealed as a typology of the power relation. But again, in this
descriptive articulation of the types of power relation, which constitute the
Nietzschean genealogy and typology, we have only one exemplary descriptive
relationship in the book of Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, but it is not
immediately what will concern us. What concerns us is immediately is this: of all
these relations of power, which is most difficult to grasp? Consequently, which
requires the imposition of maximum power? Where in the Nietzschean linguistic
device is proof of his essential requisition? Where will it be that the artistic style will
be in its purity and intensity? There are times when the ironist style or the style of
great German prose are adequate.

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But there may be a relationship or a power relation, which so well

summarizes all the others, if engaged in the Nietzschean act, that we will truly ask
for a concentration of totally particular media. I think the fundamental relation to
grasp, for Nietzsche, is the relation between Nietzschean nihilism and The Act itself.
This is the point where, in my opinion, the general system of Nietzschean difficulty
is filtered and concentrated, and I hear it there, not an extrinsic difficulty or question
addressed to it from outside, but an intrinsic difficulty: the most difficult one, which
requires imposing maximum power. What is the correlation, what is the
relationship, and is it ultimately a power relation? Is it really the whole question
between nihilism, nihilism that is the form of power that is both dominant and
obsolete, and which is summarized by the name of Christendom and Nietzschean
act, which aims even at this point to break into two world histories? In my view, this
point is crucial in any interpretation of Nietzsche. I would even say that it is the
answer to the question of how Nietzsche grasps or apprehends the relation (which
is perhaps a non-relation) between nihilism, on one hand, and his act on the other,
in the center of the disposition of thought? The relation that controls even the system
of interpretation of Nietzsche.
By the way, I argue that this is the real substance of the relationship between
the will to power and Eternal Return. I say this because, as I had the opportunity to
recall that the relationship between will to power and Eternal Return is the arche, the
entry into Nietzsche that is chosen or established by Heidegger, and which
determined a large part of the subsequent exegesis. Let’s note the fact that the
statement was made, that the word or expression of Eternal Return disappears from
Nietzsche’s vocabulary in winter 1886-87. These issues of dating are both scholarly
and critical, since you know that my attempt is to rename Nietzsche from the year
1888. However, the fact is that the term “Eternal Return” disappears in winter 1886-
87, and the term will to power disappears at the end of ’87., i.e. that all of what has
been written by Nietzsche in 1888 divides the economy in two. This has quite often

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resulted in the judgment that at the end of his account, what had taken place in 1889
did not actually take place, i.e. that the Nietzschean book had not been written,
which is indisputable, and which has been the subject of innumerable
commentaries. In any case, the Eternal Return and will to power are terms which
are self-erased at the start of the decisive year 1888, which will be both a preliminary
year in what was called the “collapse” or Nietzsche's madness, and also the year that
Nietzsche wrote and published the most. At the beginning of this year, the Eternal
Return and will to power categories appear, in the eyes of even Nietzsche, not to be
decisive any longer. Note, too, that because this is the third concept often invoked,
that the Nietzschean Superman (Übermensch) disappears from his lexicon much
earlier, soon after Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and thus from 1884 to 1885.
So, indeed, to take Nietzsche from the view of 1888, we no longer have:
- Eternal Return
- Will to power
- Superman
This is an important detail to remember!
On the contrary, what one knows for certain is the question of the
relationship between nihilism and decadence, firstly, and secondly, the project of
breaking into two world histories. And I think that is the real substance of what has
previously been articulated under the names of the will to power and the Eternal
Return. Ultimately, the whole point is how a radical act is even possible, when the
device of established sovereignty is nihilist. Nihilists wish to say that it is both
commanded by the will to nothingness, and at the same time, in a state of weakness
relative to itself.

Nihilism has two meanings with which we must be very careful:

-Primarily, this device is nihilistic because it is controlled organically by a
will to nothingness. Such is the thought that one can have of it. And I remember

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that will to nothingness is absolutely different from the will to power. These are the
vital contents of nihilism: the essence of desiring to be involved is to will nothing.
Secondly, and in a 2nd sense, desiring nothing is weak with regard to itself.
It is not in the strength of its own will, and it shall rather be called decadence.
“Willing nothing, which characterizes nihilism, is furthermore a mitigated will
which weakens itself, so that its power relation is weakened, which is simply
another way to say that it is a willing of nothing. That said, it is far from being an
absence of will. It is still a will that in the Nietzschean lexicon, one will call an
established will, i.e. still a formation of sovereignty.”
The whole question, then, is how to know how it is possibly articulated and
how one conceives of the relation between this particular form of sovereignty which
is contemporary nihilism, on one hand, and on the other, the termination of The Act
with what happens or seems likely to bring about the Dionysian affirmation. The
system of affirmation, where Zarathustra is a prophet, but where, gradually,
Nietzsche announces more and more impatiently the imminent arrival in the form
of breaking into two world histories, how this is thought of in relation or in non-
relation, but in any case, how does an act of such a nature begin? Does it allow itself
to be described or name from the interior of the form of sovereignty, which is that
of nihilism in the two senses in which I will recall them?
Thus: everything relies on the determination of The Act, the name that one
will give it, being understand that The Act must necessarily be considered in a joint
articulation or disarticulation of nihilism. Such is the extreme concentration
concerning Nietzsche, and it is not surprising that the direct expression of this
connection was replaced with the thematic expression, and probably once again in
the eyes of Nietzsche, philosophizing, which was given in the will to power or
Eternal Return. I say this because, in my view, to go back to the will to power or
Eternal Return as constituting the relation in thinking about Nietzsche, is to renew
the Nietzschean anti-philosophy to something that can be better appropriated by the

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philosophical. I see it as this: what is given in the tension of 1888 as extreme anti-
philosophy, i.e. as arch-political radical will, when taken in the dimension of will to
power/Eternal Return, is already returned to the categorical - tamed by the
philosophical. But of course, here I attempt to be in the most difficult and painful
test of taming the least possible, i.e. of capturing anti-philosophy in its wild state.
However in its wild state, the relation will be said to be primarily between nihilistic
configuration on one hand, and the possibility of The Act of the other, which under
the categorical structure of relation that is eventually contradictory of non-
contradictory, is between will to power and Eternal Return. And I think that is why
Nietzsche abandoned these categories after having created, invented and deployed
them. Nietzsche’s order of interpretations will focus on this problem: how can we
capture the essential relationship - and perhaps the essential unbinding - between
nihilistic configuration as diagnosis of modernity (modernity being this very strange
figure of nihilism) and The Act that announces the Dionysian affirmation, i.e. the
possibility of saying yes? To put it simply: the whole question is in knowing from
the bias through which act nihilism can deliver a yes while its predominant and
hegemonic nature is precisely the will of nothing. Obviously, it's going to have
various orientations which control the system of interpretation of the Nietzschean
device.

B) Rejecting Three Orientations (Hegel, Heidegger and Deleuze)

What we will exclude and call the form of zero would be the immediate
demonstration of a dialectical structure, namely the extreme negativity of nihilism
that is reversed to full affirmation in its immanent movement. We will thus discard
the massive Hegelianization of Nietzsche where in the site where one wills nothing,
the will of everything arises, for everything is the essence of nothing as Being is the
reversal of nothingness. We will leave to one side this temptation, which governs
things pretty well, but it does not lead to thinking what Nietzsche seeks to think,

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that is for sure. It will be in accord with Heidegger that especially with Deleuze to
say that we need to disperse the structure of a dialectical reversal by which The Act
would only give way to intimate hidden Being of nihilism itself in the form of
absolute affirmation. Or we could say: we will discard the interpretation in terms of
negativity. It is clear that in Nietzsche there is none of it, although the question of
negation and destruction is quite complex in his work, whether it is anything
analogous to the work of the negative. The negative does not work, where if it is
working, it would be for hammers, and not without the cunning of reason. From
there, if we go back to the great exegetical framework we are familiar with, we are
dealing with two major interpretations of The Act, and consequently, as concerning
the thought of this paradoxical and decisive relationship between nihilism and The
Act.

First Interpretation: The Act’s Essence of Creating is that of Creating New

Values Over Against Reactive Nihilistic Ones.
Nietzsche seems to bide time for quite a bit, until very late in the first
interpretation. The Act would have the essence of creating new values. It would
have to be taken in the form of creation, which is, in fact, not a form of reversal or
achievement, but a figure of the invention, and The Act would be by itself the
creation of new values in contraposition to reactive values that triumphed in
nihilism. Strictly speaking, this means, and we have already discussed this point,
that The Act would bring about another formation of sovereignty, for speaking of
new values, regardless of the evaluation of these values, necessarily means the
formation of sovereignty, and thus we would specifically be in revolutionary
camouflage. As always, the first interpretation is authorized by many Nietzschean
aphorisms. I will create new values, creating new values and ultimately the
transvaluation or reversal of all values would balance out the advent of new values
that are affirmative and non-nihilistic, affirmative, active and non-reactive, but they

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would define another form of sovereignty.

With regard to this possible interpretation, we have already declared that the
relation between The Act and nihilism is a revolutionary sort of relation in the classic
sense: The Act at once destroys the forms of exhausted sovereignty and establishes
the form of affirmative sovereignty. We have already said that this was not said most
deeply in Nietzsche himself and, in a certain sense, this is what is said less and less
the more that we approach it—what? Well, The Act, The Act being ultimately
Nietzsche’s madness: one must take things in a pinch, as that. Gradually, as we
approach The Act, it has nothing really to do with one form of sovereignty
succeeding to another. We already spoke upon this point concerning Nietzsche's
doctrine of the State. But we should add that this thesis faces a decisive objection to
Heidegger. I want to say that if Nietzsche has his essence of this relationship with
nihilism, which is the will to create new values, then Heidegger's objection to
Nietzsche is based, namely, as Heidegger said, on Nietzsche merely separating
nihilism from his own essence, because the essence of nihilism is precisely the
unleashing of the will without novelty. It is thus the unleashing of all will to will.
The deep thinking of nihilism is to detect the outbreak of the will as an obliteration
or irreversible oblivion, so that the height of nihilism is claiming that the unleashing
of this will can be structured in the establishment or creation of new values. This is
because nihilism is blind to its own power, or separated from its own essence in its
blindness.
I believe that if the nature of the Nietzschean Act really comes down to what
concerns introducing new values, it thus boils down to a camouflaged speculative
revolutionary. Heidegger has quite reasonably objected to what is below the
diagnosis of nihilism: The Act would be below what carries the diagnosis of
nihilism, namely that nihilism is itself unable to establish anything, not because it is
not a power but precisely because it is the unleashing of power as such, which is
given for Heidegger in the technical arrest of Being but in Nietzschean terms, given

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in the perception that the nihilistic will is ordained to the willing of nothing and that
such is precisely the essence of modernity. We can also say: Not willing nothing, but
willing something, is obviously below the apprehension of the will of nothing as
such – this is what Heidegger says essentially, and on this point he is right.
This wraps up the first elementary interpretation of The Act, which would
be The Act as the creation of new values.

Second Interpretation: The Act is Asserting What is of Maximal Intensity.

The second interpretation is actually that of Deleuze. I summarize it to the
extreme, but Deleuze says this: The Act, or, in any case, what is at stake in
Nietzsche's proposition, is to assert all that is the highest form, i.e. the maximum
intensity. Even where there is nihilism, there is and there will always additionally
be a corresponding creation. So we distinguish what is established, i.e. the will to
power as an establishment, which is always the triumph of the reactive dimension
of the will, and The Active will, which also includes active nihilism. Indeed,
Nietzsche distinguishes between active nihilism and passive nihilism - as might be
willed, i.e. likely to be reaffirmed. There is always the affirmative that can be
invested with a will and which can be reaffirmed. We will thus not see it, due to the
question at hand: nihilism and The Act, the difficulty of saying that nihilism itself is
affirmed in what it conceals from local creation or from contrarian novelty.
Consequently, by the correlation of The Act and of nihilism, what is furthest from
being a dialectical relationship is actually an intrinsic affirmative correlation which
senses and detects The Active reagent. It is able to identify and affirm or reaffirm, or
most of the time, to reaffirm The Active dimension at work in The Active one itself,
for example to state that the element of will, including the will of nothing, because
in the will of nothing there remains the affirmative which is the element of will. And
if you want this will, i.e. if you want this willing, then one reacts against reactivity.
And this itself is The Actual correlation of nihilism and The Act.

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I would like to read a very beautiful text of Deleuze on this subject, which
allows for me a biographical parenthesis. In 1964 he held a major conference on
Nietzsche, whose proceedings are published by Editions de Minuit as Cahier de
Royaumont, Philosophy No. 6, Nietzsche. I wanted to tell you that this conference
is quite good. That's great, because it is truly the cards placed on the table on the
question we are occupied with here, namely the system of Nietzschean
interpretations. In this conference, there was Foucault, Deleuze, Jean Wahl, Gianni
Vattimo, Jean Beaufret (thus there was Heidegger!). There was Karl Löwith there
was Henri Birault (hence Heidegger again!) And it was really quite great, because it
is in the 1964 system of texts of a density and exceptional clarity on the types of
contemporary appropriations of Nietzsche. This is completely remarkable. Thus
Deleuze concluded the conference. It is an exercise in style that is absolutely
amazing, for the way that he manages to serve all of the disparate interventions in
his own conversation is absolutely extraordinary. How Heidegger's interpretation,
the humanist interpretation, the skeptical interpretation, etc. converge and find their
completely natural place in Deleuze's interpretation, in which all of them contribute,
as ultimately life contributes kinks to its effects. I will read a passage from Deleuze’s
conclusion, which I think states what I’m trying to tell you much more effectively.
It starts with: "Mr. Birault was right" (everyone is right, and it is very Nietzschean!).
Arguably, it was Deleuze who stated at that the symposium at Royaumont,
as Nietzsche asks, that one affirm the world in all its parts, without neglecting
anything! "Mr. Birault was right to recall that between the extreme and moderate forms,
there is in Nietzsche a difference of nature. And the same is true of Nietzsche's distinction
between the creation of new values and the recognition of established values.” We are at the
heart of our question, are we not? "Such a distinction would be meaningless if interpreted
in the perspectives of historical relativism: the recognized established values have been new
values in their day, and the new ones would be expected to become established in turn. This
interpretation would neglect the basics.

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This interpretation is quite strong except that it undoubtedly dissolves The

Act. The singularity of The Act is, as such, dissolved, or more precisely, The Act is
radically disseminated. It is obvious that the formula of breaking into 2 world
histories must be placed aside with this system of interpretation. In fact, it is called
the assertion by a possible feedback system linked to what any complex formation
of latent sovereignty, which is able to be reactivated by affirmation.
In my view, Deleuze's interpretation is structural - I say that, oddly enough
– i.e. because it determines the correlation of nihilism and act as a structural order
of the configuration itself. Albeit nihilistic, i.e. under the formation of a reactive
sovereignty, there is always something to say, even in immanence, and in the
disposition of sovereignty. So there is an eternal and structural order of affirmation,
which rules, in immanence, the problem of the correlation between The Act and
nihilism. However, in my opinion, the rule is canceling The Act, particularly by
disseminating it over entire surface of the nihilistic configuration. This is Deleuze's
doctrine of the omnipresence of the event. The Eventis never a singularity, which is
given in the rarity of a break or a fracture, but it is combinable anywhere, given that
elsewhere one is struggling with the forms of the reactive and passive. But the
interpretive loosening of novelty is always possible, as is always possible the
welcoming of the Event, and Eventality is finally the law of Being.
Now if Eventality is the law of Being, there is, in a sense, no Event. There is
therefore an absolute reversibility between dissemination of the Nietzschean act and
dissolution of the form of The Act. But there is no doubt, at least in the terminal
form, which is what we use as a gateway to Nietzsche, which he argues quite
differently: Nietzsche explicitly states that The Act is a radical singularity. It is as he
himself says, "An explosive located at the junction of two millennia," and as a result,
even assuming that something has to be reaffirmed, this reaffirmation is not
immediately able to be disseminated again in eternal availability. The new—
Nietzsche repeatedly utilizes the expression—is an unprecedented occurrence. The

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question of how the "unprecedented" can be under the law of Eternal Return is a
very complex issue, but perhaps there is more here from the law of Eternal Return,
perhaps the “unprecedented" has been rightly beat out of the form of Eternal Return
in the final Nietzsche. You can also say that that there was in Deleuze's
interpretation an erasure of the arch-political dimension of The Act or, in any case,
the arch-political determination of The Act is crossed out by an immanent
understanding, extensive or disseminating from its singularity. That's what I would
object to, on my part, in this system of interpretation, which however, as you can
see, deals with extraordinary strength and skill concerning the objection we can
make to Heidegger's type, the idea of creation of new values, since it is completely
laid out in an element where there is no contradiction or contraposition between
novelty and establishment.
“We have already seen that at the level of the will to power, there is a fundamental
difference between “being assigned current values" and "creating new values." This
difference is the same one of the Eternal Return, and which constitutes the essence of the
Eternal Return: namely that the "new" values are exactly the higher forms of all there is. So
there are values which have only begun to be established, which appear only in seeking a
structure of recognition, even if they have to wait for favorable historical conditions to be
effectively recognized. Instead, there are values that are eternally novel, eternally untimely,
and always contemporary with their creation, and which, even when they seem recognized
similarly in appearance by a society, are actually addressed to other forces and seek in this
same society, the anarchic powers of another nature. Only these new values are trans-
historical and supra-historical, and demonstrate a wonderful chaos, a creative disorder that
is irreducible to any order. It is this chaos which Nietzsche had said was not the opposite of
the Eternal Return, but rather the Eternal Return in person. From this supra-historical
depth, this untimely chaos, leaving the great creations, at the limit of what is bearable. "

The text has an exemplary strength and clarity. In fact, the affirmation is

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radically immanent. One finds the necessary appearance of Deleuzian logic of

immanence is appropriate to Nietzsche here. The entire problem is precisely such
that we need to think of creation of new values as an immanent element that thwarts
the establishment in a power relation which is always already there. Consequently,
the new values are intrinsically novel, i.e. that the novelty of a value, i.e. The Activity
of the force that sustains it, is not intended to die or to be devalued in the form of
the establishment. It is eternally new, at the same time that reactive and established
values are so to speak, eternally ancient. And all this is co-owned in the system of
immanence, which performs The Act, provided also that The Act consists in
detecting and in reaffirming the novelty of the new. But the novelty of the new is an
immanent stigma in the creation or the created, which is eternally attached even in
what is created. In the depth, of course, you have the paradigm of the artwork. This
grants some intelligence, namely that the work of art as creation, still always leaves
itself to be requisitioned as novel. It does not sink into the establishment or in the
reactive, and it can always and forever be reconvened as creation and a new value.
The novelty of a value is thus an intrinsic or organic attribute of this value.
Consequently, she argues, for example, in nihilism, that there is a relation of
immanence, which is simply the relation of distribution between The Active and the
reactive in any formation of complex sovereignty. The new is returned to the
immanent eternity of its innovation. The essence of this new thing is innovation, but
innovation is eternally immanent in its system of evaluation.
c) Third Interpretation
I would suggest a third interpretation: The Act creates the possibility of a
yes comprised from the debris of nihilism. The third interpretation is present in a
sparse or singular manner in many of Nietzsche’s predecessors. I would say this:
The Act creates the possibility of a yes, which is composed from the debris of
nihilism. I have already suggested this formula in commenting upon the small
fragment of Dithyrambs in Dionysus, who said: "Debris of stars, from this debris I

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created a universe." I would say that The Act is structured in nihilism from a manner
such that it neither overcomes nihilism, nor does it affirm itself, or create another
form of sovereignty. He disposes the possibility of one or all, but the yes is itself
composed with all the debris of nihilism. Consequently, you need an explosion, a
destructive curse. And we must take more seriously the metaphor of recurrent
dynamite in terminal Nietzsche. Also, as I said, the title chosen by Sarah Kofman for
his analysis of Ecce Homo, namely Explosion I, is absolutely relevant.
It takes a blast, because the yes consists only of a nihilism in debris, i.e. a
nihilism that has exploded. This is not at all a form of negative work, nor the advent
of the essence in the negative afterlife of configuration. It is truly an affirmative
composition of debris. Why? Because we need the formation of nihilistic sovereignty
to be returned to chaos, i.e. to attest the inevaluable depths. The debris, that's it. The
debris is not nihilism maintained in the formation of sovereignty, i.e. retained as the
will of nothing. As long as we remain in this form, we do not understand how The
Act can be linked to nihilism, or how the yes can arise from nothing. The yes can
come out of nothing when the configuration of nihilistic sovereignty has exploded,
i.e. only attests to chaos, which is another name for life itself as inevaluable depth.
And the yes will be composed as the yes regarding that. So it is very important to
understand ultimately that the yes is the yes to the inevaluable. And that is why this
is not a new assessment or new formation of sovereignty, because it is nothing other
than a yes to inevaluable, and thus a yes to chaos. But for one to say yes to it, this
inevaluable should be prepared, and what does so is the explosion of nihilism, i.e.
its exposure in the form of debris.
Let’s call this explosion of nihilism something that exposes within it the pure
multiplicity. I'm not saying this does not pose huge problems, which we will try to
consider, but the composition of the link between the diagnosis of nihilism as a
characterization of modernity, and The Act, and Dionysian affirmation, at the heart
of the anti-philosophical proposition of Nietzsche, is that the Dionysian yes cannot

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be a partial yes, which would thus be an assessment, a power relation, and thus a
new formation of sovereignty.
The Dionysian yes should not be taken in a certain perspective, at one point,
but it requires the Dionysian yes to be a yes to the inevaluable depth (fond). The
metaphor of totality is both apt and misleading. Nietzsche is often said to be saying
yes to the world as it is, fully, without leaving out anything, etc. ...But this world is
above all, something that is not a formation of sovereignty, and thus not a power
relation, if you are still in a perspective. He also said that you're always at a point,
but at one point, you are actually in a power relation which defines a formation of
active and reactive sovereignty, whatever it may be, with regard to another will to
power, etc. … The Dionysian yes is only possible if it is not what we are dealing
with, but rather in the inevaluable, which cannot be itself the object of an evaluation.
Therefore the totality signifies the inevaluable, i.e. life as such, and the naming of
the “il y a”.
The name of the “il y a” is what we're going to affirm, provided that it is
exposed to us, because we cannot constitute the yes if we are caught in the network
of formations of sovereignty. Something must expose to us the pure depths so that
we can assent to the inevaluable granting of the yes. And what can expose to us the
pure depth? That's the whole problem. What can happen is that nihilism, which is
the formation of existing sovereignty, explodes, i.e. that this occurs in debris in the
radical destruction of its composition. This rupture of nihilism – in making a break
in the sense of the explosion, of being reduced to chaos - is what ultimately exposes
the ingredients of nihilism itself, i.e. the pure”il y a”, in the possibility of full
affirmation. In other words, one cannot really say yes only to what is radically
exposed as the inevaluable, because if it is evaluable, it's not yes that we’ll say - we
will deliver an evaluation, i.e. we will build a formation of sovereignty or we will
institute new values, but the introduction of new values and the institution of the
Dionysian yes are not identifiable, in my view, as shown in the Nietzschean text in

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an increasingly tight manner as he rushes headlong into The Act.

Nietzsche and Foucault: The Question of Interpretation

a) Exposition of Foucault's thesis
Another way of putting it is that what strikes me as the rereading from this
excellent Conference of Royaumont, is the notion of interpretation found at the
book’s heart. For the modern non-Heideggerians, i.e. finally, in the attempts of
Foucault, Deleuze, Klossowski and even, in part, Henri Birault, let’s say that, well,
what they credit to Nietzsche - which is especially true for the extraordinary attempt
of Foucault - is having proposed a new system of interpretation, to have reordered
philosophy to the question of meaning, of using an innovative new system of
interpretation. And this is where Foucault has his own triptych: Nietzsche, Marx,
and Freud, in saying that what they have in common is having had proposed in the
19th century, and finally within their entire thought, inflicting upon themselves as
well, a kind of injury; a system of interpretation whose great strength is that there is
nothing to interpret, i.e. that any interpretation is ultimately an interpretation of
interpretation. We recognize that in the language of Deleuze, there is only the
relation of will to power, and not of the last entity that would serve as the number,
or measurement for this relation. With Foucault, it is stated directly in these terms:
there is an infinite order of interpretations where any interpretation decodes the
system of another interpretation, and where the world is constituted as networks of
interpretations without anyone ever touching upon what there is to interpret. In this
conference, it is this that is experienced as the radical modernity of Nietzsche, but
also of Freud and Marx. The conclusion drawn by Foucault is that this work is in a
system of endless work. Obviously if any interpretation is an interpretation of
interpretation, i.e. if there is no foundation, the interpretation remains under the
imperative of an endless task. And all this is referred to in Nietzsche carefully.
Enough of Nietzsche’s texts completely validate this hypothesis as a Nietzschean

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modernity. In light of the discussion of the age of 60 years, which portrays Nietzsche
in a sort of generalized intertextuality, or of a discursivity which always returns
horizontally to itself without there ever being a basis of layers of successive
interpretations, what strikes me is that one can object, in any case, to the following:
that the yes is not an interpretation. The affirmation of the Dionysian yes is not an
interpretation. I think this is a key point, because if it is conceived as an
interpretation, an interpretation is for Nietzsche an evaluation, i.e. a granting of
meaning, and ultimately, an evaluation is a relation of power. It will necessarily be
extended to the thesis in which the yes is a new formation of sovereignty, namely
the introduction of new values, and we will make Nietzsche the prophet of the new
values. We will fall back on Heidegger's objections which are, in my opinion,
decisive regarding this point. What he holds is that the yes is not an interpretation,
regarding which Nietzsche had an increasingly keen conscience. It is also why
everything is centered more and more pressingly upon the question of The Act,
which is not an interpretation. The “yes” is not an interpretation, because, once
again, we cannot say yes except to the inevaluable but the inevaluable is also
uninterpretable. The “il y a” of life is uninterpretable. There is no interpretation of
it. Once you are in interpretation, you're in a system of power relation, and
consequently the yes cannot fully result from an interpretation. Foucault is perfectly
right in saying that if one is in the system of interpretation, it is a task without end.
There is no resulting yes. There is no resulting affirmation. Certainly, any
interpretation is its own affirmation, but it is situated there in a system that is quite
transferable in terms of there being only relations of power.

A) Critique of Foucault's Thesis

Now I shall maintain, and I think it quite arguable, that the Nietzschean yes
proposes to bring about something other than interpretation, and I would even say
that the Dionysian yes is the cessation of the interpretive system of thought.

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This is The Act! The Act is such that we do not have to interpret anything.
The assent to the whole world, without subtracting anything, is obviously
impossible when you're evaluating i.e. in power relations, since a power relation
always consists of subtracting something, and in affirming one feature against
another. However, if you are in the Dionysian yes, you are in the termination of any
interpretation, i.e. in the possibility of no longer having to interpret. And that's
normal because the yes is a yes to the inevaluable. That's why I would assimilate
Marx and Nietzsche as well, but absolutely in reverse of Foucault. Foucault brings
Marx and Nietzsche together under the category of interpretation. He admirably
shows that finally, the interpretive system of formations of sovereignty in Nietzsche
is quite comparable to the system of interpretation; for example the status of money
in Marx. And it is absolutely convincing. In addition, I would say that it's true. It is
true that the system of Nietzschean interpretation concerning the formations of
sovereignty and the system of Marxist interpretation concerning the monetary
principle can be combined under a modern category of interpretation, which is
entirely consistent. Finally, we will adjoin the system of interpretation of symptoms
by Freud, and we will find our triptych, which works perfectly well. But I believe
that it hinders the Nietzschean form of affirmation.
I would assimilate Nietzsche into the same category as Marx who said:
"Philosophers have thus far interpreted the world, and now is the time to change it."
That itself is not an interpretation. This last thesis on Feuerbach suggests a very
different assimilation, which is the anti-philosophical assimilation and not the
hermeneutic one. This is an assimilation that is not done under the banner of the
category of hermeneutic interpretation, but is instead under the sign of the will of a
termination of this system. One has so far interpreted the world, and basically
Nietzsche would certainly agree that philosophers have hitherto only interpreted
the world. He would say, in addition, that they have always played reactively. As
part of the ontological option, they have always slandered the world. And their

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interpretations, those were their calumnies. But whether it's now the time to
transform it, I think it is also deeply a conviction that is terminally Nietzschean.
Transform, not in the sense of substituting a formation of sovereignty with another,
but in the sense of making possible the yes to the inevaluable, i.e. not being able to
interpret, because the last thesis on Feuerbach Marx means above all this: It has to
do with no longer interpreting the world, in no longer having to interpret it. This is
another way of naming the Übermensch. The last time we said the Übermensch - if
this is something - is the formation of non-state sovereignty, i.e. the formation of
sovereignty without sovereignty. I would add two points.
First of all, if the Übermensch disappeared after Thus Spoke Zarathustra, it
is because the Übermensch remains once again, in Nietzsche’s eyes, too tied to the
political formations of sovereignty. Of this I am convinced. The Übermensch lets it
be understood too well that he is bringing about another formation of sovereignty,
or as Nietzsche stated, that of overcoming the human: "Man is what must be overcome"
- but what it is this imperative? Too much dialectic there! Insufficiently affirmative!
Insufficiently radical! Still interpretive! Stating: "Man is what must be overcome" is
still an interpretation of man. Thus: as far as we would retain the Übermensch - if
you keep it, which Nietzsche did not – one will say: the Übermensch is the man who
no longer interprets. This is the man as not interpreting. We will return there, and
we will see why the real metaphor of Übermensch is the child, i.e. the one that is still
under the system of interpretation, and thus still has a relation to the inevaluable.
However, to further examine the question of The Act and nihilism, one will say:
Nihilism is the unleashed reign of interpretation under the ontological option. In my
view, the confusion arises from nihilism being the reign of interpretation under the
ontological option. It is true that the Nietzschean critique of nihilism is an
interpretation of interpretation, which fits well into Foucault’s matrix, namely that
there are only interpretations, and we're always trying to interpret an interpretation.

