Friedrich Nietzsche’s perspectives on the unconscious by Martin Liebscher
Shortly before his mental breakdown at the beginning of January 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in Ecce Homo (1888) that “out of my writings there speaks a psychologist who has not his equal, that is perhaps the first thing a good reader will notice.”1
Since then, posterity has subscribed to his verdict.
Today his opus is regarded as an essential contribution to a psychology of the unconscious and he himself is supposed to have been a precursor to psychoanalysis.
This is rather surprising, as Nietzsche’s philosophy contains no explicit theory of the unconscious; in other words, the concept of the unconscious is not at the center of his thinking.