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It is true that as far as the formation of nihilism as sovereignty is the system

of interpretation under an ontological option, everything from Nietzsche's critique
of nihilism or its description will be presented as an interpretation of interpretations.
But this is the critical Nietzschean form of Nietzsche critique. When Nietzsche is
critiqued, he gives himself a number of names. This is Nietzsche called the
immoralist, the psychologist, or the free spirit. We the other immoralists, other
psychologists, other free spirits. When Nietzsche also speaks, he speaks, in fact, in
the system of interpretation, i.e. that he is an interpreter of interpretation which is
nihilism or the nihilistic reactive formation. But this is not that of the Übermensch,
much less that of Dionysus. When he signed the letters of Dionysus’s madness or
the Crucified, to we will later come back, one might say that something else besides
the Nietzsche who signaled the immoralist, the psychologist, or the free spirit,
occurred. That one, I see that in fact it was he who proposes an order of
interpretation as an interpretation of interpretations. But whoever signs Dionysus
or the Crucified, even looking at someone who announces the Übermensch, is
anything but the immoralist. From this point of view, I would even say that
Zarathustra is an equivocal figure between the immoralist and Dionysus, or between
the psychologist and Dionysus. In part, this is a figure taken into interpretation, and
which on the other hand, has announced the possibility of its separation.
Let's say that Zarathustra is a free spirit who announces the Übermensch, or
Zarathustra is a psychologist in charge of Dionysus. That is why, as we said at the
outset, that Zarathustra is the precursor of himself. This essential ambivalence of the
character of Zarathustra to be the precursor of himself must be finally thought as a
clear link between the system and the reign of interpretation, and the reign of
affirmation. But the affirmation is the cessation of interpretive constraint. So to
resume, the link to capture, to state, for Nietzsche, is thus: What is the relationship
between the interpretation of nihilism, which is the interpretation of the
interpretation, and the Dionysian yes? How should one conceive of the correlation

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between interpretation and the interruption of interpretation? The real question

is: How does an interpretive system of thought issue an affirmation, where the entire
contents do not have to be interpreted –and no longer have to be? How does infinite
interpretation stop? For Foucault is right to say that interpretation is an infinite
system, but how does its infinity interrupt itself? This is Freud’s publication on
Infinite Analysis, by the way. How can a treatment itself be interrupted? I.e. who
and to what will they say yes in this case at any time, so we do not rest on the couch
for 45 years interpreting and interpreting interpretation, and interpreting the
interpretation of interpretation!
It's infinite, principally infinite. This must be said! So when it ends, it's not
that we have an ultimate or final interpretation. Foucault is right to argue that in the
modern system of interpretation, there is not what one has to interpret, so we're still
very much in the interpretation of interpretation. A Freudian or Nietzschean
problem, but also a Marxist one, to take the triptych of Foucault, is that at the end of
ends there must be a yes. A yes to what?
That is the whole problem. There must be an affirmation or “yes”. Nietzsche
calls this yes Dionysus, and he is fully aware that yes can only be a yes to the
inevaluable, otherwise the interpretation continues. And there, Nietzsche is in a very
strong and dramatic impasse, and the mediation thereof is the idea of debris. The
idea that interpretive formations may in certain circumstances be given in the face
of their debris. This is the only solution he finds, i.e. to return to pure multiplicity
that they constitute. There, in fact, the interpretation stops, and the assertion is
possible, because it is affirmation of the pure multiple as inevaluable. So between
the interruption of the interpretation and the possibility of affirmation, there is the
explosion at the point of The Act, i.e. the yes to inevaluable depths.
I always feel that the rupture of the interpretive system is what Lacan calls the Real,
or possibly the object a. It is what is being done at any given time, in the system of
interpretation as debris. And that's what will be said... So? Yes ... that I do not know.

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Anyway, it lacks the Dionysian appearance - it does not look Dionysian! But it says
something that is not of the order of interpretation, and it seems to be in the figure of
dustiness, the Real. The Real seems to be what is unsymbolizable as such, and therefore
uninterpretable, nonetheless, as such. And when that happens, when you put your nose on
it, well it's over. That's it. We say yes to anything but interpretation, i.e. which in practice
one says yes to something besides the couch.
It is true that there is an analogy for this point. Thus we can also say that the
question of yes is the matter, if you sail from one language to another, from the key
of the Real, with this extreme depth in Nietzsche that the Real does not allow itself
to touch as the inevaluable, than in the destruction of interpretation. One might
wonder whether Nietzsche did not think at any one time that in the force of
interpretation, one would use interpretations until they would be ruined. There is a
whole part of the work of Nietzsche that consists in rubbing interpretations in
interpreting them, and we feel that it's like a pumice stone: that there was this idea
that at the end of ends, it would spread out under the interpretive screening, that
the interpretation would spread itself in the powerful action of an unrelenting and
courageous over-interpretation in the situation of control.
I believed that for quite a while, Nietzsche thought that he could have done
away with interpretation, as the true master of interpretation. There are texts in
which Nietzsche is saluted as the most eminent psychologist. But the psychologist
in Nietzsche’s sense is not someone who knows people, but rather, one who is the
master of interpretation, and Nietzsche believed that in the position of the control of
interpretation, one could bring about the ruined exposition of interpretation itself,
or at least, the collapse of nihilistic configuration. And thus I think that he
understood it as no; as for the position of the analyst he was not in the position of
control, if we continue our analogy. The definition of the analyst is not the master of
interpretation. In Freud it is still ambiguous, and it must be said. Many texts of Freud
might suggest that the analyst is the master of interpretation. But what is said

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plainly, beyond Freud, especially by Lacan, is precisely that the analyst is not the
master of interpretation. So if he is not the master of interpretation, there is an act.
And Nietzsche, in categories, for you can see that it is all analogical, came to the
same point as Lacan. He came to say that if in being the master of interpretation, we
as psychologists, we as immoralists, do not allow ourselves to expose the
inevaluable, there must be something else—the principle of the Real is not there, so
it is in an act. And The Act is life as an interpreted multiplicity, not subject to a
system of interpretation that is basically uninterpretable just as the Real cannot be
symbolized. Yes, but that the Real is unsymbolizable does not mean it's easy to feel
like this or to meet him as such. The whole affair – is it possible? Impossible? We
just don’t know ...
And so as to the yes, it is made possible by it, i.e. by the fact that the
inevaluable as the disseminated and inevaluable and uninterpretable Real is given.
And that's why it the yes is innocent. The Nietzschean innocence is: do not interpret.
We must sufficiently understand that everything of the theme of innocence and
child in Nietzsche has the essence: do not interpret. The child is the contrary of the
master of interpretation. It is he who is not only not the master of interpretation, but
it is he who does not need to interpret.
The child is a metaphor for this point, which is why he is the essential
metaphor of the Dionysian yes in its attribute of innocence. So the line to think about
is the one between the 2nd and 3rd metamorphosis early in Zarathustra, i.e. between
the lion and the child. How do we move from the lion to the child? The lion is the
one who says no, who has the courage to say no, because he is the master of
interpretation, of course. And the child is the one who says yes precisely because he
is outside the register of interpretation.

Three Metamorphoses
Let’s read the fragment entitled The Three Metamorphoses, which open

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Zarathustra, and which are quite well-known, while listening to the extraordinarily
difficult question of The Act as it is, in Zarathustra, implicitly held between the lion
and the child, i.e. the site of The Act for the boundaries of the lion and child.
Zarathustra calls it a metamorphosis, but the question concerns how it is
transformed, and what is The Act of metamorphosis. Here's the passage: "To create
new values- the lion himself is not yet capable: but to overcome in order to become capable of
creating new values, is what is called the strength of the lion. To win his own freedom and
the sacred right to say no, even the duty to do so—for this, my brethren, you must be a lion.
To win the right to new values, it is the most formidable undertaking for a patient and
laborious mind, and certainly one sees in it an act of plunder and preying. What he once
loved as his most sacred good, is "You must," and he must now find illusion and
arbitrariness even in the depths of what is most sacred in the world, and conquer also the
noble fight of the right to be free of this attachment. To exercise such violence, one must be a
lion. "
The lion is in the midst of a non-interpretive speech. This is the figure of the
master of interpretation, and it is he who finds the "illusion and arbitrariness even in
the depths of what is most sacred in the world," so that it is he who interprets the reactive
values of religion and of Christendom, i.e. he is the interpreter of nihilism who has
the courage to escape the nihilistic strain itself. For this, we must be a strong lion.
"But tell me, my brothers, what can be done by a mere child where the lion himself was
incapable? Why should the kidnapper lion still become a child? Is it because the child is
innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game; a wheel that moves by itself, the first
mobile—a holy affirmation [we could comment on each of these terms, but all refer to the yes
as something other than interpretation]. In truth, my brothers, to play the game of the
creators, one must be a holy affirmation. The mind presently wills its own will; having lost
the world, it conquers its own world. I told you of the three metamorphoses of the mind: how
the mind has changed to a camel, the camel to a lion, and the lion, finally, to a child."
The transformation from the camel to the lion is not a huge problem, but a

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transformation which, after all, if you do not see every day, is interpretively
detectable. On the contrary, the metamorphosis of the lion to the child is the central
problem in Nietzsche. We can say that the question of Nietzsche’s main rush toward
his act, i.e. to his madness, is fully implicated by the question: how does the lion
morph into a child? i.e. a violent interpreter of nihilism, the violent master of the
interpretation of reactive values? Does he become someone who forgets all
interpretation? It is this exact point that the intense Nietzschean drama must
attempt to present without representing, i.e. that it must try to demonstrate without
making a mere representation. That is obviously the focus, the ultimate call of art,
which enables the presence of the metamorphosis of the lion to the child –a
metamorphosis that must undergo the full release from all formations of
sovereignty.
That's truly it for tonight!

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APPENDIX of Nietzsche I-

Anti-Philosophy, 1992-1993
Wagner’s Anti-Philosophy
Translated and Edited by Wanyoung Kim

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New Course One: Poetry, Theater & Nietzschean Act

Some information missing from the reading which struck me as

important, and isn’t included the current daily reviews. I begin with an
element of advertising: Briser en Deux Histoires du Monde, a small pamphlet in
my name.

Elsewhere in Berlin, a collection entitled Rimbaud Millenium was

published. This is the title given to the review of a conference on Rimbaud
organized by the College of Philosophy, and by Rancière Borreil and myself.
Basically, it is a collection that takes Rimbaud in the form of a thought, i.e.
which stands at an equal distance from the consideration of Rimbaud as an
allegorical figure, character, and existential symbol, but also Rimbaud
considered in strictly literary form, i.e. taken up in the limited vision of the
function of the poem. Rimbaud taken up in the element of thought, despite
various interventions, and Rimbaud as a poet whose singular scansion is
declarative. The declarative scheme of thought in the poem has in truth
demanded almost the totality of those involved, a declaration in the poem
that is otherwise very busy in the letter, not distanced from textuality, but
seeking to decipher the declarative operations of Rimbaud in this literal
proximity.

Still on the subject of the poem, the last book by Michel Deguy,
published by Seuil, is titled Aux heures d’affluence (At peak times). My opinion
is that as a book, I find it a little insufficient and unnecessary, as far as it
groups texts that were all published except for one, in connections that are
sometimes difficult to grasp. There seems to be nothing that might establish

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it as a book. But the opening text has captivated my attention. In a few pages,
he has collected and ordered his conception of the poem, and more than that,
the vocation he attributes to the poem. This is one of his most synthetic and
gathered texts. I would like to identify some maxims of this opening.

1st statement: "I owe you the truth in a poem." This tiny bit orders
everything else. The poem is under an order of truth that is both imperative
and addressed. I owe you. The formula is simple and dense: this requirement
is of the order of truth, that this requirement is under the rule of an address
(I owe you), and then this truth is in a poem, i.e. a strictly immanent order.
The poem is not the instrument of the truth that is owed, but it is the truth
itself in the poem, and that's what the poem owes us.

2nd statement: The poem is composed of propositions. A proposition

is made clear between the verb “propose” and its grammatical meaning. But
this maxim refers to the declarative function: the poem contains or holds
something that is fully proposed. It is something besides in a dimension of
expression in some sense that we take it. What the poem makes is not in the
order of expression, but the proposition.

3rd statement: The role of the comparative function will be brought

up: the poem moves in what may be called the semblance of things, which is
precisely what opposes their seeming. Things are not in the order of the
seeming even though the poem captures them in their semblance, i.e. in their
reference to other things as evidence of their presence. And at last, there is
what Deguy calls the propensity of the near. The vision is that the
contemporary world is its distant abstraction, i.e. a distant primate that is not
at some distant horizon, but in an abstract dissemination glued to the image,

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or simulacrum. The poem is destined for a sort of hole that restores as much
as possible of the near and its propensity, i.e. which introduces a
commensurability. So it is for these reasons as well as others that I find this
opening interesting.

I’d like to point out a book by Esther Kellerman, Distance de fuite

(Distance of flight), published by Flammarion. Some words about this
collection. I would say this: you might think that these poems, with their
brevity, density, and sense of soft brokenness, i.e. something broken in a dull
and rough tenderness, could evoke Paul Celan. For example, in one of the
poems, which is interesting because it is like a figure in multiples of 1, 2, and
4 and this poetic numericity, this function of 1, 2, 3, and 4 and the order in
which the poem has this form, the question of the address, of alterity, is
something that bears a remote analogy to Celan. I read the poem "... Summer
snow, not two realities, a white hole, 4 plants."

But in reality this poem differs a lot from Celan, with a type of reflexive
entanglement, their order and function in the poem. I, you, they, i.e. the
reflexive provision of the poetic address. We know that in the Celan, the “tu”
address is essential. There is an symbolic feature of the 2nd person, who
commands the order of the address. Here it is entangled: a singular “nous”,
where listening is unique. I give an example of this: "what necklaces adorned
our nights, what smooth acacia ..". And of course there is a she, and what
strikes me here is that it is a mild inducer of light subtraction, which is
decentered. For example this: "she falls beyond a shadow of signs, and if the
sky has not shared it, columns or off-center," and this ‘she’ in light
subtraction, decentered, is distinct from a ‘he’ who is often clearly the

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separator. I will end on this question of he: "... he slices it up, justly and
unjustly. This ... ". There it is, and to conclude, at the other end of the
language, I want to emphasize to you Paradoxes of the Infinite by Bolzano,
translated and introduced by Sinaceur. I remind you that Bolzano is a critical
thinker because he paves the way for Cantor in the mathematization of actual
infinity. He assumes for the 1st time the possibility of actual infinity inscribed
in an actual matheme. Bolzano, in the modern genealogy of the thought of
the infinite, plays a vital role, even if he does not follow his position to the
conclusion.

Now we shall return to Nietzsche, our Nietzschean suspense, and I

would like first of all, of course in formulas, or in a non-definitive way, to
retrace or reconfigure some of the things that were said.

1) What was our starting point? Our starting point was in trying to
grasp Nietzsche's thought from the bridge of his ace, i.e. the point of his
madness, and not the reverse, i.e. viewing madness from thought, or
considering that madness simply interrupts thought, but grasping the edge
in which the Nietzsche act is decided, or perishes to determine the edges, the
points of forces, guiding lines, essential desire. This resonates a lot elsewhere
with Nietzschean signifiers. Especially if one proceeds in such a way, it
cannot be held that will to power and Eternal Return are the essential
organizing categories of Nietzsche's thought. It's not, what seen from this
point, appears to be destined regarding the Nietzschean Philosophical Act.
You could say it in these terms: there is a Nietzscheanism and there is even
more of a Nietzscheanism that there was a common Nietzscheanism during
the entire beginning of the century, and perhaps until today. And one could

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say that grasping Nietzsche from the point of view of the Act, is in a sense to
separate him from his own Nietzscheanism. Nietzscheanism was not through
and through some deception. It was for some time, but not apart from that.
The method we adopt is to separate Nietzsche from his immanent
Nietzscheanism, which otherwise reorders and accentuates with regard to
their importance and central organizing function. I should mention that there
is a text of Nancy where we find a somewhat comparable project. It is
published in Pensée Finie Deus paralysis progressiva. I would say this: What
Nancy sees fully, with which I fully agree, is that what is called Nietzsche’s
madness is in some way the taking upon oneself of what was formerly only
an announcement, only news. The moment there is a rush toward The Act
that Nietzsche must take on his own body because he does not stand any
more of the state of news. He must pay from his person and go from where
the announcement remained indefinitely open. Nancy will say this, which is
quite strong: "God is dead, but this time (Nietzsche = someone who is
paralyzed and mute), it is not new, it is the presentation of death." i.e. that
Nietzsche will turn himself into the corpse of God. You know he states that
he is God, and we commented on these texts. And that God is immediately
paralyzed and mute, it is a form in anticipation of the corpse of God. Nancy's
thesis is that Nietzsche made death of God’s present, i.e. in truth, his
statement that God died must be taken literally. God is nothing but dead. Or
that God is dead, hear the verb “to be” in its ontological resonance. Death is
not the adjective that suits God, God is death itself and this is what makes the
very body of Nietzsche present, in the form of progressive paralysis. He
cannot say anything because no one can speak of his own death; no one can
say “I'm dead.” One could say God is dead, but it is news, an announcement.

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Who says it? A witness, is he someone who states it? Is it good news heard
somewhere? Nietzsche shows that God as dead, he is himself the dead God
when he founders. We find that obviously what we have tried to state about
art, which is that Nietzsche, under the name of Nietzsche, becomes the name
of all possible names, of all the names of history, and under this name, what
occurs is the death of God. Nietzsche is more than a proof, but the
presentation of what God is dead. And so we find this fatal idea that the
thought of Nietzsche can be satisfied by the announcement, of the news or
testimony. It is not enough to testify that God is dead.

This needs to be presented and it is under the anonymous name of

Nietzsche that it will be done. The point of this discussion is to assign it
strictly to the formula God is dead. We have assigned it to the other, which
was the necessity of breaking in two histories of the world, and of affirmation
as such. His madness arrives when one breaks the announcement, one breaks
it, but in assuming the two words of the rupture. Nietzsche says that he has
created the world, not one that will come, but one that was there. Nancy takes
it in a more narrow sense, in the formula God is dead, which gives a decisive
function to the formula God is dead. What is at stake in madness is the
presentation of mortality as such, of the death of God, which Nietzsche will
interpret as the death of the subject, or as he said, the ultimate fatal jolt of
metaphysics. What makes Nietzsche philosophically present, is the corpse of
the Cartesian form of philosophy, the God who is no longer even able to state
his being because his being is none other than death being ultimately the last
gasp of the cogito, or the self-positing of the subject. This is the fundamental
thesis of Nancy: what Nietzsche tells us, is that the essence of self-positing is

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death, and that thus the subject itself is made present by Nietzsche, the
category of the subject in its mortal essence. A subject is ultimately only his
own death or the owning of his death, and the owning of his death is
obviously unspeakable. That there will be material to challenge it, to
challenge that the Nietzschean form of paralysis of The Act are the
presentation of the mortal essence of the subject. What I believe is that here
Nietzsche gives up an assumption of finitude, to a finite arrangement of
thought, it is what eventually accomplishes it but in the double sense of
completing something [achever], i.e. achieving the form of the cogito but also
in the establishment of a finite order of thought, i.e. of establishing thought
in its elementary consideration, in the sense of its element, in finitude. I wish
to point out this other attempt, this other way of grasping Nietzsche's
thought from the point of what has been called his madness.

2. We have mentioned grasping Nietzsche’s thought from the point of

view of madness and not the opposite, i.e. of capturing it from the viewpoint
of his act. How is the Philosophical Act determined?

3. We have said, thirdly, that this Act is that of breaking into two world
histories. It is in this sense that we have declared it arch-politics. In this sense,
Nietzsche’s thought is probably the most contemporary radical thought of
the revolution, although it is in competition with it. Breaking in 2 world
histories, which has led us to say:

4. What about the old history of the world, that was broken? The old
history of the world is the history of the will to nothingness. More precisely,
it is the history of the domination of the types of the will to nothingness. And
the generic name of the domination of the types of the will to nothingness, is

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Christianity. You could equally say that the old world history is the history
of nihilism, and that it is this history that will be broken in two by the
Nietzschean uttering.

5. A new history, which is at stake in The Act, is that of a yes. We have

tried to demonstrate a complex issue, so it is composed from the debris of
nihilism itself. Essential thesis: the yes is a yes to the inevaluable, i.e. a yes to
the very bottom of life as life that does not let itself be evaluated. And only
the rupture of nihilism exposes in a broken form the pure and egalitarian
multiplicity. The inevaluable is exposed as such to the yes in the element of
the rupture of nihilism that produces from it the egalitarian multiplicity. It
takes an explosion, which is not metaphorical, but is the real of The Act. It is
necessary for the egalitarian multiplicity to result from the explosion of
nihilism as only this egalitarian multiple disposed of to produce the
affirmative yes.

6. The yes or affirmation, the new history is not a new value: any
interpretation of Nietzsche in terms of the creation of new values is restrictive
and ultimately inaccurate. It has to do with creating new values, but to create
or blow up possibilities of affirming the inevaluable life. Precisely as it's
inevaluable, it is not as such pronounced under a value. We can also say it is
a variant, that the yes is not an interpretation or a new interpretation, but it
is the end of the interpretations. The yes is precisely what does not interpret.
It can even be argued that the superman is the man of the uninterpretable,
the man, whom if I may say, has no need to interpret, where the Dionysian
power is non-interpretive.

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7. We have noticed that The Act, which is this explosion that disposes
of the egalitarian multiple to expose the pure affirmation, is actually prepared
by the genealogical interpretation of nihilism. The Act is, so to speak
infinitely or indefinitely prepared by the genealogical interpretation of
nihilism with it being widely known that since we are in interpretation we
are in nihilism itself. The Nietzschean interpretation of Nietzsche is indeed
extracted from nihilism itself, as is any regime of interpretation. So you could
say that The Act will be prepared from within nihilism by its genealogical
interpretation that is an extreme form of nihilism. But The Act does not reside
in interpretation. At most, we will find its pedagogy, or see it as propaganda.
Not its arch-politics, but its politics. This is where the resources of sophistry
will be mobilized, available since the Greeks, and consequently they can be
reaffirmed. In the question “Who is Zarathustra,” also asked by Heidegger,
we have said: it is an equivocal figure, an equivocal figure between the
interpretation of nihilism and the Dionysian yes. Between the one who has
the capacity to interpret, pushed toward the possibility of saying no, of
saying a radical no, and one who would be able to say yes. This ambiguity is
represented by Nietzsche in the form of someone who is his own precursor,
the very definition of Zarathustra. He is his own precursor as far as he is a
master of interpretation, and interpretation itself remains intrinsic to the
interpreted, i.e. to nihilism.

And what ultimately brings meaning is the very act in which the
Dionysian yes is possible. Zarathustra moves from side to side in this
essential equivocation. This is the entire issue of the 2nd metamorphosis. The
first metamorphosis is the camel into the lion, i.e. the one which bears

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hardship, to the one who has the power to interpret, that of a certain manner
is nothing but an internal enigma of nihilism itself. For to be the lion of
nihilism is to be in nihilism’s most violent form. It is a relative enigma, for it
is an immanent enigma. One can imagine or depict the figure of the lion as
an extreme figure, or a form of extremism. You could even call it nihilism as
far as nihilism of prey. The 2nd metamorphosis involves the tipping of the
master of interpretation into a figure of affirmative innocence. It is the
transformation of the lion into the child. It is not an interpretive enigma. It is
the very enigma of The Act. Alternatively there is a hermeneutic intelligibility
in the metamorphosis of the camel to the lion, but there is no possible
hermeneutic intelligibility of the lion into the child. It is uninterpretable. We
had said: the whole problem indeed lies there, and this is the true heart of the
Nietzschean question. It can be formulated abstractly in this way: how do we
name, simply name the rupture with the order of no, which brings the advent
of yes, without it being a double negation? without the advent of yes not
merely being the negation of the order of no. Deleuze is right: Nietzsche's
thought is not dialectics, but dialectics as an adversary: how do we arrive
from there to the yes other than in the form of the negation of the negation?

How do we bring about affirmation of the inevaluable other than by

breaking with a first scheme of critique? Critique does not bring about
affirmation. The paroxysmal interpretation does not have affirmative
innocence. The child is not the negation of the lion, while the lion is (not) the
negation of the camel. The camel is the one that supports it, and the lion the
one who cannot stand all of it. Between the one who finds it unbearable, and
the one in the mastery of the furious interpretation of Christian nihilism, and

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then holy affirmation, innocence and forgetting, there is no negation. Thus

the last focus on the question of Nietzsche is that of knowing how the
Dionysian yes occurs like another world, a world I insist is without value.
This is not the world of other values, but the world of the inevaluable. How
does that happen? Other than by negation, than by dialectical negation, i.e.
of sophistrical geneaology of the old world, which we know is itself extreme
nihilism. This is where the question of art enters the scene, and it is where it
should be placed a radical question. Art should at least be able to present this
metamorphosis, to capture its own power, other than be just the element of
negation. You could say this here: the function of art is to affirm the
affirmation. Art is summoned here as far as there is power to affirm the
affirmation. It is not affirmation itself.

Nietzsche never gave up stating that The Act is arch-political, and it is

not a new aesthetics or a new art. The Act is not aesthetic. It is not fair to make
Nietzsche responsible for an aesthetic vision of politics, including the Nazi
usage of Nietzsche. He does not have a directly aesthetic representation in
The Act. There is a problem of presenting the affirmation other than as the
negation of negation, and it is a problem that requires art in its didactic form.
Only art is able to say what it has to do with asking for affirmation. That does
not mean it is he who is or makes effective affirmation. This is not an artistic
revolution. But art can at least let it be understood how the statement can be
anything but the negation of the negation. It is in this sense that I said that art
can affirm the affirmation.

We might also say this: art is par excellence what is not dialectical. Art
is not dialecticity, i.e. the ability to connect to the affirmation other than in

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the modality of the negation of negation. Thus, the question of art is central
to a boundary that must be captured well. It is central as far as it has to do
with capturing, giving to thought; it is the possibility of affirmation, not its
real (this falls within the effectivity of arch-politics, breaking into two
histories of the world), but in the least, art may suggest the possibility of
affirmation, otherwise, once more than resulting from critical extremism, i.e.
in a scheme evading interpretation. One could say that art is non-interpretive,
or that there is something non-interpretive in art. Thereupon the texts are
labyrinthine. But we can follow Ariadne’s threat in the labyrinth: there is
interpretation in art, but there is also non-interpretive element, something
that connects us to the presentation of the affirmation This is art as far as it is
non-dialectical art. Here is the dispute with Wagner. Why does it become
obsession? It becomes obsession to the point that he devotes to it his last
strength.

The register of psychoanalytic explanation is fully open, and so I will

not continue further. It is absolutely true and absolutely useless. If we try not
to go into too much interpretation, that Wagner is the name for, what is the
name, while trying to avoid answering right away that it was his father's
name. I would say: Wagner was without doubt first of all to Nietzsche, the
name of the return of high art, i.e. the name of high art, i.e. in fact the name
resulting from the possible affirmative dimension of art. We should not be
mistaken about it: high art needs to be considered in a rigorous manner. It is
art that can affirm the affirmation. It is art that is not embarrassed in its own
dialectic. It is certain that Wagner at one time was Nietzsche’s name for this.
And then finally, Wagner has been the name for the responsibility of a

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dialectization of high art itself. The background of the trial is there. In a sense,
Nietzsche never completely abandoned the first thesis that Wagner was the
name of high art of the century.

He has constantly maintained that he had it in a greater fashion. He

never said that Bizet was greater, that Carmen was greater than Tétralogie. He
had criticized him for dialecticized high art itself, of being soaked left to his
knees or his head in dialectics. This dialectization of high art has a name for
him: the theatralization. Wagner is the one who dramatized high art. Now
the theater, to Nietzsche, is dialectic art par excellence. It is par excellence the
paradigm of non-affirmative art, or the one furthest from affirming the
affirmation. Hence Nietzsche’s relentless diatribes against theater. Theater is
literally, through and through the negation of the negation. It is even in this
proper order, artistically extremist. It is through and through typological, and
it is art dedicated to the presentation of the naming of types. And Wagner
himself has submitted to this rule of high art. He has immersed himself in
dialectic theatralization. So the question that arises from there is to know this:
since high art, where Wagner remained the symbol, by his own genius, has
been thrown into non-affirmative dialectic, or in infinite interpretation, what
can be the artistic supports of art? That’s why there was a terrible crisis
around Wagner.

There is a history which challenges the very possibility of The Act. The
alliance with Wagner was decisive in Nietzsche’s strategy during an entire
period, because it testified that there was an affirmative resource of the return
of high art, within the naming... But the compromise in theatralization, i.e.
ultimately with Christianity itself, is a terrible blow on the plausibility of The

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Act. This is what is expressed with a terrible acuity in the passage in

Zarathustra on the magician. Let's look at some passages of dialogue between
Zarathustra and casting spells. The magician or sorcerer is Wagner. He is
constantly portrayed as the sorcerer, magician, as cunning ... he has
enchanted high art, cursed it, he was high art and has enchanted it in an
immanent manner. He was the magician himself, he threw a curse on what
was otherwise the symbol. It is the magician who ends up turning against
himself in his mind, the man, who having transformed internally, freezes in
contact with his bad science, his bad conscience, he who was high art.
Zarathustra encounters him, and wonders if he is not going to meet a great
man.

Zarathustra sings a song and gives him the staff. Wagner says the
following in Zarathustra: "O Zarathustra I’ve had it with all of this, I am
disgusted with my artifices. I'm not good at pretending, but you know I seek
greatness. I have wanted to do with a great man, and I have seduced many
men, but it was a lie beyond my powers. I am broken from it. O Zarathustra,
everything is a lie in me but I am broken from it. It is the only truth that
remains in me. That brings you honor, Zarathustra says gloomily, lowering
his eyes and looking away. Seeking greatness, that brings you honor but it
also betrays you, you're not that great. Sinister old magician, what you have
best, what I respect in you, is that you're tired of yourself and that you have
declared I'm not great. In this I honor you, in that you are indeed the penitent
of the spirit, and it was only the time for a breath or a wink. For a moment
you were real."

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What should we say on this complicated text? Wagner attested to the

return of high art, and he was in search of greatness, authentically. Then he
injected into it lies and artifice. The thesis is that high art, if it is dialecticized,
theatricized, histrionized, and actually becomes the simulacrum of itself. So
Wagner, by dramatizing high music, has established artifice and lies in art
itself, and in doing so he has corrupted and lose greatness of which he was
the name and symbol, and Zarathustra gives him The Act by saying, "I'm not
great." I doubt whether Wagner said it, but it's nice for Nietzsche to have him
say it in Zarathustra! This drama of the discussion with the old magician,
notice how it is treated here: Zarathustra is dark, lowers his eyes, he is himself
defeated in part. The discussion is very strange, and it is not a proud
affirmation of Zarathustra faced with an enchanter defeated by artifice. There
is something achieve and undone in even Zarathustra. The Nietzschean
conscience that ultimately Wagnerian art is the dialectization of high art, its
renunciation, its nihilistic extremism carried out, has left him helpless on the
following question: how do we present the affirmation, how will the
affirmation be affirmed, if it is not in the manner of high art?

There are trails of research on this point.

There is the matter of the poem, in German, i.e. the idea of an

unprecedented breakdown in language, a language evading dialecticity.
Nietzsche contrasts his German in his native dialect, a German that is made
once more capable of affirmation. This is no small task It is the first track, the
track of the poem as a native form of the presentation of The Act.

And then, and this is an important 2nd theme, he has gone looking
towards dance as a symbolic form of art that is non-theatrical or non-dialectic.

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On this question of Nietzsche and dance, which is a track that is both

conjoined with, and alternative to the poem, I have composed a text, which I
give to you here.

The question was: why is dance obligated by Nietzsche to be a

metaphor of thought, of his thought? This is our question: What power of art
can be summoned which at least affirms the affirmation? Dance is opposed
to the great enemy of Zarathustra-Nietzsche, an enemy he calls the spirit of
gravity. Dance is above all the image of a thought without any spirit of
gravity. We must understand when Nietzsche speaks of the spirit of gravity,
that it is what prohibits affirmation, essentially. It's not only what is clumsy,
German. It is what paralyzes the aerial possibility of affirmation. Arguably,
if one attaches to it ontological considerations, that the spirit of heaviness is
the opposite of the debris of stars, as we had seen

(Again, the aerial metaphor). This is what sticks to the type, to the
typology, so that you one is generally obliged to the reactive type to which
one is assigned. I said that it is important to identify other images of
subtraction, as they put it in part or place it in a dense metaphorical network.

There is the bird. Zarathustra says, "It's because I hate the spirit of
heaviness that I keep the bird." There is an essential metaphorical connection
between dance and the bird. The dance is what brings the bird to the interior
of the body.

There is more generally the image of the flight. Zarathustra says; "He
who learns how to fly will give the earth a new name. He will name it light".

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One could say that the Nietzschean definition of dance would be this: dance
is a new name given to the land.

There is also of course the child. This is also why the dance will be the
presentation of the 2nd metamorphosis, our essential enigma. The 2nd
metamorphosis of dance is not negation of the negation, but it is represented
in the leaping of dance. The child, as we know, is innocence and forgetting, a
new beginning, the 3rd metamorphosis after the camel and the lion. Dance,
bird and flight are all that refer to the child.

Dance is innocence because it is the body before the body, the body
before the weight of the body. As the child, dance is forgotten for it is a body
that forgets its restraint or weight; it is a body forgetful of itself. Dance is also
a new beginning: the dancing gesture should always be as if it brought about
its own beginning.

And play: it frees the body from any social mimicry, from any
seriousness, any propriety. Nietzsche says of the child: a wheel that moves
by itself. it is also a possible definition of dance. It is like a circle in space, but
lie a circle that is its own principle, a circle that is not drawn from the outside,
but which is drawn. And the child is a first mobile, but the child as well: each
gesture or layout of the dance should be presented not as a consequence or
mechanical effect, but as a source of mobility; and then dance is also simple
affirmation because the dance can be said to be what radiantly places the
negative body, i.e. the shameful body, in absence. The dance is what places
the shameful body in absence.

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Nietzsche also mentioned fountains, in the same line as images: "My

soul is like a gushing fountain." The dancing body is gushing outside the
ground but also outside of itself. I believe that finally Bachelard saw it clearly
in the interpretation of Nietzsche’s poetics, this question of the formation of
the affirmation raises a metaphorical element of air. In the arrangement of
the elements, it is air that will name the mystery of the last metamorphosis.
Dance is what permits the aerial name of the earth itself, and it is what aerates
the soil or allows the earth to be thought of as provided with constant
aeration. Or it even assumes the sigh or breath of the earth.

That is because the central question of the dance is the relation

between verticality and attraction. It is basically the same problem of the
presentation of The Act. That's why dance is a relevant metaphor. This is the
moment when verticality dissolves an attraction. Not in the sense that it
denies it in a visible manner, but in the sense where it was time for a flash,
but it is as if the attraction were dissolved. The dancing body is a vertical
body from this point of view, but in the dissolution of an attraction which
transits after it. Basically, dance manifests the possible which is the possible
of the affirmation that land and air exchange their position, and earth and air
pass into another. Under the question of the transformation of the child into
a lion, there is the question of a permutation of the position between air and
land. It is for these reasons that Nietzschean thought will find its metaphor
in dance, which will recapitulate the series of the bird, the flight, the fountain,
the child, and the impalpable air.

One could say: this series is a bit too innocent, and finally slightly
vapid. It is gives Nietzsche an image where innocence is guaranteed by an

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overabundance of metaphors. But it is necessary to understand that

Nietzsche gives this series as traversed by dance in its connection to power
and rage. This is the point. We can say that The Act is the traversal in a
powerful metaphorical series of innocence. The dance is at once one of the
terms of the series and at the same time the violent traversal of this series.
Zarathustra says that "there are enraged feet of the dancer." In dance, we have
something like the traversal in the power of innocence. It is the lion who
affirms the child, for it is he who in some way traverses it in power, so that
metamorphosis is not exactly the right word. It would be necessary to
imagine as a kind of jump of the dancer in the trajectory in which the force of
the good is the lion, but the suspended aerial grace is the same thing as
innocence, which is the child. But this is not representable other than in an
artistic recording, where dance is the symbol.

All that is related to Nietzsche’s belief that thought is an

intensification. We must understand how dance is called upon as spectacle if
I may say so, or a visibility of thought as intensification. It is also necessary
to be able to understand that the child is an intensification of the lion, much
rather than its negation, the dancing intensification of the lion. For Nietzsche,
let’s remember this is the key, the thought does not occur somewhere other
than where it is given, it is effective there, it is what is intensified in yourself,
it is the movement of its own intensity, we could say. And it is at this point
where thought should be purely given as a movement of its own intensity, or
it is what should be affirmed, contrary to reactive types, and it is where the
image of dance is natural. Basically you could say that dance visibly conveys
thought as an immanent form, in the figure of the body. It is the body as

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visibility of an immanent intensification. Of course, this imposes a certain

vision of dance, particularly Nietzsche is opposed to any vision of dance as
an external constraint, i.e. as a gymnastics with rules, i.e. as a flexible body
obeying a prescribed configuration, and that includes a configuration
prescribed by music. The dance is not at all an obedient and muscular body,
i.e. a body that is both capable and submissive. It is the opposite of the
dancing body. The dancing body is the body that inside it exchanges air and
the earth. Besides, this contrary to dance is a capable and submissive body,
and it t has a name, the German, the bad German. The definition of the
German is said to be: obedience and good legs. But after all, it is a possible
definition of the dancer. There may be a vision of dance, a tyrannical vision
of dance that requires obedience and good legs from the dancer. He is able,
with the necessary good legs, of music or choreograph that is imposed, or
inflicted upon him. Obviously such an image of dance does not correspond
to what it was intended for here, i.e. I recall giving visibility towards the
thought as pure intensification, and beyond that consequently and fleetingly
giving us a pedagogy of the yes, i.e. the pedagogy of the reign of pure
affirmation. Obedience and good legs are not everything in dance, but
everything in the military parade. To understand the thought of dance, one
must understand that it has the exact opposite of the relation to the body
manifested in the military parade. This is interesting because it's the 2 cases
where we have bodies performing something under the horizon of a horizon
of a musical or military rhythm. German is the military. The parade is the
body that is aligned and hammering, not a vertical body, and in spite of its
appearance it is a horizontal body, horizontal and noisy, the struck rate.
While dance is the aerial and broken body, it is the vertical body. It is not the

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hammering body, but the body on tiptoe, i.e. which pokes the ground as if it
were a cloud. This is the silent body, not the struck cadence. The parade is
the body commanded by the thunder of its own strikes. Finally, dance
indicates a vertical thinking for Nietzsche, thought stretched toward its own
height. One knows all too well that in the extreme of its stretching toward its
own height, there is the noon of the Dionysian yes, where dance is a kind of
earthly allegory. Basically, dance communicates with noon, too. Noon is
when the sun is at its zenith. One could give a definition of dance: dance is
the body dedicated to the zenith, its own zenith. If we go deeply into the
reasons for this emphasis on dance, in the failure of high art whose corrupt
symbol is Wagner, Nietzsche sees in dance the theme of mobility that would
be attached to itself, i.e. which moves without detaching from its own center.
A mobility that unfolds itself, as if it were the expansion of its center. There
is an elementary interpretation, which is that dance as an art form
corresponds to Nietzsche’s idea of thought as Becoming…

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New Course Two (Badiou, Nietzsche, & Art)

We had in some manner left Nietzsche on this following quibble

concerning art. One could summarize it in the following ways:

1. Art has the power required for arch-political cut-off, the fatal
gesture, for The Act, only if is what Nietzsche called high art or the art of high
style, with the understanding being, long story short, that high art or high
style designates art that is commensurate with its Greek origins.

2. Wagner is the contemporary of Nietzsche, who in Nietzsche’s eyes

is the sole possessor of a project of high art. It is he who, in this century,
proposes or re-proposes the theme of high art.

3. Nietzsche is gradually convinced, and at the end of his life

furiously so, that Wagner is not representative of greatness, and that the
Wagnerian project, the Wagnerian opera are not realized by high art, but
rather by its theatrical imitation. So ultimately there is a Wagnerian
imposture in the question of art which presents an imposture under the
theme of high art.

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From this, it results that the destiny and function of art are obscured.
Or more specifically that the connection between the Philosophical Act and
the form of the power of high art should be re-examined precisely in the light
of the Wagnerian imposture that is at last uncovered. This is what constitutes
the importance of the Case of Wagner. This is the reason why he uses this
expression: there is a Case of Wagner, who is at once a symptom and a
problem, in the light of which one must review the foundational correlation
between art and the Philosophical Act. Moreover, The Case of Wagner is
subtitled: a problem for musicians. This should be understood in the sense
where it is not simply a problem for musicians, but it is a problem, period.
The Case of Wagner is indeed a problem, and reformulates the relationship
between art and the Philosophical Act.

This tension or problem may be taken up in the light of two statements

of Nietzsche, both seen in the Case of Wagner:

1st statement: “Wagner summarizes modernity, and nothing else will do; one must
begin by being Wagnerian.”

2nd statement: “Wagner is but one of my sicknesses.”

So on one hand Wagner sums up modernity, and on the other, Wagner

is simply one of my sicknesses. As a consequence modernity, as Nietzsche
thinks of it here, is itself presented as a sickness. The essence of modernity is
in being a sickness of thought. Or even in modernity being where one must
fight. One has often seen in Nietzsche a prophet of modernity, but we
understand very well that modernity is a significant definiteness here. In a
certain sense, what Nietzsche states, is what he wants, a cut where he is the

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instigator of a cut with modernity, a healing of modernity, an exit from

modernity. One will also say on the proper question of art that modernity is
defined as “the general transformation of art in the sense of histrionics”. One
can also say that modernity is the impossibility of high art. It is in this sense
that the case of Wagner is exemplary: it attests to the form of impossibility of
high art. As for high art, consequently, in a contrapositive way, what is it?
High art is well a non-histrionic art, i.e. non-theatrical art.

Compare to Nietzsche contra Wagner: “I have for the theater, massive

art par excellence, the outrageous contempt that he owes today from the
depth of the artist’s heart…”

Modernity is the process of a theatrical dialectization of art. That

indicates a related point: for the arch-political act, which must break into two
histories of the world, it is essential for it not to be a theatrical act. There is in
political revolution something of the order of histrionics. The revolution is
about the scene of history in a theatrical posture. Against that, Nietzsche
proposes a non-theatrical explosion (explosive in a non-Christian manner). It
is necessary to conceive of the break of the world in a form distinct from
theatricality. This is what he means by emphasizing the silent character of the
true Event: that he must not owe anything to the theatre, contrary to the
Revolution. He must abolish theatricality, break from it. The arch-political
gesture is the gesture through which thought leaves the scene, and it no
longer inhabits the site of its power, but it is in departure of the scene, in the
silence of its break. In final Nietzsche, the negative slope of the question of
art is that of the departure of the scene, of the putting to death of the
submission of art to theatricality or histrionics.

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The problem that falls upon us is this: the original matrix of high art is
tragedy. It refers to the permanent manner in which Greek tragedy as a
matrix or a primary form of high art. But isn’t tragedy the founder of theater?
This point is essential.

The demand of the rupture with modernity is to finish it in a certain

manner with theatricality, but the paradigm of high art is found in Greek
tragedy where one can suspect that it is what founds theatricality. How can
theater be at once the stigmata of modernity and the matrix of high art? How
can it be what forbids high art in the Case of Wagner and what has in other
places given a form to the theme of high art?

An apparent contradiction, a great difficulty from this point. This

leads us to examine the 1st theses by Nietzsche on tragedy and the tragic in
Birth of Tragedy. There is an ambiguity of theater: a form through which high
art has become impossible, and its primary model. On this question of
theater, one has the most powerful continuity in the thought of Nietzsche.
This is one of the points where Nietzsche has not varied, despite a specified
paradox. The fundamental thesis of Birth of Tragedy is the following: tragedy
does not succeed theater, and is not theater, and its essence is in exception to
all theatricality. The paradox will be raised when theater will be absolved
from its ambiguity, theatricality will be what corrupts high art, tragedy
remains high art, but at the price of the non-theatricality of tragedy. This
point is essential in penetrating the theme of high art. There is a disjunction
between tragedy and theater. As long as its thought is tragic, tragedy will not
relieve tragedy from its theatrical sense. One can thus state that the arch-
political act has a tragic connotation at the same time that one will argue that

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it has left the scene, i.e. that there is a subtraction in theatricality. One can
even go as far as to say that Greek tragedy is high art, for it is not theater.
Theater has been created by Euripedes, and not through high tragics, which
are Aeschylus, essentially, and subsequently Sophocles.

Euripedes invents it, and it is the corruption of tragedy, an obliteration

of its essence.

To understand that, one must wonder what is tragedy, high art and
the tragic being a determination of thought, and the arch-political act.

In an orderly manner:

-Aesthetically, tragedy is the pairing of music and myth. There is

tragedy when there is a regulated and rigorous conjunction of music and
myth. This is why Nietzsche will voluntarily call tragedy the “musical
drama”, an expression that is typically Wagnerian. Nietzsche identifies
tragedy as a pairing of music and myth, and it is legible in the expression
“musical drama”. What is key (determinant) is the aesthetic of tragedy as a
conjunction of music and myth, under the jurisdiction of music as a shelter
of the creation of myth. “In tragedy, we possess tragic myth newly re-
emerged from the genius of music.” Myth, as long as it emerges from music:
thus pairing myth and music under the jurisdiction of music.

Figurally, in terms of figures (great proper names), tragedy is the

pairing of Apollo and Dionysus under the jurisdiction of Dionysus. “The two
protective divinities of art, Apollo and Dionysus, suggest to us that in the
Greek world there exists a contrast between the origins and ends of the art of
sculpture and the art of Dionysus. These two instincts stand side by side,

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being mutually awakened to perpetuate this conflict of contraries that

recover this name of art, until, finally, they appear united.” Art is distributed
under 2 names and not one: there are 2 tutelary divinities of artistic power,
and in the normal order there is a disjunction. What characterizes tragedy is
the conjunction of the two. This is not a dialectic resolution, a unity of
contraries, but it is a placing of immanent tension. The principle which is
under the name of Dionysus and the one who is under the name of Apollo,
in tragedy, are placed in immanent tension, and this tension constitutes
tragedy as such. It is a creation of will, what has been willed, and this
conjunction is what Nietzsche calls a metaphysical miracle: there is
something falling short of what this explication does not demonstrate again,
i.e. miraculous conjunction. The miraculous existence of this miracle is
tragedy as such.

Vitally, from an ontological point of view, i.e. how the inevaluable

power of life is exercised there. Tragedy is the pairing of dreams and
drunkenness. The dream and drunkenness are pre-artistic or trans-artistic
qualities, and are qualities of nature herself, of vitality as such. “It has to do
with energies of art that stem directly from nature without the intermediary
of the human artist.” As far as the simultaneity of the dream and
drunkenness, tragedy is the conjunction of the energies of art produced by
nature. The dream is what delivers appearance as appearance, and it is the
form or vision of appearance, and the happy necessity of the image which is
known as image, and which is not a self-discrediting as an image but on the
contrary is serenely produced as image. It is appearance as appearance, not
as far as degraded from the false which appears, or subordinated to the

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veiling of essence. It is its solar brilliance, its self-sufficiency, appearance

resting in itself in the calm of its vision. A “vision contemplated and
compromised” that is in the sculpture: it is the dimension of the dream
conceived in this way, the self-sufficient glory of the appearance. It is vital
energy, conceived not in the form of philosophy of the awareness or
appearance that has returned to what it is not, and arises from appearance. It
is what is as far as it is, what blooms in the solar glory and its appearance, in
an exposed, hidden depth. Sculpture produces in its force the possibility of
the solar appearance as self-sufficient; it is the dream such that, given in the
work, the sculpture is the work-dream where the dream is invested in its
form of work which does not discover anything other than its appearance.

Drunkenness is the manifestation of the artistic energy of nature. Is it

the offering of the earth in its creative movement? It is what is not
individuated (the dream proposes the individuation of appearance,
something that is serenely detached). In drunkenness, the abolition of
individuation in the immediate totalization of life (the vital) as such, is earth
“offering itself its gifts,” and it is thus the pure movement of the offering of
what “there is” (il y a). The dream, in a certain manner, is what is offered, the
manner in which the earth produces its gifts in an immanent fashion.
Tragedy will be the conjunction of drunkenness and dreams, of dreams
invested with drunkenness. Tragedy is what is offered as an offering, in the
movement of an offering? It is the moment of miraculous equilibrium, a
metaphysical miracle, where the capacity is to deliver what is offered as an
offering.

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Generically, tragedy is the pairing of sculpture and rhapsody (the

dream) on one hand, and the musician (drunkenness) on the other, i.e. from
the Apollonian and Dionysian. “The plastic artist and the epic poet close to
him plunge into pure contemplation of images and the Dionysian musician,
without calling forth images, identified with pain itself…”. Tragedy is the
contemplation of the image under the rule of absence of any image. The
image is under the law of the non-image. There is nothing but the image but
as far as the image is offered as the offering, the profound rule of the image
(sculpture) is in being under the jurisdiction of what does not use any images
(music). What does not use any images = music, and image = sculpture.
Tragedy is the moment where in the flux of images, the movement without
image passes, or even where image is nothing but the transit of the non-
image. One can say that tragedy is this art where the representation is in fact
under the law of the irrepresentable, the mode where what cannot be
represented is in transit in the representation. This gives the definition of high
art. Let’s say this is the myth of gods, the imagery of the gods, but given or
transited by musical intensification, traveled, transited, de-imaged in music.
High art is the de-imagination the image. The dream is traveled by intense
de-imagination. Nothing in that is theatre, and does not invoke, revoke, or
convoke it. There is no scene, actor, representation which touches the essence
of tragedy. It is not representation except by accident, it is the obliteration of
the image in the movement of its own intensity. Theater is a creation by
Euripedes in the eyes of Nietzsche, “the criminal Euripedes,” and he has
sacrificed tragedy, has accomplished his “suicide.” He has sacrificed herself
to something besides herself, and The Actor of this sacrifice in every sense of
the word, was Euripedes.

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Who is Euripedes? The trial of Euripedes is an anticipation of the

subsequent trial of Wagner. The system of arguments which dispose of
Wagner are what identify Euripedes as doing away with high art. Euripedes
is a Socratic dislocation of tragedy. Nietzsche calls philosophy the criminal of
criminals. Here, Euripedes is a criminal, i.e. he subordinates art to philosophy
(such is the essence of his crime). From the point of view of the essence of
tragedy, what does Euripedes do?

Aesthetically, it is the criminal birth of theatre which is the crossing

out or obliteration of tragedy. It pretends to no longer submit myth to music
but to discourse. Consequently, and ultimately, it is Euripedes who is
homogeneous in the destruction of myth by science. An essential thesis by N:
science has destroyed myth from Socrates and Plato, and Euripedes is the one
who dramatizes this destruction from the proper angle through which he
submits allusion to myth or myth itself to discursive logic in place of
capturing it in the ‘intensification and drunkenness of music’. “Science has
destroyed myth and this destruction has expelled poetry from its ideal
homeland to turn it henceforth into an exile.” An allusion to Plato’s
banishment of the poet from his ideal city. The essence of exile where
Euripedes is the instrument and artist, and this is the destruction of poetry
“Euripedes as thinker and non-poet.”

Parenthesis: the destruction of myth, the mythical rooting of thought,

is constitutive of philosophy. There could not have been philosophy except
in the cost of the end of the pregnancy of myth. Philosophy originates at the
end of the power of myth, under the condition or regard of the paradigm of
science. If Euripedes is the theatralization of this gesture, he is the tragic

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contemporary of philosophy. This is what Nietzsche says: “philosophical

thought dominates art and obliges it to cling to the trunk of dialectic.” One
can thus say that in effect Euripedes will create theater in the form of an
obliteration of tragedy by philosophy. The creation of theater is fallaciously
inscribed in tragic genealogy (3rd tragedy), but executes its obliteration in the
dominant element of philosophy. Myth is simulated and effaced. What is put
into place in this obliteration, is a simulacrum of myth, and effaced, it is no
longer there. These grievances are taken up against Wagner, as a result.
Nietzsche is aware of this primordial mutual belonging of theater and
philosophy. Not tragedy and philosophy, but theater. There is a
responsibility of philosophy in the theatralization of tragedy, i.e. in its end.
What this indicates to us is in reality that there is a constitutive element of
theatricality in philosophy. Philosophy is co-present in theater, and theater is
co-present in philosophy. There is a primordial node between the two.
Theater is forgotten from tragedy (the forgetting of Being!). Euripedes is the
patron of this obliteration, and this is connected to the proper mode in which
philosophy is submitted to art. Theater is exemplarily art which attests to the
form of submission of art to philosophy. An interesting point of view on
philosophy and theater. A primordial co-belonging. This is aesthetically why
Euripedes no longer names tragedy, the pairing of music and myth, but the
submission of myth to discourse, and through which that, a passage to a
simulated or masked myth under the jurisdiction of philosophy.

Formally, the project of Euripedes is to reverse the relation between

Dionysus and Apollo, to place their conjunction under the law of Apollo, and
indeed eradicate through this very submission the form of Dionysus, to fully

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re-appropriate tragedy to Apollo. “Euripedes’ intention is to eliminate its

primitive tension from tragedy.” Wanting to reverse the coupling in the
domination of Apollo, he eliminates the two, and he cannot be Apollonian
…in the sense of the conjunction of the dream and drunkenness, i.e. in the
sense where an ontological operation is returned as little as possible. And if
The Act is the execution of this novel possibility, it is absolutely central in the
Nietzschean device, grasped in a way other than from the genealogical and
critical angle, but grasped from the angle of affirmation.

As for Wagner: how has Nietzsche perceived him? He had proposed

to recreate myths under the jurisdiction of music. This was his explicit
purpose, for his purpose was to create myth under the shelter of music, under
the shelter of musical drunkenness. He was immediately perceived by
Nietzsche as someone who the equivalent of what tragedy had been for
Greeks. The 1st perception is that of the hero of the arch-political act itself.
Or, if you will, Wagner is perceived by Nietzsche at the start as the attestation
of the return of high art, but also, according to an old theme that goes back to
Holderlin, who attests that Germany will be at the height of Greece. It is
Holderlin, for he will provide the Germany people with a form of high art as
far as the reconciliation of myth and music, of dreams and drunkenness, and
he will be for Germany what Aeschylus and tragedy have been for the
Greeks. Wagner is the one who announces Germany as new Greece, in the
categories of Nietzsche.

Compare to Birth of Tragedy: “and thus to do justice to the Dionysian

gift of a people, myth and music, and given their close kinship, the decline
(decadence) of one leading to the decline of the other. In Germany today:

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nature is hostile to art and life and Socratic optimism.” The situation of
Germany is Euripedian: an interruption of the conjunction between founding
myth and Dionysian music. “But there are some consoling symptoms… let
us keep believing that the German soul… one day she will awaken, kill the
dragon…she will destroy the sword of Brunhilda. In tragedy, we possess
tragic myth, and it must make us expect… the worst pain, in the service of
treacherous dwarves.”

I make 5 emphatic points:

1st point: the determination of the Wagnerian opera as Dionysian

myth. It is not characterized as theater. What holds Nietzsche in the
Wagnerian resurrection does not concern theatrical representation, but the
conjunction of music and myth under the jurisdiction of music, with what
myth carries over from the Dionysian.

2nd point: to suppose that there was such an art, that the Dionysian
myth is realized, deployed, fulfilled, is the arch-political gesture itself, not its
instrument or support. It will re-appropriate Germany to itself, and awaken
its sleepy soul. The inevaluable depth is abolished, crossed out, and missing,
and so long as this high art reappears, it is arch-politics itself.

3rd point: the possible site of arch-politics itself, is Germany. But not
universally; this is not breaking into two world histories of the world, but
breaking into two histories of Germany.

4th point: Nietzsche does not speak of high art as something that has
indeed returned. He declares that there are one or more symptoms. The
Dionysian myth is in the order of the consoling symptom. In Birth of Tragedy,

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Nietzsche does not exactly argue that the musical creation of Wagner fulfills
the re-appropriation. He only declares that there is a promise, but finally,
high art is once again to come. Wagner is at the edge of possibility, and not
at the fulfillment of this possibility.

5th point: Wagner may be punctually identified as the Aeschylus of

Germany, but under certain conditions. This is not even the case. It is
necessary for him to be helped by Nietzsche, for him to be penetrated by the
proper essence of his act. It would be necessary to form a history of their
relations: Nietzsche is presented as someone who could have stated his fate
(he was about to be the Aeschylus of Germany), and Wagner thought that
where he was capable, he had been the standard of this without Nietzsche!
Whether high art is actual or promised, it has given rise to quarrels: Nietzsche
does not conceive that the return could be made without his support. The
return is not repetition, there will not be the same innocence. Wagner cannot
pretend to be the return of Aeschylus to Germany. One must in some sense
be aware of this return. It is necessary for this return to be captured in the
element of the doctrine of the return. If it returns, tragedy will not truly return
except in the logic of the power of its return: Wagner needs Nietzsche, for the
return of high art demands the philosophy of this return. The return is not
accomplished except in the element of the thought of the return; Nietzsche is
thought of as someone who thought of the return, and he needed innocence
to be named in order to arrive in its return. But Wagner let it be understood
that he is sufficient unto himself. In reality Nietzsche shows that there is
nothing but a promise, and this is thinking the essence of the promise which
will allow his accomplishment in the return of tragedy.

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Therefore the complex question of the return of high art, for it includes
Nietzsche not as an artist in the sense of Wagner but as someone who brings
the essence of the return as return.

From this rupture, the device collapses. From Birth of Tragedy and Case
of Wager, it is only an individual rupture, but a collapse of the device of
thought.

Here is a run-through of the series of events:

Nietzsche will discover that Wagner’s music is not established by myth. It is

not a shelter, a dream or myth. It is rather the simulacrm of a myth where its
essence is psychological. It could be said like this: music is the dissociation
and non-conjunction. Its music is dissociating. The greatness of Wagner is in
its detail, for the essence of this music is only the establishment of myth

Nietzsche will discover that Wagner’s art is short of a full rupture, and
is merely an accomplishment. His greatness is in accomplishing, not in
breaking. The essence of music is not in the order of a pause. What one would
believe to be healing is an illness, and the illness in its health, in its thriving.
Wagner is illness at its height.

Nietzsche will discover that the site of arch-politics cannot be

Germany. He substitutes it with the maxim “breaking the history of the
world into two.” Germany becomes a target.

Recapitulating upon this, Wagner, whom one imagined could have

been Aeschylus, is in reality Euripedes. Such is the Euripides of modernity.
What is at stake is the following: if Wagner is Euripides, there is no

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Aeschylus! He was the only person who could perhaps have existed. This is
a radical diagnosis on the question of art, and it only makes Wagner a case.
Modernity only knows Euripides. Euripides is a model – he states in Birth of
Tragedy - modernity is Euripides, if modernity is in default of high art, the
arch political Eventcannot be artistic in nature. The stakes are high: if Wagner
is actually Euripides, then there is no arch-political gesture of the artistic or
aesthetic type (high art or pure artist would be needed). And so, by an
extraordinary reversal, the arch-political act is Nietzsche against Wagner, i.e.
against the philosophy of art, in spite of everything. In the complicated
terminal device, we have philosophy against the submission of art to
philosophy. The idea was art delivered from philosophy, high art delivered
from Euripides against art submitted to philosophy, a variant of Christianity.
This was suspended in the possibility of high art. But if Wagner is not high
art, it will become the orphan philosophy of art or the orphan of high art
against art submitted to philosophy. This is where there is a break. This is
where under his own name, Nietzsche, and not under the name of Dionysus
or high art, but something involved against art submitted to philosophy, in
the order of The Act, which is not authorized except by itself, without support
or reference from the side of high art. This authorization granted to himself
independently of any reference to high art ... politics has arrived where there
was no high art, where there was nothing but Wagner. It has come from
where Wagner attests to the absence of high art. The rush to madness and
excessive nature of the conflict with Wagner is the index from which this
madness has come close to filling in the deficiency of high art.

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High art is Greek. Although it is named tragedy, it not only has to do

with theater, but the opposite of theater, in a sense: all history of the tragedy
and its termination are that of its dramatization. Euripides operates the
suicide of tragedy with theater. Dramatization is the replacement of the
conjunction of drunken dreams with the conjunction of impassioned
thought, establishing the jurisdiction of the philosophy of art in the Socratic
and Platonic sense.

That was the reminder.

Hence the question of high art as Nietzsche estimated by the possible

return at some point, around Wagner, i.e. the possibility of the return of
tragedy. What is at stake in this issue of the possible return of high art in a
musician is legitimate: in tragedy as non-theatrical art, what counts is music
(the conjunction of music and myth). This is the miracle of Greece, and of the
Hellenic will: having been able to invest the power of myth through the
Dionysian power of music.

Nietzsche is convinced that the return of the high art is the agenda of
the day. From Birth of Tragedy, Wagner's return is less the sign of the return
of high art. Wagner is a symptom and promise, not a realization. The return
has not yet taken place: it is from the conjunction between Nietzsche and
Wagner that Nietzsche awaits the return itself. If we leave aside Nietzsche’s
account of the story of the Eternal Return at Sils Maria, the return of high art
supports the Eternal Return: high art can make a return. The Actual upon
which the Eternal Return is entertained by Nietzsche is precisely this that the
tragedy can make a return, and before an ontological principle, a de-
temporalizing law of affirmation (it affirms the trans-temporal aspect of time,

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it turns time into eternity). The protocol of validating the Eternal Return is
the return of high art.

Tragedy can only really return from under the thought of Eternal
Return. The return of tragedy is only return if it is stated and thought as the
Eternal Return: it is left to Nietzsche to say if Wagner is proof of the return of
tragedy. The return will also be the return in the element of thought of the
return, and it is this which will make the affirmative fully, not in a reactive
form of its repetition. We can say that basically, there is a proposal to Wagner
by Nietzsche, not only an enthusiasm for Wagner by Nietzsche. The
proposition by Nietzsche is that through Wagner, but also through
Nietzsche, tragedy makes an affirmative return, i.e. a return which is the
effectiveness of itself at the same time. This is why he became interested in
the origin of tragedy.

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New Course Three- Apollo & Dionysus [Drunkenness and the

Dream]

What we pointed out in Birth of Tragedy, is that Nietzsche offers both

a genealogy and a definition of high art, i.e. art such that it is used to measure
all true art, i.e. all art capable of establishing a new form of sovereignty.

I briefly recall that high art, and also the artist, the artist as a true type,
the artist as a type of truth, the artist as a type of will to power; of high art, is
defined as a point of conjunction. This is in my opinion the point that we
must remember. This conjunction can be stated many ways:

- A conjunction of Dionysus and Apollo

- A conjunction of music and myth
- Perhaps, more essentially, a conjunction of drunkenness and
dreams

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And all this means that ultimately in art, in high art and in formal
individuation, i.e. the pure principle of the appearance, is at the same time
the donation of inevaluable life, or, even that the distinction of the glory of
appearance as such is completely invested by the indistinct totality (sum) of
inevaluable life, under the successive names of Apollo, Dionysus, myth and
music, or drunkenness and dreams. We can also say that art is inevaluable
life presented in the pure multiplicity of appearance.

At last, another crucial point: the recognizable localization of high art

is Greek. High art, thought of such a way, is immediately and above all else
high Greek art, and we had insisted on this as well as high Greek art being
called tragedy. Not only does this not have to do with theater, but it has to
do in another sense with the opposite of theater. As for Nietzsche, as we have
pointed out, the entire history of tragedy and its cessation, its interruption, is
in a certain sense the history of its theatralization. With Euripides, the
theatralization of tragedy is accomplished. Tragedy with Euripedes commits
suicide, and the crossing out of tragedy or the catastrophe of tragedy as high
art is one and the same as its theatralization. I recall that theatralization is the
replacement of the conjunction of drunkenness and dreams with the
conjunction of passion and thought. Theater itself is the specific effect of a
fully different combination, which in a sense is nothing but the degraded
imitation of the 1st, which substitutes passion with drunkenness, and
thought with the dream, also establishing from this point of view the ultimate
jurisdiction of philosophy on art, of philosophy in its Socratic and Platonic
sense.

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This is where the question of high art as such is presented such that
Nietzsche has at a given point, at some given point, estimated the possible
return. We can say that what has been entertained around Wagner is
precisely the issue of the possible return of high art conceived and defined in
such a way, i.e. also, if you will, the possibility of the return of the tragedy. I
recall that the challenge of the question of this possible return is false to
propose a musician is legitimate precisely because in tragedy, what Nietzsche
identifies is the primacy of music is the tragedy as an non-theatrical art, the
theater is only the degraded simulacrum, and tragedy is the combination of
music and myth in power or in the shelter of the music. It is the myth of the
rhapsody inhabited and supported by the Dionysian genius of the musician.
This is exactly what Nietzsche calls the Greek miracle, the miracle of
Hellenistic will. This miracle has to do with having been able to invest the
force of the myth with the Dionysian shelter of music. That this question of
return is entertained around music in general, and Wagner, is not particularly
surprising. And even after 20, Nietzsche believes that the return of high art
is the order of the day, and that in a certain sense that Wagner is the sign of
that return.

It is clear from Birth of Tragedy that for Nietzsche, Wagner is rather the
sign of this return, than the return himself. If you look closely at even the
most pro-Wagnerian texts of 1st Nietzsche, you can see that what is valid in
Wagner is still in the scheme of the symptom and the promise, and not really
the scheme of the execution, or realization. So the return has not yet taken
place absolutely. It is in a sense from the collaboration between Nietzsche
and Wagner, that Nietzsche expects The Actual accomplishment. I have told

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you why: it is because it would be a return under the sign. In fact I am deeply
convinced that if left the Nietzschean narrative on the side of a stunningly
and revealing shot of Sils Maria the doctrine of Eternal Return, and we didn’t
need to take it all that seriously, I am convinced that the prospect of return of
high art is what deeply supports the doctrine of Eternal Return. Ultimately,
the essential proof of what there is, is that high art can make a return. I would
say that the real upon which for a time Nietzsche entertains the question of
the Eternal Return is precisely this, that tragedy can make a return. And
before being a principle I may say ontologically, a detemporalizing laws of
affirmation (the return is that: the affirmation as it can never become, it is not
carrying a temporal decomposition), it affirms in a sense the trans-temporal,
it is this which turns time toward eternity (or the name Eternal Return). But
in a certain sense, from the point of view of the situation, of the situation of
thought and of schemes of will to power, the true protocol of validation of
the Eternal Return is the possibility of the return of high art. There is being
surprised when philosophical will is compared to Nietzsche as the artistic
will. The Eternal Return is presented, or attested to where it is first of all
proved as a return of the greatness of art, which has its essential stigmata in
high Greek art. This is not surprising. Thus when I say that it is in the couple,
the coupling of Nietzsche/Wagner that Nietzsche in fact sees the true
condition of the return of high art, this means that tragedy cannot really
return except und the thought of the Eternal Return. I.e. the return of tragedy
is not fully a return, except as far as this return is thought and stated as the
form of the Eternal Return.

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That is why it is Nietzsche's responsibility to state in fact if Wagner is

indeed evidence of the return of tragedy. We can say that this is intrinsic: the
return will also be the return in the element of the return, of the thought of
return, and that’s what somehow makes it fully affirmative, not blind, and
not pulled toward reactive or passive forms of its repetition, but fully
affirmative as taken up and revealed in the sentiment of thought of its own
role. One could say that at bottom (and this is gradually clarified by
Nietzsche himself), there is a proposition from Nietzsche to Wagner, and it is
not only the enthusiasm of young Nietzsche for the great patriarch, it is not
simply the discovery of a father, for it then requires murder and
assassination. There is a proposition. If Nietzsche is in the figure of sons, it is
in the figure of a singular son that makes a proposition to the father
concerning his fate. And his proposition is that by Wagner but also by
Nietzsche, tragedy makes an affirmative return, i.e. a return that is at the
same time the achievement of itself. That is why through and from the
meeting with Wagner, it required Nietzsche to question the origin of tragedy,
i.e. Wagner himself in the element of the return. For Birth of Tragedy is not
actually dedicated to Wagner. It originates in Wagner as a possibility of the
return, but what it addresses is the origin. What is opened up, is the return
to the origin. Birth of Tragedy is oriented and thought of as the possibility of
its return. So Birth of Tragedy already disposes of Wagner and in a sense
disposes of Wagner, a possible figure of someone who returns, and this
proposition (the subjective element of things), I have suggested that Wagner
had in a sense pushed it away. In other senses, we will come back to it, this
is a complex debate, but in a sense it is not the Wagner who is punishable.
After all, perhaps it is actually he who ... [indistinct].

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But the fact is that we can say that the origin of this drama that finished
by making of Wagner a meaning that is at once impractical and haunting, is
that Wagner did not know too much what to do in his own element, the
artistic element of the proposition of Nietzsche having to think in the element
of the return of tragedy.

At this point, the details of this proposition are clear. What was the
device of thought from the interior of this proposition that made to Wagner?
There were 4 main points:

One could identify as a generic figure of tragedy, in the Event-ality of

its return what Nietzsche calls the Dionysian song, i.e. in a certain sense a
new music, since it is always in the shelter of music that its conjunction to
myth should occur.

The fact that such an art, if it exists, if it comes into existence, will be
arch-politics itself, i.e. an overall process of re-identification. Such art is
absolutely re-identifying, i.e. it brings the return of the identity of what is lost,
as a return of the origin.

That the site is no longer Greece but would be Germany. Proof at the
end of Master Singers of Nuremberg, the great hymn to statist German art,
but it is in Nietzsche’s terms the return of tragedy at the site of Germany. In
a certain way this makes Germany the return of Greece. Germany many is in
itself whereby Greece returns. The real Greece, that of Aeschylus and
Sophocles, that of Euripides and not of Socrates.

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I have gathered this in to a formula: in such a regard, Wagner,

succeeded in Nietzsche’s propositions can be, but in fact is not quite yet the
Aeschylus of Germany.

From here on, a number of things occur: constitutively Wagner does

not endorse Nietzsche’s proposition. Nonetheless, he defends it with loyalty.
For the record, the philologists (Germany is perhaps high art, but first and
foremost it is the University!) fall on Nietzsche with folded arms and say that
Nietzsche’s book does not even for a second pull its weight before historical
and scientific investigation. Moellendorf, a young burgeoning philologist,
stretches out below this. And Wagner had obviously believed with Nietzsche
in forming an alliance with the University. That interested Wagner.
Nietzsche’s proposition was complicated. But the idea that the university in
the person of one of his bright young representatives endorsed Wagnerian
art, interested him. Wagner was at once in the process of singular
canonization with the support of the King of Bavaria and the court, and the
support of European intellectuals, and that of consistent, solid, and
immemorial Germany that took it quite strongly (fort mal). And Wagner had
hoped for an alliance, a pact, an armistice with what might precisely be called
philological Germany. This was another conjunction, a combination of music
and philology. And he realizes that Nietzsche is actually not at all
representative of the German university! From the moment when the high
philologists begin saying that this is a crackpot, a fuss over nothing
everything is subjective in it. Wagner realizes that if he believes that through
Nietzsche he makes an alliance with the other Germany which is not that of
the romanticism of high art, but of the positivism of philological science,

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academic and established, well there is something that makes it even more
obscure to him what Nietzsche wants. What does he want, this Nietzsche?

The question intensifies. However, he defends it loyally, intervenes in

the press to support him in his own name, Wagner, in the quality Nietzsche
wrote in Birth of Tragedy. And then let’s add to it the question it is what
wants me that Nietzsche certainly plays the fact that we can answer: what
this Nietzsche wants is my wife! The situation, as we have discussed, is
triangular: we must not forget Cosima in this case. Cosima, whom we have
seen that in the letters of madness, Nietzsche called Ariadne, which is not
nothing when one considers him as Dionysus. He said, "Ariadne my love":
there is something declarative there. And then there are texts where
Nietzsche is the seduction of Cosima through Wagner the enchanter, one of
the main complaints against Wagner. In the eyes of Wagner, the question that
he wants me is murky, complex. A question he did not use and that Nietzsche
will make increasingly venomous. If we use terms that are descriptively
rather Lacanian: from a certain moment, Nietzsche was anxious about
Wagner, in the proper form that relates anguish to the question of does he
want me?

Does he want me to give him my wife

Does he want me to give him a share of my glory

Does he want me to give him what is able to state that tragedy has
returned?

Does he want me to give him my own name, and our names are
combined?

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I think there has been a fear of what Wagner to which Nietzsche has
in a way responded with increasing aggression, i.e. the coupling of anxiety
and aggression. It's a complex form, and the central point is the system of
questions. The question has remained suspended rather as a threatening
issue than as a question which ordered his answer. But all this, we can follow
it to the track, and there is a huge body of literature trying to distribute the
wrongs in the case, has Wagner unduly repelled or discouraged Nietzsche,
due to vainglory, because he wanted a young man to sing hymns to his glory,
or did Nietzsche attempt to parasitize off Wagner’s glory, etc ... this is not of
great importance except that it must be added that Nietzsche did not have a
manner of a dazzling elegance. I assume what I have called Nietzsche’s
interior holiness because the proper mode in which he is exposed is pretty
radical. But ultimately it was not always very elegant in this case. It has a side
like that where we no longer measure the presence and absence of simple
criteria.

For example, an anecdote, but it is a symbol: he knew, relevantly, that

Wagner hated Brahms, for the wrong reasons, and one day he considered it
a feat, obtaining Brahms’s final score, and placing it on Wagner’s piano! It is
the last gift, a poisoned gift. It is not to be blamed. Everything is significant:
when in a sense Nietzsche, who did not like Brahms either (it was not
propaganda) does that, it means the protocol by which he begins to engage
in challenging Wagner. I.e. the ability of Wagner to be the representative of
the return of high art. We could talk a long time about this. But I say, finally
to summarize these complex ingredients, of this triangle between Ariadne,
Dionysus, and Theseus, which are actually Cosima, Nietzsche, and Wagner

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makes this a trio, a trio of maximum symbolism, in truth the philosophical

device, Nietzsche’s device of thought that has collapsed.

I think from that point of view that we must absolutely support there
being a first time in Nietzsche before madness, which is not given in terms of
psychic collapse, even if there are constant troubles, lurking illness. It is a
collapse, the collapse of a first device of thought. A collapse that will give a
particular color to the terminal sequence of Nietzsche, a color that I would
call the color of catching left to disaster. This is present in final Nietzsche, a
kind of precipitation that is not only precipitation to the final crucifixion, i.e.
the final abolition under the proper name Nietzsche, a self-sufficient name,
but which is merely that a first control controls the necessity of all review, of
all re-taking, as if a first systematization or first generic vision is challenged
to the point where all elements that they dominated (and where it was
making the elements of thought circulate) should be returned or re-
articulated. Caught in disaster, because the first device of thought has
collapsed. This is prior to 1889.

So it's true that there is a 2nd Nietzsche. I think is a 2nd Nietzsche, in

a sense that is not the traditional periodization of the work of a great thinker:
of 3 successive Plato, of 3 Nietzsches, etc. ... I think there are 2 Nietzsches in
a more essential sense: a second Nietzsche tries to make up for thought, with
a 1st device of thought, in dramatic conditions. A collapse which again refers
to the first fault, i.e. it is not taken or absolutely submitted. There is a path
but there is a given moment where none of it functions any longer. I think
that there is at heart of this collapse, the theme of high art, and it is this theme

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that will collapse and somehow break in two non-histories of the world, but
the history of Nietzsche’s thought. 1st break in 2.

I told you how I believe the 4 points are given in the Nietzschean
device, I repeat:

Wagner’s music is in no way immune to a genuine mythical creation,

but on the contrary the ornament of a decadent psychology. Or even,
Wagner’s music is dissociative. This is a separation and not a conjunction in
the form of high art between dreams and drunkenness. Or even that its
greatness is small. There is a greatness, but it is the greatness of the small.

Nietzsche will think that Wagnerian art is beyond any rupture, i.e. it
is not a return, but an accomplishment. There is no return of the tragedy, the
return of high art, but there is an accomplishment of nihilism, i.e. it does not
start but finishes. Still this fundamental problem of those who dream of a
break in 2 which is the typically indistinguishable character between what
ends and what begins. There is a very fine scale. There Nietzsche comes to
think that what he took for a beginning, or at least as a promise of the
beginning, was actually a completion, was really the accomplishment of
nihilism.

Nietzsche comes to think that in any case the location of high art
cannot be Germany. He will enter a sequence of unleashed Germanophobia.
Germany is the name of the obstacle of the return of tragedy. All this is
controlled by the fact that Wagner the Euripides of Europe, furthest from
being the Aeschylus of Germany. It is the Euripides of Wagnerians, too. The
Euripides of European women. Hysterical, says Nietzsche, who knows.

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Each of these points will be suggested by final Nietzsche, the one who
keeps me more than the first. I would like to address each of these points:

Point 1: The fact that Wagner’s music does not establish myth, but is
correlated with a decadent psychology.

Let’s take a little look at the Case of Wagner: it is a program rather than a
case. Where we had the return of tragedy we have a case. A case of nihilism,
precisely. I give you on this point (precisely on the Wagnerian will to
establish myth in the shelter of musical creation). "But you will say, the
content of Wagnerian texts, their mythical content, their eternal content.
Question: how do we analyze their contents? The chemist responds by
transposing Wagner in modern real life. Let's be even crueler with the
bourgeoise view. What happens then to Wagner? Between us, I make this
exposition. Nothing is more entertaining, more recommended for the walk,
than to tell of the works of Wagner rejuvenated. For instance, Parsifal, a
theology student after good studies in high school, necessary to explain his
pure silliness or surprise after surprise. I believe I have told you that all the
heroes, without exception ... stripped of their heroic finery, similarly, or
uncannily like Madame Bovary. Conversely, he would have had Flaubert
transpose his heroine in Scandinavian or Carthaginian style and after
mythologized, to offer to Wagner in the form of a libretto opera. Yes it seems
roughly that Wagner was never interested in other problems than those that
interest small Parisian decadents. Wagner, always 2 steps from ... ".

Just a point on this text: Nietzsche’s thesis (between us, it must be said
that the exercise is tempting, in Tristan and Isolde, it is this high monologue
of cuckold). But what thesis is at stake? The thesis at stake is the following: it

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is the creation of a myth, in the sense of Birth of Tragedy, tragedy is never a

form of sublimation. This is not the sublimation of concrete available data. It
is an irreducible process that is to itself its own appearance. The greatness of
myth is innocent, it is native, it is given as appearance in appearance, it does
not return to the magnification of whatever it is. Or if you want, what makes
highness in general, in this case of the greatness of myth, is what is by no
means an enlargement or expansion. There is in true myth something that
makes it what it is, and its form of propagation or teaching is in the derivation
of this being. Wagner is not a creator of myth in this sense because according
to Nietzsche, one sees perfectly that it has to do in reality with expansion. I.e.
there is a transposition or sublimation of elementary data of bourgeois life in
the 19th century. What is going to be tested and tested against, i.e. one can
chemically dissolve the Wagnerian myth and find the elementary bourgeois
nucleus that there is within it. And inversely we can imagine how unlike an
elementary bourgeois core, subjected to a treatment of enlargement, could be
depicted as Wagnerian myth. We have already seen the dawn of this idea
that perhaps there is not simply a modern myth, i.e. one thing is the trial of
Wagner, to finally know it is Madame Bovary disguised as a Scandinavian,
in Scandinavian tinsel. And thus not at all what makes the strength and
uniqueness of the myth, which is to be in the naiveté of his being or his
proposition, but in the background there is the fact that the modern is
characterized by this mythical incapability. Perhaps all mythical creation
ultimately falls under the symptom that is always this form of expansion.

So, still on this point, we touch upon the question of the diagnosis of
modernity. “Let’s repeat: Wagner is not admirable, is not likeable except in

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tiny finds, in the invention of details. It is perfectly justified to proclaim it as

a mastery of the first order, our highest miniaturist who in the confined space
fully concentrates on a sense of infinity and sweetness." Just now, we treated
the question of myth in his relation with sublimation exaggerated in
bourgeois reality, therefore as false myth, like a simulacrum of myth. There
is something else. The problem is that of high form. High art is also and
always a high shape. What is meant by high form? High form means some
evidence of the totality. Why? Because the authority of the Dionysian
principle on the Apollonian principle or the authority of drunkenness on the
dream (which is the principle of high art), is what gives glorious appearance
to... as such, the inevaluable life, to what builds. And so high art pairs with a
form that is entirely in evidence itself. What Nietzsche will say is: that finally
in high shape Wagner is worthless, high form belongs to the genre of Victor
Hugo, i.e. large contrasting blocks, super-heavy effects, massive
contradictions that excite the viewer and whose finesse has no obviousness.
Such features describe special effects. So there is no more myth in Wagner,
and there is no retaining of high form. It is cobbled, cooked, it has no formal
authenticity, it is not a self-sufficient musical or artistic appearance. On the
contrary, Wagner is excellent with detail, he is a master of inflection, the tiny,
something that can captivate and intoxicate with a sudden inflection of
musical detail. This is someone whose artistic unity is not at all high form,
which is part of the effect, but in careful inflection, in the register of detail.
The highest miniaturist of music, this man who is present as… establishing
huge opera to give shelter to the resurrection of myth, is actually the highest
miniaturist in musical history. Someone who fits an infinity of meaning and
sweetness in a cramped space. For Nietzsche, infinity is local in Wagner,

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infinity is given as a point and not as a power of the totality, but as a fleeting
thing.

As I have said before, I believe this corresponds to the most

contemporary analysis of Wagner. This is exactly what is thought by Boulez,
for example. The analysis of Wagner’s musical genius by Boulez is precisely
the extraordinarily flexible and virtuoso management at the microcellular
level, where Wagner happens to draw an extraordinary advantage in the
variability, tone, color, and inflection. We see something extraordinarily
acute in Nietzsche’s intuition. Only in the background is there also, as earlier,
the question of: with modern art, would we not become incapable of high
form. This will work against Wagner due to the Nietzschean disappointment
with Wagner. We thought that with the return of Wagner with regard to high
art, but it's ultimately modern art. And modern art is for Nietzsche incapable
of myth, and perhaps also (this is the - that Nietzsche tries to both formulate
and keep, since it is painful) that modern art is incapable of high form, and
perhaps it is the essence of modern art to not have power except for in the
tiny. Nietzsche will also say that Wagner is "the best connoisseur of tiny
infinity." And symmetrical to this, that "Wagner practices counterfeit in the
imitation of ..."

Nietzsche’s thesis is that in Wagner, high form is an imposture. But on

the contrary, it’s not all an imposture. In terms of tiny infinity it is the best
connoisseur. But perhaps modernity is indeed helpless in artistic matters
under high form. This is the thesis of genius in detail. Perhaps it’s true that
"what nowadays can be done well, masterfully done is, and is exclusively, all
that is small.” Small is beautiful! This is the maxim that Nietzsche already

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stated as the maxim of modernity. Note the "exclusively", and this is a general
statement. Note that the statement doesn’t only apply to Wagner. What is
from our days, is exclusively what is small. You see that this small theme is
opposed to the theme of high art.

At last Nietzsche comes to support the thesis that what characterizes

modern art is the genius of smallness. One can use a formula to which
Nietzsche is near: modern art is the biggest small art. It has a greatness, but
its greatness is the greatness of the small. This first point is the opposite of
the identification of modernity as a resource of high art or return of tragedy.
Tragedy is absolutely what cannot be produced today. High art cannot be
produced today. There is no return of tragedy. That's Nietzsche’s finding.
This finding goes through Wagner and goes beyond it: our time is not that of
the return of tragedy, of the return of high art. I contend that this resulted in
a crisis in the theme of Eternal Return. At the end of 1886, it has often been
remarked, the theme of Eternal Return fades and almost disappears. One can
really ask whether the constituent, revealed, Zarathustran problematic of the
Eternal Return really still belongs to the late Nietzsche, to final Nietzsche. I
think that it is seriously put in crisis by the finding that in any case our time
is not that of the return of the high art, for the reasons I mentioned. Namely,
the perspective of the return of high art was what sustained and vitalized the
perspective of the Eternal Return. Thus in a sense we can say that for final
Nietzsche, who remains the standard, i.e. the ability to fully affirm the
inevaluable, the affirmative noon, separated to some part from the issue of
the Eternal Return. And this separation is induced by the fact that Wagner is
unable to function as the icon of high art but suddenly the very issue of the

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return of high art is abandoned. So the pattern of return is not what drives
The Act, and is no longer what commands The Act. This is very important. In
the first vision, that we can call Nietzschean-Wagnerian (Nietzsche believes
that Wagner is), the prospect of The Act is underpinned by the Return. The
Act, the effectivity of The Act is in some sense the return of tragedy, or the
foundation of new myths that Hegel would have called the return of the
gods. We are still in the political return of the gods, in Nietzschean-
Wagnerism. The Greek gods will return, in the figure of the tragic power of
the shelter given by the music to new myths. But if that's not it, in reality the
perspective of The Act is no longer supported by the logic of return, and I
think that the final logic of Nietzsche is to abandon the perspective of Eternal
Return in favor of another thing, i.e. the maxim of breaking in 2 world
histories, but history without the shelter that this break makes a return, or is
in the paradigm of the return. This is because eventually the law of modern
art is miniature and not greatness, or where greatness has its place in
smallness. This is what we can draw from this point. The main thing is that
in my opinion the entrapment in the disaster of terminal Nietzsche would
catch centrally on the relation between act and return, The Act and return of
the origin. The Act could be thought without the shelter of the return of the
origin, and once again the induction of that would be that tragedy does not
return. Besides this incidentally explains why it is so important to constantly
talk about Wagner. We can take it as an obsessive symptom, Nietzsche is
truly obsessed with Wagner from 1887-88. In 88: The Case of Wagner,
Nietzsche against Wagner, Ecce Homo, and he returns there constantly.
Wagner occupies and obsesses Nietzsche’s thought. But if we assume that
what is at stake (I recall that Wagner died in 83, 5 years previously, so this is

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not a polemic vindication, Wagner does not respond, Wagner can no longer
decide on the proposal of Nietzsche, which he has rejected). What is at stake
in Wagner is that The Act needs to make a return. This is the key issue, the
central issue. He makes all the land take witness to this point, because
ultimately all those who are Wagnerian, the public of Wagnerians, are those
who perpetuate the illusion of the return of the tragedy, those who share in
the theme the return of the tragedy. We must show them that it's not that,
that it is a necessary propaedeutic to an act which cannot avail itself of this
return. It is thus necessary to destroy the Wagnerian camp that was
uncovered so that is exposed that the condition of The Act is not in the
aesthetic form of the return of the tragedy.

I will merely sketch out this point. We can also say that what is at stake
here is the break with the aesthetic vision of The Act or even with arch-
politics as aesthetics. It will be argued that consequently it is also if I may say
an anticipated break with the general system of ideological foundations, from
Nazism, i.e. politics as German aesthetics. If there is a theme where Nietzsche
rids himself of violence, precipitation, and almost anguish, it is the idea that
The Act could be in the form of Germany as a new Greece, i.e. in the form of
aesthetization of arch-politics. But we see that the means are almost default,
the reorganization of all of this is quite difficult, that this precipitation, this
collapse, this collapse of availability, this sincerity as well, clearly
precipitated Nietzsche toward his own disaster.

Point 2: Wagnerian art is not a break or foundation, but the accomplishment

of nihilism. The texts are innumerable. I take a text from the Epilogue of Case
of Wagner. This means that Wagner is an imposture, in the precise sense of

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Euripedes being presented as Aeschylus. It is The Actor of Euripedes, playing

the role of Aeschylus. Here again Nietzsche will generalize: “but the
imposture as that of Beirut has nothing exceptional nowadays. We all know
the eminent notions of the Christian squire. This unconsciousness in the
contradiction of terms, this good conscience in lies is modern par excellence.
It is almost enough to define modernity. Modern man embodies a
contradiction of values, sitting between two chairs. He says yes and no in one
breath. Is it any wonder that it is precisely today that falsity will be made
flesh and even genius, that Wagner was stirred among us. It’s not without
reason that I have called Wagner the Cagliostro of modernity. But we all have
2 in our veins without our knowledge and despite our ambitions, values,
vocabulary, forms and formulas, standards and morals of diverse and
opposing origin, and biologically speaking, we are false. To make a diagnosis
of modern art, where should we start? Resolved by a stroke of the knife in
this irreconcilable opposition of instincts, by exposure of their conflict of
values, by vivisection undertaking on the most revealing clinical case, the
Case of Wagner for the philosopher is more a kind of event. This is a real
bargain. These pages are dictated by the recognition."

It is the recognition, the ultimate debt of Nietzsche to Wagner: Wagner

is the exemplary clinical case of modernity. For the essence of modernity is
imposture, the imposture of Bayreuth, is only theater or the theatrical form.
What is this impostor? What is his essence? It's complicated, the essence of
modern imposture, but it has two possible descriptions.

The first, elementary and already given, is that modern imposture is

presented as the greatness of smallness itself, i.e. to present the genius of

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smallness as a form of the return of greatness. This is analyzed constantly in

Wagner’s music.

But there is a second thesis: what is smallness? What is small? The high
form of original tragedy is the simplicity of appearance. And thus the small
is the duplicity of the real from the smallness is a constitutive duplicity, the
inability of the simple, simple as far as it is the donation from the land of its
gifts (as says young Nietzsche), the simple donation by the land of its gifts,
simple affirmation (I recalled that in the third metamorphosis, the child is the
emblem of greatness, and simple affirmation). Artistic greatness is the simple
affirmation, as well. And artistic modernity is incapable of simple
affirmation. It establishes art in duplicitous flexibility. Modern art is
compelled to trickery, it's a duplicitous art. And this is its essence. Basically,
Wagner is the most cunning of the cunning, he remains iconic, Cagliostro, the
old magician, and as far as he is the most cunning of the cunning, he is the
exemplary clinical case who reveals the fundamental trick of modern art
which is this time to present duplicity as simplicity. This is a specific function
of art. Modern art, the art of modernity, whose extreme trick is to disguise its
constituent duplicity in simplicity, in the appearance of simplicity. Obviously
this brings about the very symptom of nihilism, i.e. the inability of
affirmation. Or even the developer of modernity as the reign of the false.

Point 3: The Site of Arch-Politics cannot be Germany.

Nietzsche’s diatribes against Germany abound. The Case of Wagner: "no

taste, no voice, no talent, the Wagnerian stage requires only one thing, the
Teuton, i.e. obedience and good legs. It is deeply significant that the advent
of Wagner coincided with that of the Reich, and these two facts show the

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same thing, never was it so well obeyed, never so well commanded. The
heads of the Wagnerian orchestra are in particular worthy of an era that
posterity will call with fearful respect, the classical age of war".

Again in a few words, Wagner is thought of strictly as the

contemporary of Bismarck, i.e. the figure of obedience, the German figure of
obedience. I.e. the moment where art cannot even be presented in the
innocence of a form of sovereignty. It is not even sovereignty in the sense of
will to power, a simple sovereignty. It induces obedience and submission. It
is a specious art, and ultimately, a captive art. German art is what is captured
by Germany (in the historico-statist sense). This slope (tendency) had been
addressed a little.

There is in Wagnerian art, and finally in the art of modernity, in

addition to its incapacity with regard to myth, and high form, its duplicitous
constituent character, there is a deeply static element. Nietzsche diagnoses
this point, i.e. it is an art which is in a certain sense nationalized in its being,
i.e. an art that is itself part of a dialectic of commandment and obedience. So,
we have done a development on Nietzsche and dance: one can say that it is
an art that has stopped dancing, an art that is at odds with something whose
nature is not the dialectic of command and obedience. This German art, this
statist German art does not represent any form of the return of the tragedy,
nor a form of emancipation. It is an art that ultimately enslaves or bewitches
at the profit of the form of the Reich, not an art that liberates or emancipates.
But suddenly it is the same in Germany. In the first time it is presented as the
very site of the return of tragedy. And here it becomes the essential obstacle
in this return. In other words, if you want, Germany cannot be a site for

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thought. This is certainly a big rupture in Nietzsche, difficult, painful and

violent at the same time. Symptomatic by its very violence. We read many
commentaries where Nietzsche’s diatribes against Germany are taken into
account from madness, considered aberrant, and in the order of unleashed
and monstrous insult. As for myself, I think there is a deeper reason for the
anti-German fury of Nietzsche, which is at once conflicting, contradictory.

The first reason is the same as that which had affected the imposture:
it is necessary to destroy the theory of Germany as the privileged site of the
return of tragedy. It was necessary to denounce Germany publically, not
Germany in itself, or Germans as an empirical reality. We must denounce the
false myth of Germany. For it is in the obstruction of The Act, henceforth.
Anyone who thinks that Germany is a new Greece, or that Germany is
identifiable as the very form in which The Act is prepared, is an obstruction
to the possibility of The Act in its new definition, which is not just the return
of tragedy in Germany. And so it is really necessary as well, a vindication, a
necessary violence, required publicly and across Europe (where French is
identified, as well as Italy ...). All this becomes quite important for Nietzsche.
It is necessary for Germany to be ruined in its mythical pretension. This is
ambiguous because Nietzsche shared this belief, quite simply, this German
myth. He is even its co-author. It is an intimate renunciation, a break with
itself, it is for this reason that it is so vehement, but at the same time logical.
It takes an intense intellectual propaganda to ruin it, to deride the German
self-sufficiency as a pretension of being the site of the new Greece. This was
important. We have seen what this myth was capable of doing.

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The rushed determination that is also paroxysmal and desperate in

Nietzsche’s sense, to make Germany appear before the tribunal of his gross
sufficiency and to denounce it as an obstacle of a living conception of arch-
politics, was, I believe, finally focused, something which was ultimately
relevant, and that Nietzsche had to rescue him from himself is a great
intensity but once again, an exceptional honesty. What Nietzsche says: it is I
who am German, and I say the impossibility that there is in being that. He
invented himself a Polish biography, disgusted of being German. Regardless,
it's iconic. More iconic than him in some sense, Germany more than anyone.
Coauthor of Germany of the return of gods, of Germany as the privileged
arch-political site, he has torn Germany from himself and has become
Nietzsche. The advent of the proper name Nietzsche as the naming of the
arch-political act has been if I might say made from its being yanked from
Germany. That his name is not German. It was German, of course.

Through Nietzsche, an extraordinary form of breakout from Germany

to itself. This is a vital point. It is necessary that Germany extirpates itself,
and a Germany extirpated of itself is for Nietzsche a Germany that is
disposed in a certain improbable correlation to France and Italy. All the last
texts by Nietzsche lurking around the development of this improbable form
which would be Germany outside Germany (like him, in Turin) which would
be connoted at the same time in an Italian and French way. This is the
Nietzschean idea of Europe, Nietzsche is a prophet of Europe, thus conceived
as a phenomenon of thought, where Europe is eventually constituted from
Italy, from France and from Germany extirpated of itself. This is the
European configuration for Nietzsche.

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Point 4: Wagner is theater.

We return to the question of theater. I remind you that if we say that

Wagner is not Euripides and not Aeschylus, we will finally say that Wagner
is the one who has submitted art to theater, specifically submitted music to
theater. Instead of the return of tragedy, he simply continued theater. On
Wagnerian theatricality, its determining character, the mode in which it
begins and ruins the high musical form, this is a characteristic passage on
theatricality, on the question of the effect "of what it is necessary above all for
Wagner to carry in roughly the same judgment as all men of theater today: a
series of strong scenes, each more powerful than each other, and in the
intervals a lot of clever silliness. He seeks above all to ensure the effect of his
work, beginning with the third act. He proves to himself the value of his work
by its final effect. Driven by such a sense of theater, we do not run the risk of
writing a real tragedy unintentionally. Drama requires a rigorous logic, and
Wagner has never bothered with logic, and this is not the public of Cornelius
he had in reconciling, but it was only that of the Germans"

So on this text:

1. The essential point perhaps is that Nietzsche continues to oppose

theater to drama. A decisive sentence: "Driven by such a sense of theater, one
does not find the risk of writing a true drama without intending to." A real
drama unintentionally, what is it? Real tragedy is the same as tragedy.
Writing a real tragedy without intending to would be precisely in the element
of return and innocence. In truth, a real drama could not be written except
without willing, because what we want in the sense of calculation always has
to do with theater. Tragedy is not desired, for it is in some sense an artistic

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demonstration of the appearance. It is not required in the strict sense, i.e. an

object of a calculation of the effect. True involuntary drama is what produces
the conjunction of dreams and intoxication regardless of the will of an effect.
True art is an art that is indifferent to its effect. We could give a very general
definition of theater (not just scenes or actors, etc ...): it is all art that wills its
effect. It is a form of the will, like everything else. Theater is art that wills its
effect, and Wagner in this sense first and foremost a playwright including in
music. It supports and considers its effect. And so it's very interesting that
when one wills the effect, one cannot submit art to what I call a rigorous logic.
And so it is paradoxical but significant rigorous logic of art that arises only
when one stops willing its effect. This is a typical Nietzschean maxim. The
rigorous logic only arises when one ceases willing the effect, calculating its
effect, being attentive to its effect. In a sense, perhaps it would be a definition
of art, the logic of art, and its rigor is essentially involuntary, for any artistic
intent can only be a will to the effect of art. And while we're in the calculation
of the effect, there is no rigor or artistic logic.

And then of course, the last point is that the effect is also a
representation of the public. Willing the effect, is to wish to reconcile the
public. The ultimate development would be the following problem: if
Nietzsche had formalized that, there would have been, in reality, three
periods of art. This is a periodization of another order:

One could say that there is an epoch of high Greek art, and perhaps
Nietzsche would return to the definition that he gives of it. But let’s stay there
a moment: tragedy, the conjunction of dreams and drunkenness, Dionysus
and Apollo. This identifies Greek art.

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There would be Wagner: an exemplary clinical case of modernity.

Wagner is the theater, but the theater began with Euripides. The
theater is folded into a distant modernity, it is theater as far as the calculation
of its effect, which in a sense will divide theater in 2. What Nietzsche says,
basically, is this: is the theater ultimately what the public is worth (not as high
art, which is self-sufficient, the public does not come into play, and it is not
calculating the effect but arising from its own appearance), since theater,
going from Euripides, is built on the calculation of the effect. It is thought as
this, and not drunkenness. But it reconciles the public. The calculation of the
effect is more or less sordid according to what the public is, more or less.
Nietzsche will identify classic art (not in the Greek sense) as the art of the
epoch of a public inquiring about the very nature of the effect (the public of
Cornelius). This is theater, and it not the return, tragedy comes from theater,
but theater such that the audience is involved in its determination, giving it
a strong measure. So it is true that it has to do with art that reconciles the
public, and when the public is difficult to reconcile, it is a valuable art. It will
gradually become an essential reference for Nietzsche, than this reference to
French classicism. There would eventually be three paradigms:

- Greek art, if indeed we still support the proposition

- Classical art whose paradigm is French
- Modern art, whose paradigm remains Wagnerian.
What will happen is visible and quite strange, and it is the following.
Deep, deep down, finally, the collapse of the theme of the return of high art
will also be gradually abandoned from the theme of art itself. What will
happen is this: it is not only the thesis of the return of high art which will

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collapse, but the identification of high Greek art itself will gradually become
ineffective, inoperative, or absent. This form of a native art which nonetheless
still leads the possibility of his return, will finally be absent. Nietzsche will
consider this Greece mythical or as already being a German creation.
Germany wasn’t only believed to be new Greece, but was perhaps Greece
itself. I.e. this Greece was dreamed up by Germany as the paradigm of its
return. This identification there was too German (art from the conjunction of
art, Dionysus versus Apollo, the dream versus drunkenness, degradation
from Euripides, was already German).

Parenthesis: what is remarkable, in which one recognizes German

Greece, is that it is always in the position of identifying a more fundamental
Greece than the Greece that is apparent. It is a schema of thought that is fatal
from German thought about Greece. One might think about Greece, but it is
not classical Greece with Socrates and Plato, Nietzsche says, but Greece in the
background, forgotten, where classical Greece is the degradation or
forgetting. One must always restore a lost Greece in the German landscape.
Not Greece consisting as a total archeology, which is in question, but it is the
essence of Greece to have been forgotten by what? Forgotten by the Greeks!
This is the essential point. The Greeks, the bad Greeks have forgotten their
own original essence. Greece has always gone through a forgetfulness a test
of forgetting herself in what appears as its classical foundation. We must
identify what has been called the preso, Heidegger says, as the authentic
Greece in its outbreak, before the strikeout (Socrates and Plato wear the hat!
The emblematic greats and the suspects of this strikeout of the origin). It's
quite German. Germany is itself identified in thought from the operation by

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which Greece has forgotten itself. This is a singular schema: it is not only that
Germany says that it will repeat Greece, a new intellectual world center. The
modern Germans need to identify Germany not only as Greece, where
Germany would be a repetition, but a Greece forgetful of herself, already
buried a first time in the obliteration of its past. …

Already a German construction in this vision of Greece, if we accept

that in some sense what is at stake in all this is a philosophical identification
of Germany, which is in need of the thesis according to which a native Greece,
primordial and home to Being, and which was high art, l’accointaine of the
poem and of thought, or the conjunction of myth and music. Greece has been
ossified, crossed out. Germany appeared to be the operator and place where
the thought description of this concealing and the promise of de-
concealment. Nietzsche writes Birth of Tragedy because there is the German
promise of the statist German art of Wagner. I think that Nietzsche at some
point no longer believed that. Not just the idea that Germany was going to
be the return, but the assemblage itself, the identification of Greece itself is
precarious. If the identification of Germany is the key to Greek assembly, and
conversely the de-identification of Germany challenges the Greek assembly.
That's for sure. There is actually a loss of the theme of high art that called
Greece the dream, myth, thought. The theme of high arts fades away
gradually in Nietzsche, and what suddenly takes strength is classical art, the
art of classical France. For if somehow theatricality is no longer measured by
high tragic art, then what matters is the story of theatricality itself. What
matters is high theater. What is high theater? This is what has a high public,
since theater is always in the logic of calculating the effect. Thus the troubled

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seeking of Nietzsche would be this: is there a non-histrionic theater, after

which it was said that the essence of theatricality was histrionics? A non-
histrionic theater, i.e. a theater commensurate to the classics. Indeed, Wagner
has a German public! The statement means: after all, if there is no return of
tragedy, and perhaps not even tragedy itself (German assemblage from
Greece), the force is to agree that what there is, and what there has, in a sense,
been for all of time, is theater, and if there is only theater, then finally the
principle of evaluation is high theater, and so it is theater to which the public
endows dignity. Theater such that its public makes it unfit to be a stage actor.

There is a form of what is indeed the era of classical French tragedy. I

would willingly sustain that in terminal Nietzsche, classical French tragedy
is certainly not a tragedy in the sense of Birth of Tragedy but tends to become
the true paradigm of what art can do. This is indeed a renunciation to its
mythical capacity. Art is capable of this, provided that the public is
constituted as such. Which of course (as we expect for next time) means that
it must be changed immediately, and it's the Germans. The problem is to
reconcile the Teutons! As long as theater will be devoted to a public Teuton,
it will be Wagnerian. It will reconcile them by making them believe that it is
high art, i.e. in the regime of the simulacrum and of the sham. I will conclude
on this point today.

We could say this: if we abandon the topic of the theme of

identification of the epoch through the return of high art, then we cannot
completely take over the criticism of theatricality. This is because theatricality
was precisely defined by the renunciation of tragedy. Theatricality is this il y
a, in the sphere of the art. Thus we must look for new standards on the side

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of theatricality itself. This is the meaning at the bottom of this story by Bizet.
Carmen, she was able to laugh, the French against the Germans, but it is a
lower layer. The real layer is why Nietzsche says Carmen and not Wagner?
The real signification is that Bizet's Carmen is the best theater, and it is French
theater. We will see it in detail. This is cemented by a public that is higher, or
whose dignity is higher because it does not pretend to something other than
what it is. This is not an imposture, it really does not take itself to be high art.
And even to say this is not high art, is also in Nietzsche’s favor. There was
the normative character of high art, oblique to theatricality. Again if we go
along with theatricality, everything is a public question: is the public
captured or controlled by Germany society, is the public a contemporary of
the “il y a”? But if the question is that of the public, then the ultimate question
is not aesthetic but political. This has a price. So for Nietzsche it is arch-
politics, directly arch-politics.

I would conclude this way: tragedy, the theme of the tragedy, leads to
an aesthetic conception of The Act. This is certain. But theatricality leads to a
political vision of The Act. And that is what Nietzsche found suffering to be
suffering. The failure of the aesthetic potential of The Act, because the theme
of high art has been affected. Consequently the obligation of a mediation of
the standard by the public: the public needs to change. It is a political
conception of The Act. Finally the theater has been, and is the intermediary
between aesthetics and politics. This is the vector of a blind translation of the
representation of the Philosophical Act of aesthetics to politics. And again
this translation is also the passage of the treatment covered by the return to

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an act that I would say, in all senses of the term, is without return. Evidently,
Nietzsche's madness has no return.

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New Course Four – Wagnerian Art

In conceptual terms, I recall an important point. It means, that:

1. In reality, Wagner’s music does not have as its essence a conjunction

(as does high art), the conjunction of drunkenness and the dream, the
conjunction of Apollo and Dionysus, but it is alone a dissociation (which
follows from this). I repeat that its greatness is in its detail, and not in the
manifest operation that it explains or employs, but rather in the miniature
musicale grasped in its minute details.

2. Wagnerian art falls short of any rupture: it is not the re-

establishment or return of the rupture of high art, but it is the contrary of a
rupture in the form of an achievement. It achieves nihilism. What one
believes to be healing is illness, in its developed or superior form, and what
one believed to be innovation is only an accomplishment.

3. It results from this that there is a dismissal of Germany as a possible

site of the return, i.e. as a possible new Greece. In a certain sense Germany
collapses with Wagner, Germany as the site of a mythical restoration of a
people is disposed of at the same time that Wagner is succeeded. Which
opens the question: what is the site of the arch-political act, of the
Philosophical Act in its arch-political essence? Regarding this point there is a
complexity of the national question of the last Nietzsche: one simultaneously
sees an Italian allegiance, more and more pronounced, notably regarding
music, from French references that are (extremely sustained) argued for
highly, in what concerns the reference to Classic French art, theatrical or
prosodic, the consolation of a fictive genealogy of Nietzsche himself as

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Polish, as coming from the East. Behind the plan of this dreamed Poland, an
essential Russia, he says that there is a form of joy in the Russian manner of
being sad, concerning the musical or artistic inscription that is fundamentally
Russian. There is also ultimately a theme of Europe which is developed more
and more, a theme that is related to a remarkable anticipation of the idea of
Europe to the idea of containing Germany, and I will put Germany, he says,
in a corset of iron.

So on this last point we have developed in extreme complexity the

last time, because it ultimately involves the question of the relation of
philosophy to theater. Since I remind you that what is essentially Euripides
for Nietzsche is the founder of the theater, theatricality arrives as the
corruption of the tragic in the figure of Euripides. Finally we could say that
Wagner as Euripides maintains an anti-theatrical hate of Nietzsche and the
fact of the histrionic and theatrical, character of Wagner as an actor is a source
of Nietzsche's polemic against him. But ultimately the question is more
intricate than that. If we take the issue another way: if Germany is not the site
of the return of the high art, where is art in this? What is the reserve of the
power of art, since ultimately that Wagner is an impostor, i.e. a miniaturist
where one expected a founding myth. It is Euripides where one expected
Aeschylus. But it should be emphasized that there is no alternative
hypothesis. The removal of Wagner is the removal of the very hypothesis of
the return of high art. When Nietzsche calls upon other musicians, whether
this or that Italian, Peter Gast, or Bizet, we see that this is not an alternative
to Wagner in terms of return of high art. It is another thing. The succession
of Wagner is the removal of the hypothesis return of high art, and it leaves

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completely open the question of the form of the artist in the era of nihilism or
the era of decadence. It consequently leaves open the hypothesis that the
criticism of theatricality is equivocal.

It can be critiqued given the imposture of high art, but opens up the
possibility that theatricality is unavoidable in the conditions of nihilism (i.e.
that high art is an inconsistent reverie), and that it also opens the idea that 2
theatricalities ought to be distinguished: a theatrical that is completely
corrupted, and a lively, more affirmative one. This can be understood well:
Wagner’s theatricality is an imposture with regard to the fact that it is
presented under the form of high art. This is the essential point. There is a
theatricality that subordinates music, there is a theatricality in which the
combination of intoxication and dreams is a theatricality of an impostor, and
as such it will be fully condemned. But the place is also cleared for a
reassessment theatricality itself and this leads to an opening of the re-
evaluation of classical French art. French classical art that would be the
possible paradigm of an art that is no longer conceivable under the reign of
high art. If art is no longer to think at the behest of the Greek return of high
art, we must change the paradigm. Otherwise we will be an impostor. This is
what demonstrates the Case of Wagner: by clinging to the paradigm of high
art, it only makes a theatrical caricature. If we deliver the question of art from
the fantasy of high art (Greek fantasy), perhaps we will find a theatrical
paradigm in reality, but a theatricality that is no longer chained to the
mythology of high art. This is what designates French classicism, classicism
and beyond, literary art, prose, references that are increasingly warm to
Goethe, who is also in a sense a revaluation, a rise in power of a certain…

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Perhaps at last, final Nietzsche would be opened, before the rush of madness
as the name of The Act might have been a division of theatricality itself as the
strict maintenance of an objection made to Wagner (in the part of the
deception) to have enslaved the question of high art under the question of
the theater.

That said, it is true that the trial of Wagner as the Euripedes of high
art, just as Euripides is the Euripides of Aeschylus and Sophocles. He fulfilled
what cannot be a paradigm. If we say that Wagner is Euripides, it can be seen
in detail. I would like to resume it in detail. In Nietzsche there are very
specific definitions of Euripides. That is accurate. I recall that for Nietzsche
tragedy is a conjunction, i.e. its power is properly the power of a conjunction,
and power is given in conjunction with fulfillment of a conjunction, this
conjunction being the conjunction of drunkenness and the dream, with in
some way in this idea (I will return to it) the singular conjunction of the
infinite and the finite. If we look closely, we see that the orgiastic Dionysian
character of which is given in the form of drunkenness is lifted, and it delivers
the infinity of life itself, while the Apollonian dream is the finished figure
[form] of form. It is true that the conjunctive power of high art is to hold
together with a completely unique creative alchemy the finite of the form, in
the form of the dream, and in the form of drunkenness, the infinite of life.
Euripides is another conjunction, namely the conjunction of thought and
passion. In other words, Euripides is someone who substitutes thought with
the dream and passion with drunkenness. In an operation which is a Socratic
operation. Nietzsche will therefore undertake to show in a certain sense that
Wagner does the same thing, i.e. that he is also overwhelmingly a man of the

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idea and not a man of dreams, and he is a man of passion and not a man of
drunkenness. 2 texts on this, drawn from the Case of Wagner.

On the fact that Wagner was a man of the idea, this will lead to a
systematic reconciliation between Wagner and Hegel that is fully interesting.
Wagner is in a way to Nietzsche's eyes the Hegel of music, i.e. he makes the
productive continuity of the musical flow become an idea, principally. In this
sense, he is the Hegel of music. I will read you the Case of Wagner: "Hegel is
a madman, but not only a German one; he is a European madman. A madness
that Wagner has understood, felt, immortalized, but has only applied to
music. He invented a style that keeps an infinite significance; he became the
heir of Hegel. The idea makes music. And as one has understood this in
Wagner! The same kind of man who is infatuated with Hegel is infatuated
with Wagner. At school we are going to write as Hegel. This is the adolescent
who understood that these 2 words were enough: infinite and meaning, for
he felt incomparably comfortable. It's not through music that Wagner has
won over adolescents; it is through the idea. This is what is most unequivocal
in his art: the manner in which he plays hide and seek behind 100 symbols,
the polychrome of his ideal that has irresistibly led adolescents toward
Wagner. This is the Wagnerian genius of cultivating trouble, his art of
clinging to clouds, of gliding and sailing through the air, in short precisely
what Hegel in his time had seduced and bribed with. Hegel as Wagner has
seduced and bribed teens with their exceptional talent to be simultaneously
everywhere and nowhere. This everywhere and nowhere must be
interpreted in the following manner: it is the idea that by which pretends to
look like the dream or drunkenness, cloudiness is the ubiquity of the idea,

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character vague and multifaceted, whereupon it simulates, it is the

simulacrum of the… Wagner, like Euripides, is someone who the power of
the ubiquity of the idea with true musical expansion. From this point of view,
music is controlled by the multifaceted forms of the idea. At the same time,
Wagner is also a man of passion. So he makes two characteristic substitutions
for Euripides. I will read you the passage, still in the Case of Wagner, "but it
is above all passion that overthrows. Let us be clear about passion. Nothing
is more advantageous than passion! We can ignore all the virtues of the
counterpoint, no need to be scholarly - passion works every time! Beauty is a
difficult thing, let’s keep beauty. And specifically, melody. Let’s denigrate,
my friends, or else take the ideal seriously; let’s denigrate the melody.
Nothing is more dangerous than a beautiful melody. Nothing corrupts the
palate more surely! We are lost if we begin loving beautiful melodies.
Theorem: the melody is immoral. Demonstration: Palestrina. Application:
Parsifal. Better, the absence of sanctified melody. And here is the definition
of passion: the passion of acrobatics of ugliness on the tightrope of
disharmony. Let’s dare to be ugly, Wagner has indeed dared. Let’s
courageously reject the mud of disgusting harmony! Let us not be afraid to
get our hands dirty. This is the only way we will become natural." In this
canonical charge against the passionate dimension of Wagnerism, we need
to decipher a bit beyond his irony. In reality, what is called passion in this
case (and just as I recall) is substituted for drunkenness, is the subordination
of the musical construction in its immediate effect. As always: we must
understand the idea and passions should be thought of from the interior of
the musical question, and they are not external attributes. If Wagner is at once
a man of the idea and of passion, in place of being the man of dreams and the

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man of intoxication, even his music testifies of it (and not declarations about
it), it is immanent in music. The idea rules music because it was what leads
musical dramaturgy, and it subordinates musical direction to theatricality.
Passion rules music because it subordinates musical construction to the effect
of disharmony or the passionate moment of music.

This will lead to Nietzsche to emphasize that in Wagner, what

fundamentally counts in music is its color, tone, and even more specifically
the timbre. There is a theory of Nietzsche's theory according to which Wagner
is someone who has placed the singularity of timbre at the heart of the
musical effect, through what is diverted from the teaching of classical masters
who weave the issue of melody and issue of harmonic structure. He says it
just before: "The color of sound is decisive here, its exact nature doesn’t
matter. It is above this that we must refine. What good do we waste our
efforts for? Let’s sound unique in sonority, obsessively so. The more we will
introduce the timbre, the more we will find spirit. Let’s get on each other’s’
nerves, beat them to death. Let’s have lightning and thunder, all shaken up.”

Aesthetically, it is the idea of what Wagner opens up through music;

it is the dictatorship of the tonality in the sense of tone, color, timbre, against
the regulation in some architectonic manner of musical discourse. To
summarize, we can say that at the heart of his music, Wagner is Euripidean
on one hand, because he subordinates the conduct of musical discourse to the
form of the idea. I.e. in a sense, music itself will become illustrative rather
than intrinsic, and it will stop being pure music. Furthermore he is the man
of passion in his music because he will gradually privilege the timbre over
other parameters of his musical configuration. Here we are. To conclude this

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point, we can say that Wagner himself surrenders to the same operations as
Euripides, the double substitution of thought to the dream, and passion to
drunkenness, but in some sense what Nietzsche will say does not even have
to do with conjunction. There is substitution, but there is not really a
conjunction. Between passion and idea, there is actually something
Wagnerian discourse that is dissociated. We will not go into details (we
would need Wagner). Nietzschean critique does not even recognize the status
of Euripedes in Wagner, as far as Euripides would perform a certain
theatrical conjunction of thought and passion, but in a certain way, which is
also why he is a decadent, Wagner himself is good at produces the
subordination of music to the idea, on one hand, and the subordination to
immediate passion on the other, but in dissociated forms. This is why it is a
music that is not always in The Act of promising, i.e. which its revolution
always differs from. Nietzsche analyses well how the organization of
Wagner’s musical discourse consists of accumulating tension without ever
resolving it. There are intrinsic reasons for this: if Wagner's music builds
tension without resolving it, whether it is a broken promise, or it is kept
hanging, but it finally settles this suspense, and it is precisely because it does
not truly realize the conjunction of thought and passion. It leaves them in a
dissociation that music can only irritate. Music is this dissociation itself. We
could say that Wagner is finally the timbre of the idea in this dissociated state,
the timbre of the idea. Certainly, the idea invested in sound, invested in the
uniqueness of sound, of timbre; but this timbre of the idea does not produce
a true architectural conjunction. It is in some way the promise that we will
really have the idea, but the idea itself is always concealed, in the suspense
of the tension accumulated in the tonality or timbre. And thus this is why we

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could say that what is ultimately covered by Nietzsche in Wagner is a

dissociated theatricality. Wagner’s music is the real of dissociated
theatricality which is carried out as the timbre of the idea or as the unresolved
cumulative promise. So ultimately it's in this regard that Nietzsche will
appeal more and more to a theatricality that is in the least non-dissociated,
i.e. he will call it simple, right. But a simple, right theatricality is certainly a
theatricality, always in the registration of the idea and its passions, and not
drunkenness and the dream of high art, but at least it does not leave itself in
a state of dissociation, nervousness and promise. One can say that it would
appeal to a sober theater. He calls it a non-hysterical theatricality. There
would be a long development to make in Nietzsche’s category of hysteria.

We can say that Nietzsche is actually among the philosophers who

have attempted to make hysteria a category, i.e. the designation of a type.
Nietzsche's typology refers to the ambivalences of power of this type. As
always, even the hystericization of music by Wagner is a complex operation.
Hysteria is a category of Nietzschean typology. Sure, it means to a degree
what he calls a good little woman, but not only this, for it also refers to
Wagner. There are even passages where this category is used by Nietzsche to
describe himself. The record of its definition in power is always ambivalent.
So theatricality to which he is going to appeal is a theatricality that would
have been de-hystericized, i.e. where dissociation explodes. The hystericized
theatricality of Wagner leaves a dissociation, the idea as a timbre. Hence the
contra-valorization of what would be a sober theatricality and also a sober
music. The problem being that any evidence of the paradigm of sober
theatricality, or what is meant under the name Bizet, for example, is surely

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not in a position to support the Philosophical Act as an arch-political act. This

is better than the Wagnerian dissociation, but this better is not a better such
that we could (as we hoped to do with Wagner) sustain it in The Act’s
maturity. This is not on the same plane. It is in a more complicated and
restrictive circuit that finds in any case that there is theatricality which is
sober or dissociated and hystericized, and to conclude that sober theatricality
is higher. But that does not give the arch-political undertaking of Nietzsche
the support that he could expect from the perspective of the return of high
art. What does not constitute the same support is not on the same plane. Thus
it follows that in final Nietzsche there is a type of rapid wandering, if I may
say so, in the determination of the question of knowing whether there is
something else. If the artist of high art is not the type of the arch-political
rupture (the Case of Wagner: the artist-type in the Wagnerian sense turns out
to be an imposture), and if on the other hand, Germany can no longer be the
site for this, there are two questions: is there another type, another site?

This is where Nietzsche will wander, in the strict sense. He will

become a European nomad. He navigates Italy as a form of this distance. He
will become a nomad of his own thought, which points to the double
question: Is there a site of this Act? (What nation? What configuration of
nations) and does he have support for it other than the form of high art which
would invest in a certain sense the possibility of The Act? Situated in the final
posthumous texts, Nietzsche establishes all the possibilities in this regard.
For example, it revolves around science. Nietzsche's relation to science, the
scientific is a question that is in itself very complex. There is the question of
whether science or a certain science, even beyond the intermediate positions

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of Nietzsche, close to science, if science does not produce a form of power

which would eventually relay the failure of high art. I quote a text from the
year ‘88 to indicate the complexities of Nietzsche’s thought on this point:
"Compared to the artist, the apparition of the scientist is actually a sign of
containment, a lower standard of living. But also a gain in strength, rigor,
force of will." Quite complicated, i.e. the apparition of the man of science is
the sign of containment or some decline in living standards (in Greece after
the time of tragedy), but also a gain in strength.

Thus a lowered standard of living, a gain in strength, rigor, and force

of will. So there would be a balance: if the artist-type will faint, the man of
science can arrive. Overall, it is certain that the arrival of the science man type
is an inflection, a slight negative curvature of the movement of establishing
values through life. What life creates in the form or type of the man of science
is not in the same degree of wide power that it creates in the artist-type (not
in the sense of Wagnerian histrionics, but the sense of high art). But there is
also greater strength, a gain in strength. So it's like this if you want to examine
more closely (science compared to art), but at the same time more focused.
And in terms of broader evaluation, the artist is superior. In terms of local
force, i.e. of invested power, the scientist may be higher. But ultimately
Nietzsche will stay there, and not opt for it. He will not reconstruct a device
in which the form of science will finally arrive to the stance of the form or
type of the artist.

He will maintain the idea that the figure would have been the artist, if
he had been in the form of the return of high art. He also turns towards the
issue of amorous power. Regarding this power, Nietzsche asks him (as he

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often did, with the figure of Lou Andreas Salome, for example), but in final
texts, there is an evaluation of the matter of love from the point of view of
energy. There are texts in which he states in some manner that love makes us
generous, i.e. wasting. The strength of love is such that one can waste vital
energy for nothing, in some sense. But these are sketches, and they are always
re-folded or reused by the idea that this wasting, so this affirmative
dimension, despite everything, (dilapidation as such escapes asceticism) but
it is rather a kind of release, a loss in another sense, and there is something
that by default strays from the point of application. Our way is to look at love
in its comparison with the resources of war. Nietzsche speaks of Bizet: Bizet
is finally sober. And then there is love, but not in the sense of Wagner: "At
last love, love transposed again to its original nature, not the love of a perfect
blank, of a sentimental sanctum, but love conceived an inevitable fatum, love
that is cynical, innocent, cruel, and it is precisely what nature is. Love in its
means: war. In principle: the sexes’ deadly hatred." War, deadly hatred does
not have an element of devaluation. There are passages where the war is
raised in some manner as a form of affirmation. We see this in Carmen by
Bizet. "Beloved Carmen, it was I who killed you." This is not an indication
that there is an intrinsic hatred in love. For basically, love that is cynical,
innocent, and cruel, as far as it is an unforgivable war between the sexes, is
in a sense a form of childhood, something like Dionysus the child. It could
consequently also be a figure ... but what is not appropriate, what is not
appropriate and what makes everything there also be considered as a folding
in on itself which results in it not supporting the arch-political gesture in the
sense of high art, this is only the hatred between the sexes, in its cynical,
innocent, and cruel dimension, and in a certain manner it does not find its

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principle of inevaluable affirmation. Something like that. I.e. love from this
point of view can be a force, and great strength, but it is compelled to repeat,
it insists upon its own war, but it does not create its immanent affirmation as
a rupture or otherworldly odyssey. I.e. it is a force that indeed squanders its
own assistance. It is ultimately quite superior for Nietzsche in the idealized
sentimentality found in pseudo-Wagnerian mythology. Cynicism, innocence
and cruelty is a real principle of life, which is made asphyxiated and
deleterious in the principle of Wagner’s music. This is not an ideal
sentimentality. It is truly the new real of a war. But it has no universal space
of opening. For ultimately it is in the insistence of its own rupture. So
obviously science, love, Nietzsche then interrogates politics itself in ‘88 in a
pressing manner, and that will be what he will call the theme of high politics.
We spoke on this at the beginning of the year. In a certain sense, “political”
is a fundamentally ambiguous word. What this high politics must mean, is
also the full termination of any policy, as supra- or arch-politics. So in a sense
Nietzsche does not find, in any immediate sense in politics, any word of the
typical form of a possible support of the philosophical gesture. This is
obvious since he has disqualified the political revolution. We have talked
about it in a detailed manner. He disqualified it, and he ultimately saw in it
an egalitarian resentment, and so in a sense for politics, history offers
nothing, nor any more, finally, that Wagner offers high art, history does not
propose high politics. In his time, a possible form would have been in the
register of the revolution, for sure. But as this historical theme of revolution
is disposed by him in the category of ressentiment (an Eventthat is far too
noisy, as Zarathustra will say), politics is for Nietzsche entirely to come. He

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will have to found it. So politics in his sense dissolves in arch-politics and
thus cannot be supported. This is what he announces.

So you see in some sense that if we seek to represent Nietzsche's

intellectual landscape in the year 1888, i.e. what there is, what there isn’t, for
this man who is alone in Turin, and who, alone in Turin, announces he will
break the history of the world in two? What is there, and what is there not,
as a possible resource for this Act? There are in posthumous fragments of
lists, which are in fact almost desperate, what may serve as support. There is
a general theme of the triumph of the will to nothingness, and then there are
even some lists of things to hang on to: there is the pagan spirit, there is art,
there are Greek Sophists. There are some things, but very few of them. If we
try to constitute the backbone, the vertebration of this landscape of thought
to the extreme of Nietzsche’s lucidity, we can say:

- There is no high art (a key point)

- Love is a form of insistent consummation - this is a war without

peace, a war without end.

- Science is too narrow (that's its own… its force or rigor is paid from
a lack of generality or extension).

- High politics is yet to come, and it is what has to do with bringing

about the possibility of The Act

So what there is, and we will come back to it, is indeed Nietzsche.
What there is Nietzsche both in a very true, and quite disinterested sense.
And Nietzsche tracks down signs that would show that it is indeed Nietzsche

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who is there, like when he is pleased to be recognized in the street. When his
tailor was very polite to him. You see how far the research of what there is:
what there is, is possibly some traces of this il y a, what there is for Nietzsche.
And Nietzsche is obviously honest, sincere, to save these traces. Not at all
with glory or vainglory, but in the desperate search for the question of
knowing that since there is nothing else and in particular no Wagner, there
must have been Nietzsche, at least. Madness came here, naturally. The
madness came when finally the fact that what there was, was Nietzsche, an
absolute overinvestment of this singularity. Thus he heard the title Nietzsche
against Wagner. Nietzsche against Wagner, it is an extraordinary collection.
Basically this is the last book on which he had worked, this is the last thing
he composed. He wrote the Case of Wagner, he still needed Nietzsche against
Wagner. This is an issue, an extraordinarily moving text because you cannot
help but read it as the text of someone who arranges his papers before
madness. It is entirely made of fragments of previous books; it is not a
creation, but a classing: he takes the texts he devoted to Wagner from Birth of
Tragedy left to Case of Wagner, and wants to show that in classing, one sees a
basic logic that is given in Nietzsche against Wagner. This man is thus trying to
classify both his life and work strictly from the point of view of the issue of
Nietzsche against Wagner. But what does that mean, finally, Nietzsche against
Wagner?

In the 1st basic sense: it demonstrates that there has always been a gap
between Nietzsche and Wagner, of course. But this is not interesting. In
reality what he wants to say is that there is no Wagner and thus look
carefully, there is no need for Nietzsche. It is Nietzsche instead of Wagner,

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fully against Wagner, in the place where he should have been, where he
should have found the return of high art. There is a point to mention in
passing, which is that Nietzsche against Wagner also designates a complete
change of perspective. It refers to a complete change of perspective. Because
Nietzsche cannot come exactly into the place where Wagner is, because
Wagner was identifiable from the point of the artist’s specificity, i.e. the point
of the question of high art. So it's something else, something else because
Nietzsche himself knows that he, Nietzsche, is no longer the artist of the
return of high art, and that at the least on this point, he is like Wagner. He is
as powerless as Wagner to bring about the return of high Greek art. He will
keep at the most the imposture that there was at the core. If we say Nietzsche
against Wagner, by storing the papers of this great history, if it is the last
thing we tell people, namely that there is no Wagner, so there is no Nietzsche,
we must see that the arch-political act will not actually have an artistic
character. It will not be supported or invested in the power of high art, it will
not be providing a people of its re-establishing or founding mythology. There
will be none of that. It will be only Nietzsche’s “fold”. But this has no
importance to us. For what matters is in reality what it means, this Nietzsche
against Wagner, that it is ultimately necessary to account on philosophy
itself. And even for Nietzsche this is a great conversion. He wrote at the same
time that philosophy is the criminal of criminals. This is an anti-philosopher
madman. But if this is not art, love, science, etc. ... ultimately it's what gives
support or material or execution to The Act that consists of breaking into two
histories of the world. ? What comes in the name of Nietzsche? We know that
when it has been invested or crossed by madness, it will be all the names, all
possible names, it will be the name of all names; it will be the naming itself.

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But this here is the ultimate tipping. We saw at the beginning of the year, that
this is the question of nature itself, the status of its undertaking. But
otherwise, what arrives under its name? This issue makes a return for
Nietzsche when we have Nietzsche against Wagner. We know what
“Wagner” is, maybe it's an imposture, high art corrupted by theatricality, but
we know what it is. But what is Nietzsche, for Nietzsche himself. The name
"Nietzsche" names what for Nietzsche himself? It does not name an artist, a
scientist, etc ... there is no listed type, like the others ... reviewed. And so I
would argue that Nietzsche against Wagner is at the end of ends, the revenge
of philosophy against art, from the point of view that the name Nietzsche is
able to support. High politics will be initiated by the philosophizing
declaration and exclusively supported by it. It will be in this truly silent sense,
i.e. not musical. Yet to the end Nietzsche will go on maintaining nostalgia for
art. He will leave a kind of intimate adherence to the rule of things through
art, and we sense this, although Nietzsche against Wagner somehow gives or
refers by itself the nudity of philosophy. For final Nietzsche, philosophy
divested of politics of the return of high art, divested of typical forms of
support on which they rely; it is its able to be own declaration and its own
declaration is arch-politics itself. It is lonely, as lonely as Nietzsche in Turin,
indeed. I would say on this point of view which is almost the last page of
Nietzsche against Wagner, the last passage of Nietzsche's epilogue against
Wagner, so really it is something that you can mean by testamentary, directly
concerning The Act, since it is the last passage of the last text written by
Nietzsche. You can only be seized with emotion thinking about that. We
basically have the last sheets that Nietzsche thought should be classified into
public view for the audience, before being silent, powerless to speak, i.e.

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ultimately in The Act from which one can no longer escape, The Act in which
one is frozen.

I have said to you that Nietzsche against Wagner is a compilation, a

classified text. It is a text taken from The Gay Science. You could say that it
does not have to do with a truly terminal text (GS 82), but the text is the title
of the foreword of GS. It's strange to see this text of the foreword as an
epilogue. This text of declaration and opening, becomes terminal and
testamentary. It changes status. It is October 1886 and published in June 87.
It is a text that I consider the legacy of the penultimate period. I consider that
from ‘86, i.e. after the 4th book, Zarathustra (‘85), which is the beginning of
the end (there is a difference of tone in the 3 other books). The 4th book is
where we will find the complications that will cause the final Nietzschean
rupture.

From ‘86 after the fourth song of Zarathustra, the categories of

standard or current Nietzscheanism are absent: this point is very important.
They do not disappear in their mention or their naming, but are absent as
living categories or susceptible to support thought. What categories? That of
the eternal return (mentioned in the plans, that’s all). It is no longer active.
You know my interpretation on this point: I think that this category of eternal
return was organically linked to the hypothesis on the return of high art. I
think The Actualization, the subjectivity of the eternal return of the category
was first and foremost the promise of the return of the possibility of high art,
and with it the collapse of the device of the return of high art. This category
becomes not false, but abstract. And Nietzsche never clings to an abstraction.
When a category becomes abstract, it is dead, in a sense. Similarly, the

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category of Will to Power. Imposture of building a book under that title, as did
his sister, who under this title is intended to focus on final Nietzsche. It also
passes into the status of abstraction. In my view it is because of the very
concept of will, which was in Will to Power, but not able to refer to the
experience of final Nietzsche. The truly involuntary character of madness is
being prepared, in anticipated consideration, in the abstraction of
progressive death that becomes the category of Will to Power. Breaking into
two world histories is no longer a program of the will, and is no longer called
“will”. Sarah Kofman says explosion, the non-Christian dynamic, breaking
into two, it is an Event..., i.e. a politics of its own in The Act no longer in terms
of VP, but in terms of transit or o the even which transits or grasps its act. The
category of Superhuman disappears, as related to the politics of new values,
which indicates the triumph of active forces over reactive forces. It is more
than that in final Nietzsche: keeping the term of the affirmation does not
mean the creation of new values. The affirmation is, to the contrary,
acquiescence to the inevaluable, which is not given in the form of the creation
of new values. Or provided that there is a perspective of the Superhuman, it
can be defined as man freed from all forms of sovereignty, lacking any
configuration of sovereignty. But there is no reason to call this man the
Superhuman.

So from 1886 on, the eternal return, will to power, and the
Superhuman are abandoned. And the text of GS from 86 belongs to the
terminal sequence, from this point of view. "Morality: we are not with
impunity the most profound mind of all time, but one is no longer without
reward. I’ll prove it with an example. O what horror we have when

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enjoyment, enjoyment coarse and thick and dark as the sensualist, our
educated public, our rich and powerful conceive it. How contemptuous irony
do we listen to henceforth, the flons flons of the great fair, where the
cultivated man, the city today, does violence through art, reading and music
to meet at their spiritual enjoyment in high reinforcements of spirituality. As
the theatrical considerations of passions tear our ears; this agitation of the
senses that cultivated plebs love, with their confused aspiration to the
sublime in exploded grandiloquence, in bypassed overload, as is foreign to
our taste. No, if to ourselves who are convalescing, we still need an art, it is a
different art, an art that is mocking, light, fleeting, divinely intact, divinely
artificial, rising right as a pure flame in a cloudless sky; Above all, an art for
artists, and artists only. After that we know where we stand on what he
requires: joyfulness, full joyfulness. We who know, know certain things all
too well, or as we learn henceforth to forget, to know nothing well in our art.
Perhaps truth is a woman who has reason not to reveal her reasons. Perhaps
its name is in Greek .... O these Greeks, they understood life. It is essential to
stick bravely to the surface, to the arid, appearance, sounds, words to all
Olympus of appearance. The superficial Greeks in the force of depth and very
space to which we return, we, the neck of the spirit breaks, we who have
climbed the highest and most dangerous summit of contemporary thought,
and who from there have a look around, a condescending look at our feet;
are we not, in doing so, Greek, worshipper of forms, sounds, words, and thus
artists." This is how the last page of the last book of Nietzsche ends.

I’d like to make several punctuations on this text:

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First, it is a typical subjective attack which we had discussed:

Nietzsche will henceforth have to take up the full greatness of The Act. “You
aren’t the deep spirit with impunity all the time": not only this time but all
the time, since The Act, I remind you, is breaking in two world histories, and
not only overcoming current nihilistic decadence. The text is under the sign
of this subjective attack that brings the name Nietzsche to the position of
carrying out The Act.

Second, the entire beginning of the following passage is a mockery of

what may be called the sublime art, the derision of subjective sublimity in art.
In other words, the idea that there is high art here is mocked, derided and
considered a great fair. The great fair, it is not so much art itself, the
contemporary art of Nietzsche, that the ideology of art (“the cultivated man,
the city ..."). It is the concrete form of the absence or denial of the return of
high art. Specifically, the fact that there is not high art, and well that's the
great fair. We could give it its modern name, the great fair is culture. The
culture is what remains when one has not forgotten everything (as told by
the brave Herriot, himself forgotten), but culture is what remains when there
is no return of high art. This is the trace, the public trace of the broken promise
of the return of high art. It is the great fair. We see that Nietzsche is bent on
it especially since he has contributed to it, for a time at the announcement of
the return of high art. There is a manner of tearing oneself from it.

- Thirdly, it should be noted that in the text we find the dubious

character of the very necessity of an art ("if to ourselves who are convalescing,
there must once again be art ..."). It is not yet clear that art is once again
necessary. If there is no high art, you can perhaps completely do without art,

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or in any case you must do without art in the form it takes in culture. Thus
the doubtful character of the necessity of art itself. And provided that there
will be one, this will be an art with characteristics quite different from those
announced by high art. It is an art that bears no trace of the conjunction. Its
typical form is no longer the conjunction (drunken dreams, Dionysus and
Apollo). This is no longer the form of the conjunction, but it is essentially a
simple art, but not in the sense of foolish or not complex; simple in the sense
that it is not exactly the order of the conjunction (no longer Wagnerian
dissociation). A right art is an art that shows right as a pure flame in a
cloudless sky. An art marked by an essential simplicity, with the decisive
attribute of lightness (airy, fleeting, light, mocking). It is an art that no longer
summon nature's powers as they were convened under the figure of
Dionysus in high art: a divinely artificial art. This is an essential point, an art
that no longer summons any people: this is no longer art which has the
organic function of providing a people its myths. It is an art for artists, only
for artists: it is strictly an art that is not for the community. The subjective
name of this simplicity of art will be gaiety. It is subjectified in joyfulness.
Joyfulness, any joyfulness. Between us, the text has nothing joyful, but it's
ironic. This subjective tonality of final Nietzsche: it is a turn that makes
everything lighten, promised in gaiety, essential simplicity, the pure flame,
the blue sky, and at the same time what prepares for an absolute disaster, its
own disaster. It is true that there is a sacrifice here. This devolution of the
world to gaiety, old, yes, but which affects it to the heart of the question of
art, its function, its necessity, what it can do, this theme is carried out to
madness. Until Nietzsche became a kind of indescribable wreck. Thus,
joyfulness as a subjectification of essential simplicity. An art for artists, let’s

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understand that he no longer summons the uniting of a people. It is an art

that is also blind, an art whose simplicity is made of oblivion. It is a forgetful
art. Let’s learn to know nothing well, to forget well. It will be blind to itself,
wholly consumed in its simplicity. It is an art of the return of the origin but a
current art.

From this point of view, what will happen (perhaps this is the most
profound metaphor) is a change in status of the word “Greek”. What is
Greek, being Greek? The Greek naming continues. Ah these Greeks! As for
the penultimate sentence, it is extraordinary that this sentence of Nietzsche
is "are we not Greek” at the last moment, all the classified papers, even that.
Nietzsche says he will slay Germany, but he will remain German if by
Germany, one means the indestructible character of being Greek. It is still
there, but Greece has changed direction. Greece is no longer the summoning
of a people by the conjunction of the dream and drunkenness, myth and
music. What it was originally, in a German tradition, the people, the
community gathered under the symbol of its mythical shaping supported by
the intensity of drunkenness and music. I.e. the myth that configures the
people by giving them a blind power, that was Greek. But here Greece means
the pure consent to appearance. This is appearance as radiantly taken in its
appearance, that is all. No function of the institution of the origin, of the
summoning of a community, of the foundation of the mythical spirit of a
people, of aesthetic regeneration of a race. All this is completely dropped.
Being Greek is to love this il y a, as far as it is this il y a. We can say that Greece
tips over completely from the side of Apollo. After all, Apollo was the glory
of the appearance as such. Dionysus was the bottom of the inevaluable, the

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multiple power of life. Apollo was the solar appearance taken in its pure
form. I would thus say that Greece has basically become the solitude of
Apollo, but solitude in a twofold sense:

First of all, Apollo’s solitude for it is decoupled from Dionysos

Then, Apollo’s solitude is unleashed from the theme of the

configuration of a people

That applies to itself, in itself, for anyone. And which was more for
anyone than Nietzsche in Turin, an exile among everyone, whom nobody
cared about. For him it is what is of worth, for anyone. There is something
like Nietzsche Becoming anyone in this text on Apollo. This is his princely
hand, his princely true side, the prince of The Act as anyone sharing Apollo’s
solitude. So it is the artist, with, again, the last word: aren’t we artists Greek?
Until the last moment there was this idea. But Greek and artist change
meaning. The artist is a worshiper of appearance, that's all. This is
synonymous with Greek, but as Apollo. Worshiper of the show, the sensible
appearance. It is holding it in a radiating classicism. Indeed a worshiper of
sounds and words.

So this is what the text says. Only, the problem is what relation there
is between what is said and the question of The Act, i.e. the non-Christian
explosive of breaking in two world histories? It classifies and puts it last, but
what relation between art as Apollonian solitude of the adoration of
appearance and the assurance of breaking in two world histories in arch-
politics? Finally the question of what is the relation between being an artist
and being a philosopher? Between being the artist and being a philosopher,

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there is a disjunction, a fissure in final Nietzsche. It was said that the theme
of Nietzsche deploys the theme of the artist-philosopher. Nietzsche would be
the inventor of this form which is often mentioned; reality but rather was a
tear at the end of this theme, and even a disintegration. The philosopher-artist
is caught in an essential disjunction that makes the artist basically become the
mourning of high art, i.e. the renunciation of conjunction, or if you will,
Apollo’s solitude. The philosopher has entrusted to it The Act, without the
resource of art, which is a wounded solitude. There we are. And finally the
ultimate question asked to us by Nietzsche, is in my view an enigma for art,
an enigma about the nature of the relations between art and philosophy.
There is a legacy of Nietzsche on this point: what is the nature of the relations
between art and philosophy?

It is bequeathed by the same explosion of the theme of the artist-

philosopher, by the disjunction that explodes in terminal Nietzsche. We can
summarize what we finally agreed in this legacy. What is the content of this
legacy? What does Nietzsche leave us, in this disjointed state?

The theme of high art whose paradigm is Greek. It started before him,
and transited after him, but it is an essential moment. Philosophy, says
Nietzsche, philosophy, is a free and Hyperborean spirit (not the ascetic
Christian), and anti-philosophy (the Nietzschean version of the philosopher),
the philosopher discerns the principle of high art and supports its return. The
link is clear, under the hypothesis of high art: discerning the principle and
supporting the return. This is Nietzsche of the Birth of Tragedy. The
ambiguity of the relation to Wagner is already there. The principle of art is a
paradoxical conjunction, but one where we can say that it is the last resort of

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the infinite and the finite. The task of philosophy is to discern in high art the
proper mode of the conjunction between the finite and the infinite that it
offers, and to support the return. I suggest naming this disposition the
romantic disposition, i.e. Nietzsche was romantic, and suggested an
outpouring of romanticism (he called Romanticism a great show). One could
call the romantic this form of link between art and philosophy which in
philosophy sets the task of identifying in art a form of singular conjunction
between the finite and the finite. Nietzsche has given it all sorts of names:
tragedy ... there is such a disposition in Nietzsche.

- There is the theme of art as a unity or radiant intensity of appearance,

art as a formal principle focused on the intensity of showing, i.e. in a sense as
the formal capturing of life itself, as reaffirmation of life in the element of
appearance taken in its form. What is the duty of philosophy in this case? The
duty is to show that in this case, art is not to be crowded, crushed by the
question of truth. The task of philosophy is to deliver art that is not only the
radiant proposal of appearance itself, of all the threats imposed on it by
philosophy in its ascetic, critical, Christian form, which claims to entrust art
to its task, its duty, educational capacity, and informative will. The
philosopher supports art in its pure vital vocation, i.e. in the pure intensity of
its appearance, and to deliver it from a destination to the true, good, and well.
Philosophy is at the service of letting art be as it is. The subjective principle is
a principle of simplicity and cheerfulness, a principle of subjectivity. It is the
principle of pleasure: the purpose of art is to please, and this is not to instruct,
educate, to direct the good towards the truth the good, or to be profound. It
is to please, precisely in the sense of pleasing in the pure flame that rises to

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the blue sky. I propose to call this arrangement the conventional

arrangement. In this sense, Nietzsche was also a classic, and he has also
argued it once he has exhausted the inconsistency or imposture of art. From
Nietzsche alone do we inherit a classic configuration and a romantic
configuration that is intricately noded. Eventually this will be concentrated
in the mystery of the artist. He is a fundamentally equivocal and versatile
figure. The artist as a type summarizing Nietzsche’s complexity:

As far as he is thought of as a man of the conjunction, i.e. as an artist

of high art (there is Aeschylus, for example), given the artist is a man of the
conjunction, he is a man of truth, despite everything. For after all there is a
Nietzschean concept of truth, and it is indeed him, the man of tragedy. The
truth is tragedy. Not only is truth tragic, but tragedy is the truth: through a
miracle, the Greek will comes to be held in conjunction where separation
makes an ascetic damnation and misdirection of humanity. Because
ultimately the unleashing of reactive forces is linked to the dissociation of
what tragedy joins to. It is only by working in this dissociation that Socratism,
then Christianity will be able to enslave humanity in the unleashing of
reactive forces. It is the moral, i.e. essentially untruth in Nietzsche’s sense
(vital affirmation). Thus tragedy is the truth. Thus the tragic artist, the true
tragic artist, is indeed a man of truth as much as a man of conjunction. This
is perhaps the only man of truth recognized by Nietzsche.

- On the other hand, in another sense, which is given to him from high
art, the artist is Apollo’s solitude, i.e. the man of simple appearance, i.e. the
contrary of the man of life illusion. The man of the useful life illusion, one
that strengthens power circumstantially, without conjunction (i.e. the truth).

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Hence Nietzsche will say that the artist is a type of truth and sometimes a
type of illusion, which allows him to recognize in Wagner his identity as an
artist. But Wagner cannot be recognized as an artist (impostor) because the
figure of the artist is equivocal, and can be taken between 2 different
meanings.

Therefore the Romantic disposition, Classic disposition, the

ambiguous figure of the artist, where are we in the relations of art to
philosophy, and how have we crossed Nietzsche’s field?

The key question is what constitutes art, with regard to philosophy, in

the possibility of relations that are intricate and elusive, even contradictory,
the question of what this pertinent unity is. What does philosophy call art,
and what is the relevant unity? This is not simple, and in Nietzsche there is
Wagner, tragedy, the artist, and Carmen. There is a variability of naming: the
author, the work, a sequence or a genre. This question is paramount. If after
Nietzsche we wish to consider the question of the relations of art and
philosophy, there is a question of determining the pertinent unity of this
relation; is it the work of art that gives art, the work of an artist, or the artist?
Often it is the artist who is in a sense more important than the work. Is it
something else? (Tragedy.)

There is a primary element of demarcation, and it could be decided in

Nietzsche himself that as we adopt the theme of the work as a pertinent unity
for philosophy or the type of the artist, or of unique sequences (tragedy), one
nodes art and philosophy differently. We open up different hypotheses on
the relation of art to philosophy. I will leave this issue for next time, to
address directly: if we try to think about the question of the relation between

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art and philosophy, what is the specification of the very lode of presence of
art? What does philosophy call art? In Nietzsche himself, there had been great
complexity in the issue of the question of the naming of philosophy of art
prior to the question of relations, which initiates the relation. That will be for
next time...

New Course Five - Knottings [The Pen-Ultimate Course]

…Having said everything, or at least the essential, leading us to

Nietzsche’s legacy on the question of art, and specifically on the question of
the node between art and philosophy, in the contemporary guise of this
question, I think it’s still all the same as far as Nietzsche, or Nietzsche’s anti-
philosophy, are concerned. The question learned this century is: where are
we in the relation between art and philosophy, a complex and controversial
question. We have demonstrated that the question of art was evidently both
central and deeply divided in Nietzsche To recall to just how true this is, and
how it has remained central to the end, I would like to read you a fragment
from spring 88, which is after all a true hymn to art: "Art and nothing but art,

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it alone is what makes life possible, and it is the great temptation that leads
to living, the great stimulant that pushes us to live. Art, the only antagonistic
force superior to any denial of life. Art, anti-Christianity, anti-Buddhism, and
anti-nihilism par excellence. Art, redemption of what one knows, of what one
sees, which wants to see the terrible and problematic character of existence
of one who not only sees, but lives, and wishes to live the terrible and
problematic character or existence, of the tragic man and warrior, the hero.
Art as the redemption of one who suffers, provides access to states in which
suffering is willed, transfigured, deified; where suffering is a form of great
joy.” There we are!

Still to the end there is art, nothing but art. This thesis is, in a certain
sense, one could say, the last word of Nietzsche’s anti-philosophy. That is the
very moment he writes, "The philosopher is the criminal of criminals," and
he writes the conjunction, "art and nothing but art." One could argue that
there is a general movement which in some manner sacrifices philosophy to
art, in the name of its superior force and transformation of life, including,
essentially, the life of suffering. And at the same time we have seen that from
inside this powerful generality that finally devotes existence to art, and,
inversely, saves or relieves existence through art, there is a split, division, and
extreme complexity of development that forms the motto, "art and nothing
but art," to stumble, really, on a more essential question which is, "what is
art?". Art and nothing but art, of course. But ultimately, art. In this hymn, art
is supposed as far as its existence. As far as there is art, then yes, art and
nothing but art. But what is art, and is there art? These are questions that the

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masked philosopher must address, whatever the antiphilosopher’s devotion

to art may be.

On this question, there is in final Nietzsche:

On one hand a 1st assemblage, a 1st device, revolving around the

theme of high art and the collapse of this device, around Case of Wagner

Along with a hasty sketch of something else, which in some way

remains, on some level, undecided.

Thus Nietzsche has bequeathed us (1st point), the question of art,

contemporary art, whether there is art, as a formidable and by no means
evident question. By no means evident, even taken up in the shadow of the
near-certainty that in any case there is no high art, i.e. art which would be in
the form of the eternal return of Greek art (this is the return of Greek art or
primordial tragedy).

And we had said last time that ultimately this split makes Nietzsche's
legacy on the question of art a complex legacy for us, which in no way settles,
in one form, as a hymn to art, in the 20th century, as a superior aesthetic form
of existence, but enters one of the most difficult considerations to resolve and
decide.

We had said that there is in Nietzsche the legacy of a possible

Romantic disposition, re-transformed, reworked, which would be the tragic
disposition, strictly speaking, the modern tragic disposition, whose
philosophy would identify the principle, support the return, as Nietzsche
had done for a long time around and concerning Wagner. And this is where

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one can say that the central maxim is that the artist of high art is he who
performs the paradoxical conjunction of the finite and the infinite.

Parenthesis: I use the word "conjunction", in the sense of a conjunction

of the dream and intoxication, and of the Apollonian and the Dionysian, to
indicate that this is not dialectic. I quite agree with Deleuze (this is not in a
configuration of contradiction, in the sense of the Hegelian movement, but it
is a conjunction and almost a forced one, at that, and in this force we find the
Nietzschean concept of power, i.e. that the power of the artist is precisely
joining in strength with something, while by itself it does not allow itself be
conjoined. It has the puissance of the conjunction itself. This is what forms
great tragedy. The conjunction of the finite and infinite is really a conjunction
and not the Becoming or succession of one by the other, or a movement of
contradiction.

Emerging in final Nietzsche is a conventional arrangement (with a

genealogy), where art is taken not in the power of the conjunction but rather
a principle of simplicity and cheerfulness. There is an absence of any depth,
basically related to the previous conjunction. It would spill over into the
Apollonian form as such, i.e. the taste and the commitment of the appearance
taken in its form. In this case we could say art is essentially finished. One
could even say: art is the content affirmation of finitude. So there is that, this
double provision.

And then the artist, who is a figure left by Nietzsche in a

fundamentally equivocal status. I would like to mention that this idea of the
character who is fundamentally equivocal is a decadence of the modern
artist. Precisely because it is no longer taken in the simple power of

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conjunction, of high art, but taken in a simple movement which is itself not
found on some level in modern art, this idea that the artist who is
fundamentally equivocal will have a very large artistic posterity. I also think
of the novelistic universe of Thomas Mann. Actually, this universe is haunted
or inhabited by a meditation or immanent return of the theme of the
equivocal nature of the artist’s figure, distributed somewhat metaphorically
between health and disease, as if there had been something in the artist which
is always in imposture to assert as a health as well essentially a disease. I.e.
to deploy in the form of formal splendor something that is actually in its
inmost being pathological or perverse. And the artist, in Mann as well, will
be flushed out with creative sincerity to the point where at bottom it is
possible glory in artistic appearance, and he alone, of immanent givenness
that is precisely deprived of any health. It is thus in a sense the power of the
powerless.

So in reality it would be necessary to relate this point to the ambiguity in

Nietzsche from the relation between art and sexuality (compare with the last
time we discussed this). This question of the relationship between art and
sexuality is omnipresent in Mann, metaphorically or directly. It is true that
Nietzsche has a sort of great ambivalence on this point: he also argues
simultaneously or in short diachronies, that:

High art has a policy of joyfully and affirmatively considering sexual

orgiastic element, from Birth of Tragedy (and then this is accompanied by the
anti-ascetic polemic, Christianity as the fundamental device that represses
instincts)

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And he argues at the same time that the artist is essentially a chaste
figure, i.e. a figure that does not abandon itself to the immediacy of sexual
desire. This is quite a Freudian theme, i.e. that after all there is only one
libidinal energy, a single reserve of power. And if we squander it in pleasure,
it is as far as lost for art. If it is executed, it is not sublime.

So we have two examples on this point:

- Posthumous Fragments, but in the moments Nietzsche revisits the

whole of his work, both for writing Ecce Homo, his biography in mind, and
to write Nietzsche against Wagner (I said the last time that there was in
Nietzsche this emotionally moving terminal aspect of ranking papers or some
of his papers). Unfortunately for the rest of his papers, it is his sister who
ranks them. She has not given a second thought to doing this. She has ranked
some of them the same. And what he classified revolves around the re-
routing of his work. I re-punctuate upon this point: he does it in part because
it has become essential to state that there is Nietzsche. The point should not
be lost sight of. It is not at all testamentary itself. It is the whole scheduling of
evidence public, that there is Nietzsche. Nietzsche himself is a category of
thought in Nietzsche terminal, not a person in psychology. It has to do, then,
with educating the public validation of the Nietzschean category where I had
said that it comes from where high art was a failure, the category was going
where high art was in failure, the category was going to hide, as I said, the
explicit opening with the collapse of the theme of high art. This is the deep
meaning of the title “Nietzsche contra Wagner”.

In one of those texts where he revisits Birth of Tragedy (his final stage),
in November 88, he speaks of the orgiastic mystery "that ensured the Hellenic

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through these mysteries? Eternal life, the eternal return of life, the promise
and consecration of the future in procreation, a triumphant yes to life beyond
death and change, real life, global survival in the city and in the community,
the sex ratio, the sexual symbol thought of as the most venerable symbol in
itself, the true symbolic epitome…". So the sex ratio and sexual symbol
thought of as the very concentration of Hellenic heritage, which is in other
parts depicted as high art, and adds, "I do not know a of any symbol higher
than sexual symbolism. It took Christianity to make sexuality base. The
concept of immaculate conception was the worst psychological baseness ever
achieved on Earth ..." So we have on the first side: the idea that finally high
art in its Greek origin is crucially related to the question of the sex ratio, the
symbolism of the sexes, and that there is an essential node to consider
between the sexual dimension of existence, without the form of sin, without
it being marked by the form of sin, and the ability to affirm life in the form of
high art. The lack of asceticism, the absence of repressive figure, the absence
of disfigurement of sex as such by Nietzsche is assigned to the highest
affirmation of the vital power. It is a Dionysian text.

But by October of 1888, and thus at the same time, and in passages that
were left or correlated: one finds here the artist: "Still, on average, the artist is
actually under the duress of his mission, of his will to control,, a temperate
man, often even a chaste man. The dominant instinct required of him, it does
not allow him to spend himself at will. It is a single force that is spent in the
artistic design and the sexual act. There is only one kind of force. Succumbing
to this, wasting oneself in that, it is treason for an artist. This betrays a lack of
instinct, and will, this can be a sign of decay; in any case, it depreciates his art

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to an incalculable point I take the most unpleasant case, the case of Wagner.
Wagner, bewitched by this incredibly unhealthy sexuality that was the curse
of his life, knew only too well what an artist loses when he lost in his own
eyes his freedom, his respect for himself. He was sentenced to be an actor.
His art itself becomes for him a constant attempt to escape, a way to forget,
to stun. This alters, and ultimately determines the character of his art. Such
an un-free man needs a world of hashish, of strange mists, which are heavy
and enveloping, all kinds of exoticism and symbolism of the ideal, even if it
were only to get rid of his own reality. Such a man needs Wagnerian music.

Thus, I do not wish to dwell upon this issue but it is still significant. In
a certain sense, the division that I propose to perceive in the doctrine of
Nietzsche's art can also be spoken of in these terms. It is a purely Apollonian
text, i.e. an entire text that is entirely on the site of the control of form. We
must not forget that the Dionysian form of art its surrendered firm, but
surrendered affirmatively: it is that of the surrender of art in the form of life.
While the Apollonian form is the form in control. Of course, the one and the
other have their affirmative and reactive dimensions (compare with Deleuze
on this point, an excellent analysis). But the Dionysian affirmation is in a
sense precisely in the surrender or an almost unconscious yes to vital power.
While the affirmative dimension on the Apollonian side is made up of formal
mastery that submits the appearance to affirm the pure appearance. Thus it
is quite clear, as we said last time, that this combination no longer belongs
within final Nietzsche. In a certain manner, we continue to find valuations of
the Dionysian element, and there are also the valuations of the Apollonian
element, increasingly considerable indeed, and it's the classic side that

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prevails gradually, but the conceptuality of the conjunction (which regulates

the principle of art in Birth of Tragedy) is weakened. There somewhat of a
split, which happens to no longer hold everything together, not only in art
itself, but t not in art itself but also in the thought of art and sexuality.
Sexuality will also considered from the Dionysian side as the superior
symbol, where art is nourished, and from the Apollonian side, from the
mastery of form, as an outright squandering of energy (like a loss of power).
This will have a great literary and artistic fortune after Nietzsche, in Mann
and others, with a psychoanalytic glaze above it. But ultimately the question
will be established in the following terms: what does art have to do with sex?
The question turns explicit, and you see that has not, strictly speaking,
awaited Freud’s psychoanalytic device. It is explicit in Nietzsche, but it is an
issue that is really not going to take up the form of relation between sexual
energy or libido, and art, but more insistently, it is already fully present in
Nietzsche's text on Wagner, and will take the form of a question that is the
relationship between perversion and art. This is what will become the
insistent question, as if in a certain way the theme of affirmative Greek
sexuality which Nietzsche talks about in the first text, was an issue that could
no longer be modern, and was in truth mythical. You should see that this
sexual symbolism is ordered in procreation, and it is civic sexuality, sexuality
in the toils of its collective destination, even when it is celebrated in the
manner of this orgy, it is this sexuality that is celebrated. For Nietzsche it is
like that.

And contrarily, in Wagner, this is the theme of a morbid sexuality that

is overlooked, and it is ultimately a perverse or perverted sexuality. I think

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from this point of view, art itself becomes a sexual analyzer, and it is
presented or proposed also as an analyzer of sex and particularly as an
analyzer of its versatility, i.e. in its non-univocal character. There is no
unanimous view of sex, either in its standard or prohibited form. So it looks
like the art of the early century in various forms (quite striking in paintings)
was haunted by the question of the relation of artistic resource itself, not just
sexual - in terms of mere energy - but in the versatility of its effects. And
indeed on a terrain I do not exactly believe to be that of a problem of
sublimation. This here is the point: it was not exactly in terms of not wasting
energy in an oddity of all kinds, but it is necessary to reserve it for the formal
simplicity of Apollonian art, and it is not in the classical view, but in this
vision which introduces or ties the question of artistic ability itself to the
question of the versatility of forms of sexuality. To give an example, we can
say that Death in Venice by Thomas Mann is a kind of symbol of that. That's
its subject. That is why it is an exemplary text on this point (Visconti
understood that well). The subject is not so much death, as mentions in the
title; the question: what is the artist able to think from the point of his art, of
his own desire? This is the question. I think this has been a question that in
fact is quite central. It is often taken under the scheme of the intrusion of
psychoanalysis in the form of art. I believe this is the 2nd point. I mentioned
it in Nietzsche to show that more originally before the shrink, and in the most
immediate manner, the meditation in thought that he proposes for it, there is
a destination for art itself, for post-Nietzschean art, that is appropriated as
internally at stake from its future, the question of its relation to the versatility
of the sexual. This is present, and absolutely essential in Nietzsche. There we
go!

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We had concluded that by saying: finally, the most insistent question

Nietzsche leaves us, in this complex panorama, is ultimately that of: what is
philosophy as understood by the name of art? It's too easy to say what is the
essence of art or what is art? It is a timeless and general question. The
Nietzschean question, its torment through which this question of high art is
most greatly specified: there is nothing but art, and it saves life. Alright, but
what is understood by this name of art? This question is all the more
disturbing when trying to recapture in Nietzsche that basically, there is a
circularity in Nietzsche on this point. There is a circularity because on a closer
look, the statement that art is what saves life, it is what raises suffering, etc ...
is also, in truth, the only definition of art it ultimately offers. I.e. that art saves
life, but what is art? What saves life. There are not so many other definitions.
It is the non-Christian, non-nihilistic form of the relation to life. This is the
only real anti-nihilistic power. But if you wonder about the assignment of this
power, as in what is its trait, its singularity, what gesture or procedure it is,
there is very little. In a sense, I would argue that one of the enigmas that
Nietzsche leaves is that art is omnipresent in his work without somehow
being identified, or identified in quite disparate and fugitive protocols.
Because of this essential circularity which is that we recognize in this thing
that allows living, but in a sense, this is precisely what it is, the power that
enables living. But in the question what is really understood under this name,
the political Nietzsche is very difficult to reconstruct.

But I think that on this point he has left a real question, even with this
slightly obscure circularity. A real question which is that precisely what

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philosophy is in a state to understand under the name of art has indeed

become problematic, quite problematic. It is a question that has no evidence.

I would not say that this attests to a crisis in art, for example, although
Nietzsche argues this to the extent of there being a collapse of the principle
of high art. But I think that the question of philosophical identification of art
is a matter which is greatly muddled. It is perhaps muddled from the
moment it became clear that this identification could not be made in the
register of an aesthetic. And it will be argued that the last aesthetics is actually
that of Hegel. What do we mean by aesthetics? We mean by aesthetics
precisely a mode of functioning of the name of art in philosophy. It is a certain
mode of functioning of the name of art in philosophy called art in philosophy.
And this functioning, which is very original, which we may think in this
sense of Hegel is the last form, consists of identifying art in its relation to the
idea. Art as the specific instance of the idea. The idea in the sense that
otherwise, such and such philosophers will give it (e.g. Plato’s Idea, Hegel’s
Absolute). But there, in a general manner, philosophy is tied to the art by
examining art as a singular figure at the heart of presenting the idea. Art is
one of the modes in which the idea is present. Even Kant's aesthetics is still
under this maxim in complex ways, including in the registration of the fact
that it has to do in some manner with the presentation of the idea without
concept. The general theme of aesthetics in that finally in this sense, is when
even the theme according to which art is present form of the idea. Something
like that. In any case it is a node of the sensible and the idea, which can be
presentative, devalued or on the contrary revalued, but it is a node of the
sensible/idea. It is the relation between art and philosophy in terms of

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aesthetics. Basically, you see an aesthetic that's what sets art i.e. in its place.
From the point of philosophy, it is an operation of philosophical placement
of art. And like any placement it is done in a space of places, and therefore
virtually always in a hierarchy of presentations of the idea. Hence, finally the
fact that we almost always acknowledge an aesthetic in the fact that between
other things that proposes a hierarchy of the arts themselves, because the
placement of art with philosophy is also an intrinsic placement of the arts in
the space left to art. We would have fairly simple criteria. It looked like quite
simple criteria, for example in aesthetics, art is always placed, i.e. in reality
compared to other things, arranged in a space of placement which establishes
its uniqueness or its difference by relation precisely from other forms of the
idea (philosophy, or science), and then finally this placement is refined, is
singularized, or carried out in a hierarchical arrangement of the arts, in a
classification of the arts, philosophical classification of the arts, because
obviously the arts is the proper mode in which the place of art is fulfilled. The
role of art is never fulfilled except by the deployment of the arts. So there's
going to be a topology, and any aesthetic is a topology of the arts. On one
hand one art, on another hand, another art. Finally we can say in the lexicon
of metaphysics that there will be a higher art and lower arts. A hierarchy will
be arranged. The mode of its node of supreme art to the idea is the
antechamber of something else, while on the contrary there is a more inferior
art that is knotted to something else. So here I call aesthetics a generic form
of node between philosophy and art, and one could say that it is in the order
of placement. And once again, the empirical sign of the order of placement,
is the philosophical ability to offer a philosophical classification of Fine Arts.
And so in an aesthetic we must see that philosophy intervenes in a manner

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of evaluation, and it provides an evaluation of the arts, and all placement is

also an evaluation, a comparative evaluation, hierarchical, so that aesthetics
is also normative. One cannot necessarily say that it distributes a principle ...
concerning works, but it is normative categorically, concerning the general
system of fine arts. If we roughly examines Hegel’s doctrine, it is an aesthetic
in this sense, perhaps the most accomplished one, and we find there what we
just said: classing, classification, and simultaneously the history of arts, and
as you know, it is accompanied by the thesis that art is finished. The thesis of
finished art, one must understand it. This does not mean there are no works
of art, or there will be none: art will not bring anything new to thought.

Where art is now capable, philosophy is capable in a sublime manner.

Art is relieved of his duties. That does not mean he does not continue
empirically. Hegel’s thesis is thesis of placement, but it is historicized, it is a
thesis of the end. Actually, I think what Hegel states, and justifiably so, is in
my opinion the end of aesthetics; not the end of art, but the end of the
aesthetic disposition of the relation of philosophy to art. There is something
that is completed there, but this is not art, not even in the sense that Hegel
mentions it. I do not, and we cannot believe that art has fulfilled the destiny
of thought which is its own, the innovative singularity of its invention, the
proposition that is its own, that it was relieved of the philosophical
appropriation of the absolute idea, but what we can believe is that the
aesthetic node of art with philosophy reaches its terminal edge. Thus the
inherited portion of philosophical intelligibility of art would become obsolete
with Hegel, and have completed its virtues of thought with Hegel. We could
argue that. Hegel marks not the end of art, but the end of this particular

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disposition of the philosophical in art, namely aesthetics. This would be the

final aesthetics, something like that. For Hegel, there is an identification
between the end of aesthetics and the end of art, since its thesis is that
philosophical appropriation of art exhausts its essence. For Hegel, aesthetics
is the last thought of which art is capable. So the end of the aesthetics can be
interpreted as the end of art. This is not inconsistent. For we must separate
the two things, if we do not think that the philosophical investment exhausts
the essence of art. There is no end of art, but the end of the aesthetic
assemblage of the relation of philosophy to art ... Nietzsche is a modern
thinker of art, because his approach to art is not subject to an aesthetic.
Nietzsche is the one who considers thought at the end of aesthetics as a form
inherited from the node of philosophy and art. It is thus a dimension that
could be called post-aesthetic from the Nietzschean relation with art. Take
note that we cannot bring the philosophy to art in the categories of aesthetics.
I note in passing that this Actually applies to the relationship of philosophy
to the system of its entire conditions.

We cannot argue in modernity that the relation of philosophy to

science can be done in the order of knowledge. But in a sense, the thesis of
knowledge, in the relation of philosophy to science, bears the same relation
that philosophy has to art. This is where there is an overall crisis that does
not concern procedures that are involved; art, science, but it concerns the way
that philosophy is tied to these procedures. It is roughly the undermining of
aesthetics, of the theory of knowledge, or epistemology, but also the difficulty
of political philosophy. On the particular issue of art, the importance of
Nietzsche is in trying to establish itself in a non-aesthetic relationship to art.

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This is his greatness. And then what we is bequeathed to us regarding this

point, if we share this issue, and I deeply believe that we share it; in effect,
we are all orphans of aesthetics. The attempt of the refabricate, to hem it up,
is reactive. There is not, and there will be no aesthetics in modernity, and no
longer will there be epistemology or political philosophy. It's good for the
academic group. So Nietzsche has left us this point, but it indicates or
specifies to us that there are difficulties. This difficulty is twofold.

You could consider it on the side of philosophy: i.e. is philosophy as

such capable of a relationship with art other than aesthetics? Is it not, if I may
say, viscerally aesthetic on this point? That's the first question. You see the
importance of it: if in some sense philosophy is actually incapable of a
relationship with art other than aesthetics, the collapse of aesthetics after
Hegel is only a symptom of the collapse of philosophy to the test of art. At
the end of the account, modernity would be a time when the philosopher is
unable to stand the test of art. And this would be a symptom of his own
dereliction: the test of art would be in reality fatal for philosophy. It would
demonstrate its incapacity, because as aesthetics is obsolete, it does not
happen to settle in a relation to art that is at all inventive or renewed. Now
that it’s evident Nietzsche shares this conviction, to some degree, that’s the
very problem. He does not agree with it fully, but he shares it to some degree,
i.e. to some degree he is really an anti-philosopher, and he says that the need
for anti-philosophy, the polemic against philosophy, is educated by art. The
test of art organizes anti-philosophy, and not philosophy. We’ll have the
maxim: art, nothing but art, which does not mean anything but: not
philosophy. So the first question: assuming that ultimately philosophy is to

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some degree identified by aesthetics, then the thesis of the aesthetics of

collapse is a thesis on philosophy, and not just on the relation of
art/philosophy. If philosophy is subjected to the test of modern art, what is
noticed is its inability to sustain this test, for it still attempts to restore the
ruined category of aesthetics. Another way to say it is the following:
aesthetics is a position of control. Philosophy is the master, especially the
master of art. Aesthetics is philosophy holding upon art the discourse of the
master. It indicates the place in a hierarchy. We could say that Nietzsche is
symbolic of the removal of any ability to exercise control over art. It would
be this: basically, philosophy has always tried to have with art a relation of
control, and with the statement of the end of art we reach the height of this
control, but it is also indeed its collapse. Removed of its possible position of
control of art in its aesthetic configuration, philosophy is finally disposed of
its identity, if it is true that the identity of its discourse is that of the master.
This gives the following question: Is philosophy capable of maintaining a
relation to art that is not a relation of control? Can philosophy wish to do
something else with art than master it? It is well known that a solution
proposed in this century been reversed, i.e. it is art which is the master of
philosophy. The tendency found in this century: since philosophy should be
removed of its form of control with regard to art, in this removal, it is art that
is the true educator, the form of invention, breakthrough, blinding revelation,
and philosophy shortly behind. There is also some of this in Nietzsche. Art is
the great education of those who know, art is the real master, the master of
life. This would leave us a second question: can philosophy have a relation
with art that is neither control nor submission? i.e. at the bottom where we

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indeed renounce the aesthetic project, without having to shout "art, nothing
but art," which deifies slightly.

The word “deify” in Nietzsche’s text: art is a deification of life and of

suffering. One could say this: Is philosophy capable of proposing in
contemporary conditions, of art and itself, what might be called a free relation
to art? This would undoubtedly be the question Nietzsche has left us. What
is meant by free relation, is a relation that is not taken up on one side or the
other in the form of control. What is a free relation that is not negative, or in
the form of control?

That is the first question on the side of philosophy. We will return to

it in our final session. But you see that the point is as always when it has to
do with freedom and equality. What is an egalitarian relation between
philosophy and art, an egalitarian relation that envelops the radical principle
of differentiation of the two. So oddly enough, the key point is to understand
that at one end and the other it has nothing to do with same things. It is the
absolute condition for equality. If it is the same thing, you are in a form which
is inevitably a form of rivalry. If it's the same thing that circulates between
art and philosophy, one wonders which is carried out more completely,
radically. Ultimately, given the dialectic of Becoming of the absolute idea,
philosophy raises art, there has been an era of art, but it is completed. So the
key point, which in Nietzsche is obscure, is ultimately the intelligibility of the
fact that the operations in thought which are at stake in the 2 cases, are not
the same.

The side of art begs the question: what does art think? With the
background of the fact that what he thinks is not in rivalry, subsuming, or

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placement, for example, of what philosophy thinks. A free relation assumes

that at some given point there was not a circulating category something that
circulates between the two, which is shared between the two, which is
expressed by the two, and that makes for some inextricable [sensory] node
where it is then captive in a process of control.

So the first job would be to deliver art from circulating categories that
render it homogeneous to philosophy, and mutually, removing philosophy
from categories that make it homogeneous art, and establishing a radical
disjunction. This disjunction is not established by Nietzsche. It reverses the
hierarchy. Ultimately, for Nietzsche, it is philosophy that is finished. But then
what happens? Art, nothing but art! But on this particular point, in my view,
Heidegger does not say anything really. He says metaphysics is finished.
And provisionally at least that there is a poem, but it is a reversal of the
Hegelian theme that art is finished and tied to philosophy. The free relation
that I speak of cannot settle in a reversal, but what is required first of all is a
disjunction. And so the question would be: if the question that art thinks, that
philosophy thinks, is disjoined, one must assert the heterogeneous. The
difficulty, then, is as follows: asking the question "what does art think"? If it
is philosophy that asks this question, it is re-established in control and
ultimately it will offer a new aesthetic form. So we are absolutely constrained
to the following thesis which argues that art itself thinks what art thinks. Art
will be understood not only as a thinking but also necessarily as the site of
thought of this thought. And this here is the sine qua non condition of the
egalitarian relation. It is not merely a question of disjunction, and to say that
philosophy thinks art is that it restores thought to a position of control, and

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eventually aesthetics. Thus, the true consequence of the ruin of ethics to

which Nietzsche is a fundamental witness, is that art must be seen as thought,
and as thought of the thought that it is. This is not a reflection, but it must be
intrinsic, i.e. art should in its effectiveness be thought of what it is, the
thought that it thinks. And of course not as far as he would propose an
aesthetics. It is clear that art and artists can borrow from philosophemes and
fabricate aesthetics. This is not the issue. Within the rigorous meaning of
aesthetics, it doesn’t have to do with that. The process of art itself must be the
element of identification of its own thought. Furthermore, it is quite essential
to maintain that such has always been the identity of art, and not to reserve
this attribute to contemporary art. We must insist on this because it is quite
important in my view. You know the doctrine that contemporary art would
be aware, an art show its own operation, an art whose subject is art, etc. ... is
a common site of modernity. One would say: yes, artistic modernity, it is an
art that has received self-consciousness sufficient to testify of its own
protocol. So a painting that shows itself as a painting, music that carries the
dialectic of its own operations, a literature that starts in the abyss of its own
text. That characterizes artistic modernity. It's not the thesis that I support
here. I argue a thesis on contemporary art as an avant-garde form carrying
art to an immanent consciousness of itself. Or in other words: it has to do
with establishing a new relationship between philosophy and art, and this
relation should not be based on a thesis that singularizes the artistic sequence
itself. But it should as always retrogression to the whole issue, by assuming
that art has always been the thought of thought. Why is this important?
Because otherwise, one makes this characteristic a consequence of the ruin of
aesthetics. If we think that only contemporary art has reached a form of self-

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consciousness, or a form of thought that it is, it will be said that this is because
it has ceased to be thought by philosophy in the element of aesthetics. So it's
consequence of the un-knotting of the interiority of art to its own thought.
Thus the form of modernity where the time of splitting would itself be
philosophical, namely in the ruin of the aesthetic device would be the real
opening up, a clearing of artistic modernity. We would have the story of a
liberation: with the collapse of aesthetics, art would be freed from control and
thus appropriate the immanent categories of its destiny. It will be said in
other words that art is delivered or renewed by the end of metaphysics. But
that's not it. As for me, I do not think that; I do not believe in fidelity to final
Nietzsche, that this is a negative Event in the history of philosophy, i.e. the
collapse of aesthetics or even the collapse of metaphysics, which commands
the internal destiny of art. I think that the form of a new node between art
and philosophy offers an immanent identification of art as the characteristic
of art, quite simply, and not as a characteristic of art at the time of the collapse
of metaphysics. This characteristic is timeless, like any real characterization.

So if we at last narrow down the issue, we could also say:

- On the side of philosophy, it has to do with assessing the role played

by aesthetics. What role has aesthetics played? One could say: it was
mastering art, fine, but why was it so important for philosophy? What did it
have to do with in this case? Plato eliminates ¾ of it in order to master art.
He exiles the poet, and only allows the patriotic song and still nothing
anything else. In the assessment of this case, and if we give it a technical form:
what role does aesthetics have in the classical philosophical disposition. And
it has to assume the categories of a relation to non-aesthetic art, which are not

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a vassalage or kneeling in front of art. One would have gained nothing,

finally. One would have redistributed control. I believe that the element of
balance can in no way be neglected. One is not at the end of knowing what
role aesthetics has played, and what was the meaning of this node Nietzsche
demonstrates its collapse, he testified to it, he took it upon himself to be the
historical witness to a time when the relation of could no longer be aesthetics,
and to some degree tipped into the unlimited apology of art.

If we take the question from the side of art, the essential point to know
is what, and how should the artistic procedure proceed for it to be thought
from thinking as such? This brings us back to the question from last time: to
think about it, art is a thought but is also immanently the thought of what it
is. What is the unity of this examining? What is true unity? We had seen that
there were three options for it. What does Nietzsche mean by art? There are
at least three possibilities. We understand art as the work of art or works of
art, or indeed there is very little meant by it in Nietzsche. Its cutting art is
fairly around the work. When he speaks of Wagner he is not singling out a
texture or a work that interests him. There is the artist, another figure of
possible unity, and this is a very important category, but fundamentally
equivocal. And then there are categories of another type, for example, that of
tragedy. It is not reducible to one or more works, but is a category in itself,
but it is not reducible to the artist or artists, or consists as a subjective unity.
There is a unity of examining, constituted by any evidence. It is a category of
investigation. What is there at stake in thought?

So it seems to me that there may be a 2nd sequence of summoning in

Nietzsche which is fully different, re-summoning or repunctuating Nietzsche

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or a completely different way, focusing less in some sense on conceptual

theme gradually forged from 1st Nietzsche, which revolves around will to
power, but paying more attention to what I would call strictly the core of
Nietzsche's anti-philosophy, i.e. in a sense calling upon philosophy to endure
Nietzsche’s anti-philosophy and to find there information on the protocol of
its own reconstruction. So it would not be a Nietzscheanism, strictly
speaking. The form of Nietzscheanism was always undecidable. In fact it
was, as we shall see next year, the same as discussed in Wittgenstein, but in
a proper mode in which philosophical uncertainty calls upon eminent figures
from his opponent, i.e. one that has always denounced it as illusion or
suggested therapy. Not to rally around this anti-philosophical perspective
but to make it a test plan for a restoration, from a new perspective, where
philosophy might prove itself capable. I think that something like that
happening, including in the work you submitted to me on Nietzsche. It is
around the true meaning of the Nietzschean act that the issue is brought up,
more than in the attempt to restore a Nietzschean conceptuality in the
modality of critical genealogy or the destruction of the ascetic form of
nihilism. This is my first remark.

So it seems to me to result directly from the opportunity to revisit the

issue of history. These comments on this 2nd Untimely Meditation are
specifically oriented toward the question of politics in history. This indicated
that the question, "what is thinking about history?" Can we think of history?"
is what it means, and in fact, is a question that is fully important and difficult
from our actuality. And after all in the circumstantial collapse of the
Hegelian-Marxist view of history, the theme or anti-historicist interrogation

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of Nietzsche has held our attention. Or let us say in other words, we can
imagine that we are in an age that is struggling with the legacy of historicism,
in its inherited great figure, after all, of the Hegelian system. It is certain that
2nd Untimely Meditation explicitly targets certain figures of historicism, that it
develops the vital necessity of the supra-historical. And that undoubtedly
what brings your attention to the text is the symptom.

The 2nd, which interested me a good deal, is the matter of an

involuntary survey, which is, what texts have you discussed so far? I forbade
us from taking into consideration the works of 1888. So what texts were you
going to discuss? The survey has given us this: almost the only book that you
have discussed is the Birth of Tragedy, a book that argues organically and
deploys a number of theses. This has been brought up. And then maybe at
last the fact that the question of art is understood directly as a challenge, and
not understood in a manner that is diagonal and complex. So first the Birth of
Tragedy. And then after it is the 2nd Untimely Meditation. The 2nd Untimely
Meditation is a text on history. And it is the 2nd text you have questioned
enthusiastically. So there seems to result directly from the opportunity to
revisit the issue of history. These comments on this 2nd Untimely Meditation
are specifically oriented toward the issue of the politics of history. This
indicates that the question "what does history think?”, and "Can we think of
history?" What that means, in fact, is a question that is quite important and
difficult from our actuality. And after all in the circumstantial collapse of the
Hegelian-Marxist view of history, the anti-historicist theme or question of
Nietzsche has held your attention. Or let us say otherwise, we can imagine
that we are in an age that is struggling with the legacy of historicism in its

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inherited great form, after all, the Hegelian system. It is certain that 2nd
Untimely Meditation has an explicit of targeting certain figures of historicism,
that it develops the vital necessity of the suprahistorical. And that
undoubtedly, what has held your substantive attention to this text is the
symptom.

The third text addressed is On the Genealogy of Morals. What can be

said about Genealogy, is that it has to do, much more, if I may, of a careful and
critical examination of classical Nietzsche. Geneaology may be considered
especially from the perspective of Deleuze’s interpretation of Nietzsche,
which places at its core all non-dialectical opposition of reactive and active
forces. It is also at times almost a book, a text that is strongly constructed, and
which is attached to the Genealogy, questioning it from the point of view of
internal forms, from its conceptuality and its consistency. That is why it
seems to me, furthermore, to be a critical review, a critique of common sense,
of the term of the classical Nietzschean device, i.e. the genealogical and
critical device. These were the remarks. We will not conclude, but close from
this viewpoint where we had arrived. I remind you that the issue we had
considered as the issue left by Nietzsche was that of the node between art
and philosophy, the node between art and philosophy that one may envision.

Either on the side of art (under the issue that may be this node if art is
not the return of high art), or on the side of philosophy (wondering what
might be the categories of the capturing of art by philosophy, that is not of
the order of the Platonic exclusion, nor of the suture or conjunction that one
points out in Nietzsche).

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On these issues I will attempt to give you some ideas, to point out
some hypotheses. I inform you that I've said this elsewhere (you might
recognize it), and that finally the central question also seems to me to be what
is necessary to understand through art from the point of view of philosophy.
What is the pertinent unity of the exposition of the artistic process, such that
philosophy as such is captured? A unity grasped without either art or
philosophy coming to occupy a question of control in this correlation.

I would say to establish, once again, the condition of an egalitarian

pact between art and philosophy. To establish the unity of the consideration
of the question of art, one must examine these different possibilities. We must
return to these possibilities. The identification of art in the strict sign of the
work (by art one means works of art, and nothing else), the artist (writer,
genius, creator) would be another relevant unit, with a complex of work, his
works and something else as well, which is not resolved in the simple totality
of works considered, and then in the 3rd site of sequential categories,
ultimately, as tragedy for Nietzsche. Tragedy is a sequence of existence of
what he calls art. A sequence which has its birth, its peak, or center of gravity
and its form of internal corruption (Euripides). That defines something that
one will call art, but on the basis of a category that neither allows itself to be
dissolved, either in terms of the work or in terms of the artist, which is no
longer a kind in the sense of academic classification, but a singularity.

Here we are. Next time I would make some assumptions on these

issues, on the 2 sides, i.e.:

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1. On what conditions can philosophy, while it is de-aestheticized, i.e.

freed from aesthetics, or an aesthetic project, i.e. establish a relation with art
other than what is contained in aesthetics, i.e. not "art, only art."

2. On what conditions can we identify art as being both a thought and

an immanent thinking of this thought? I’ll sketch it out.

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New Course Six : On Philosophy, Subjectivity & Art

...The Nietzschean Act is the dissolution of any form of sovereignty,

not the emergence of a substitute form of sovereignty. In this theme of the
artist-king, to which Borreil dedicated a book, one finds this peculiar
historical situation, which marks both Romanticism and post-Romanticism,
i.e. it covers its broad stratum for nearly the entire 19th century, where the
function of art and the artist becomes somewhat preeminent, and where as I
proposed to say, any part of philosophy undertakes to suture or conjoin itself
to the artistic process in a fully unique way. That’s it for the news.

I’ve corrected your homework. It is not purely formalistic or academic

work. But for the most part, between them, we feel a commitment, a personal
decision to focus on this, on the correlation that is attempted or practiced
between Nietzsche and ourselves. This 1st actuality, where basically, the
central theme was, well, let’s say, the Nietzsche of the people’s vitality, or
let's say, the critical Nietzsche of nihilism, thought of as the one who points
out the paths or means to overcome nihilism, of reclaiming the people’s
mythical origin, etc…

Thus it seems to me, that there might be a 2nd sequence of summoning

Nietzsche which is altogether different, re-invoking or re-emphasizing
Nietzsche in a fully different way, focusing less in some sense on the
conceptual theme progressively forged from the 1st Nietzsche, who revolves
around will to power, but paying more attention to what I would strictly call
the core of Nietzschean anti-philosophy, i.e. in a certain sense it calls on
philosophy to endure Nietzsche’s anti-philosophy and to find there the

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information on the protocol of its own reconstruction. So it would not have

to do with a Nietzscheanism, strictly speaking. The figure of Nietzscheanism
has always been undecidable. In fact it was, as we shall see next year, the
same as discussed in Wittgenstein but from the proper mode in which
philosophical uncertainty calls forth the eminent figures of his apparent
opponent, i.e. the one who has always denounced the illusion or proposes
therapeutics. Not to rally around this anti-philosophical perspective but to
constitute the test plan for its reconstitution, from a new perspective, whose
philosophy could prove itself to be capable. I believe something like that
happens, including in the work you have submitted to me on Nietzsche, and
it has a lot to do with the true meaning of the Nietzschean act that brings up
the question, more than in the attempt to restitute a Nietzschean
conceptuality in the mode of the critical genealogy or in the destruction of
the ascetic form of nihilism. This is my first remark.

The 2nd, which has interested me a great deal, is the matter of an

involuntary survey, which concerns what texts you have discussed. I forbade
us from taking into account the works of 1888. So what texts were we going
to talk about? The survey has given us this: practically the only book that you
mentioned is The Birth of Tragedy, a book that argues organically, and
deploys a number of theses. It has been mentioned. And then perhaps finally,
the fact that the question of art is approached directly and simply, and not in
a manner that is diagonal or complex. So first the BT. And then after the BT
there is The 2nd Untimely Meditation. The 2nd Untimely Meditation is a text on
history. And it is the 2nd of these texts that you have examined
enthusiastically.

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Thus it seems to result directly from the opportunity to revisit the

issue of history. The commentaries on the 2nd Untimely Meditation are
specifically oriented toward the issue of the politics of history. This points
out the question, "what does history think?", “Can we think of history? "What
this means, in fact, is a question that is fully important and difficult from our
standpoint. And after all in the circumstantial collapse of the Hegelian-
Marxist view of history, the theme or anti-historicist question of Nietzsche
held your attention. Or let us say otherwise, that we can imagine we are in
an age that is struggling with the legacy of historicism in its great inherited
figure, after all, the Hegelian system. It is certain that the 2nd Untimely
Meditation explicitly targets certain figures of historicism, and that it develops
the vital necessity of arch-history. And there, what undoubtedly draws your
substantive attention to the text, is the symptom.

The third text is On the Genealogy of Morals. What can be said about
Genealogy, is that it is much more, if I may say, a careful and critical
examination of Nietzsche classic. Genealogy of Morals may be considered,
particularly from the perspective of Deleuze's interpretation of Nietzsche that
places at its heart all non-dialectical opposition of reactive forces and active
forces. It is also at times almost a unified book, a strongly constructed text
that is attached to the Genealogy, questioning it from the point of view of its
internal figures, its conceptuality and its consistency. This is why it has to do
with what seems to me a critical view, a critique of common sense, in terms
of the standard Nietzschean device, i.e. the genealogical and critical device.

These were the remarks. We will not conclude but close from where
we had arrived.

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I remind you that the issue we considered as the issue left by Nietzsche
was that of the node between art and philosophy, the node of art and
philosophy that one could consider:

1. Either on the side of art (on the question that that may be this node if art is
not the return of high art)
2. Or on the side of philosophy (in wondering what could be the categories
of grasping of the grasping of art by philosophy, which are neither of the
Platonic order or exclusion, nor any longer of the suture or conjoining that
one can points out in Nietzsche).
On these questions I will attempt to give you some ideas, and point
out some assumptions. I mentioned to you that I have said this elsewhere (as
you may recognize), and that finally the central question also seems to me
what must be understood by art from the point of view of philosophy. What
is the relevant unity of exposition of the artistic process, such that philosophy
as such is grasped? Grasped, such that neither art nor philosophy come to
occupy an issue of control in this correlation.

Regarding this point I would like to start by making a kind of census

of figures inherited from the node. The line of investigation on this issue
seems to me to be taken up as follows. Finally, while everything is concerned
in the history of the question on the point of knowing what is the position of
art with regard to the truth, truth being taken as organic category of classic
philosophy. In other words, what judgment has philosophy brought to the
relation of artistic phenomena to what it would consider its organic or
constituent category (namely, the truth)? This is why I would distinguish two
essential and macroscopic relations between philosophy and art, according

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to which philosophy ultimately holds that truth is absolutely exterior to art

(i.e. that art is no more than imitation), or as it holds on the contrary, that the
truth is rather strictly exposed by art itself (i.e. art is the formal instance, if
one can say so for the infinity of truth). Thus what interests us is what these
provisions entail about the philosophical limitations of art itself, the order of
statements of philosophy on art. In the first case, if we say that art is basically
irreducibly linked to the form of the semblance, or is even inherently mimetic,
there will often be 2 consequences:

The first is a philosophical suspicion toward art, which is naturally

linked to this fact is that is presented as, we should say, the charm of the truth
or truth in its sensible form, and consequently it is presented as the truth in a
form capable of capturing emotions, whereas the fatality of truth rests
outside it. This will be the first consequence, in the tradition inaugurated by
Plato; art will divert suspicion of the truth, and divert from the necessary
diversion that leads to the truth, for it is the semblance of an immediacy, that
of a truth which operates in the immediacy of the sensible realm. The heart
of the process is here, elaborated in the critique of the mimetic of the second
manner. Art is presented as if it could exist while not striking the immediacy
of the truth, and consequently it is what detours from dialectic, in the sense
of the labor of the truth, the long Detour, as Plato says. And so one will
consider that it is art from which one must detour, to rediscover the true
detour. What is at stake is less the imitation (it simply states that the truth is
exterior, but if you could see that, it would not be a big deal). What is serious
is that art really functions as if there were an immediate instance of truth. We
must strike a rigorous review of suspicion to regain the territory of the

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dialectic detour, which alone allows access to truth as such, with its
movement.

The 2nd consequence is that at the heart of this suspicion, art will be
monitored. I.e. art is what should uniquely be from the point of view of
philosophy that is monitored. Then what does monitoring mean? Monitoring
means to say that as far as art is a semblance, semblance from the immediacy
of the truth, one must monitor the truth where it is the semblance, or truly
the truth.

One must appropriate the immediate form from the result of the
detour. In other words (and this is monitoring as such), immediacy is in
reality a result, the result of what the detour permits us to conquer, and in
which we will consent to portraying the appearance of the immediate, which
is in reality the appearance of the result of the detour in the semblance of art.

This is why we would call this relation a didactic relation. Ultimately,

there is a didactic vocation of art. Art is under the possible control of effects
of the semblance which are proper to it, as the effects of the articulated
semblance of an extrinsic truth, where the principle truth is not art. Art is a
monitored immediacy, or second immediacy. It must be added that the
instance of the control, where the territoriality of control is possible for one
can measure art by its double effects. From the moment the truth is extrinsic,
i.e. where the semblance is controlled, or the immediacy is 2nd, we will reveal
its actual effects, and make them public. The public relation always includes,
ultimately, the relating of the question of art to the question of its effects.

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Rousseau, for example, who belongs to this Platonic tradition, writes:

“The shows are made for the people and it is only by their effects upon the
people that one can determine their absolute value.” In the didactic node
between philosophy and art, the absolute of art, effect or absolute quality, it
is under the control of public effects of the semblance. Public effects that are
themselves standardized by extrinsic truth. This scheme is not only an
outdated configuration by Plato and Rousseau. This is obviously the
disposition that Brecht argues, for example. I do not go into details, but this
case is interesting: there is an expressly didactic theater conception of theatre,
which means exactly that the place of truth is indeed extrinsic, and that
theater’s function is in some way to show what it is extrinsic to itself, to show
that the truth is extrinsic; this is the true order of the control in the semblance;
finally, theater will present the possible forms of subjectivity of this extrinsic
truth. How this extrinsic truth will be appropriated or not, is precisely what
the theatrical configuration will outline.

The phenomenon of distance is crucial: it is precisely the mode of

difference that allows the legibility of the subjectivity of truth, as far as it is
extrinsic. It follows from this that theatricality is by no means the normal
presentation of truth. In this sense Brecht’s invention is not dogmatic, and it
doesn’t consist of organizing the totality outside the semblance of truth.
Instead it will show the order of the distance and its multiple subjectivity,
through which –what- will indicate –what-? Though it is not the truth (which
is extrinsic to the artistic configuration as such) but the forms of its courage.
The subject of Brecht is the following: what are the terms of the courage of
the truth, or conditions of cowardice with regard to the truth. Because the

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courage of the truth is an equally theatrical form of subjectivity. That's why

it is evidently the figure of Galileo that is central: Galileo is the relevant
person here, and it is through him that surroundings are discussed and
debated, not truth (science extrinsic to the theater, and theater will not place
in the semblance this truth concerning the movement), and it is not a
semblance of truth but the artistic organization of the decisive question of
subjectivity of the extrinsic truth, notably the conditions of its courage. The
point that art slips is where truth as a subject is not self-evident. That the truth
is not self-evident is finally the theatrical form arranged for educational
purposes. The ultimate goal is to convey this form of courage, to project the
visible system of conditions. So I recall that Brecht was aware of this point of
view from a certain subordination of theater to what he called philosophy.
The master of the game in didactic dialogues is commonly called the
philosopher, and it is he who is the master of the procedure. Brecht had a
fundamental dream of creating what he called a dialectic society of
friendship. Finally theater convened in such a society, less to please than to
give to each person the courage of truth, i.e. to become a friend of the truth,
of dialectics. Bringing in friendship for Truth. This is the first node.

There is a 2nd node, at the opposite extreme, which holds that art alone
is really capable of the truth. Nietzsche belongs to this end to some degree.
We can call this scheme, this node, the Romantic one. The y axis is that art
alone is truly capable of truth and in this sense art is the self-accomplishment
of the abstract indication of philosophy. Or even that art is the real body of
truth, or produces this real body of truth. We can also say that art is the
descent of the infinite in the finite of the form, something like that. In this

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perspective, art is the deliverance of the subjective sterility of the concept. It

is art itself that is in fact the absolute as subject, to put it in Hegel’s formula.
Or even, a formula which Nietzsche would distance from all the while
frequenting, which is that art is incarnation. Let’s say that art is actually the
real figure of the truth as far as it occurs in the sensible, i.e. in the identifiable
form of truth that otherwise is only the abstract promise of the concept.

We thus have 2 opposing nodes. On Nietzsche, we can say this: in the

academic form, truth and art are finally in a form of disjunction, and this form
requires a singular regulation from philosophy. This regulation can be at
most an absolute disjunction (exclusion, banishment by Plato). There is only
patriotic music. The nature of the dialectic scheme does not involve teaching
this disjunction but offers a standard. In the conceptions elaborated by
Brecht, one has the norm, i.e. the disjunction which is termed “distancing”.
The distance is properly the manifesting of disjunction.

While, in the Romantic scheme, one has a conjunction (which is what

Nietzsche argues for), save for the essential being a dialectic conjunction. For
if it is said that art is the descent of the infinite to the finite, or the assumption
in sensible finitude of the infinite of an idea, we are still in the process of
dialectic succession. Thus we would have on one hand a disjunctive
normalized schema, and on the other hand connective scheme that is in
general dialectic.

In the second case, art is politics for philosophy. It is a true and

insistent question, and still it is at the heart of the device constituting
philosophy. Even for Plato, it is striking to see that Republic X finishes by
saying,: “everything that one has done was good, but what was particularly

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good was that one has made poetry, and what is truly formidable, and what
one has done best (i.e. the banning of poets). In this Romantic figure, it is
decisive. If art is truly capable of the path of truth, it is central, and
philosophy is the denegation of its abstraction to the Real of art.

In the two nodes, one fixates attention, or focus upon the artistic
procedure, whether in the modality of a standard disjunction, or in the
modality of a dialectic conjunction. The problem is that after all there are still
philosophies which art has left alone. The Classic sequence opens with
Aristotle: it is not a problematic tearing, and one is not cornered by the
dilemma of expelling everything, or genuflecting to them. Art is neither an
instance of embodied sacralization of the truth, nor a danger that the
semblance exerts on the immediacy of the truth. Art does not disturb
Deleuze, Spinoza, or Levinas much. Everything is fine, they are not in
jeopardy. This is contrary to Romanticism on one hand (which is a Platonism
returning to meaning), and constitutes disorder for philosophy. The Classics
are not in jeopardy: there is a third node, neither didactic nor Romantic. This
node, I believe, originates in Aristotle; who is already quietly writing a policy
without considering the need to take extreme measures. The man of truth can
go to the theater and read poems, and it will not destroy his sight of the truth.
What is the nature of the device I would call the Classic device? I believe that
crux of the matter is as follows. Clearly, in this node, we shall also consider
how art is essentially mimetic. It endorses the concept of art as mimesis and
as pretending. Thus, strictly speaking, the truth is not immanent to art but
extrinsic to it, and at best, perhaps, a semblance. This device shares the
Platonic conviction, but concludes differently: the conclusion is that it is not

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too serious. Art is in the mimetic dimension of the semblance, but this is not
a serious problem.

Nietzsche I, Seminar 1992-1993. Translated & Edited by Wanyoung E Kim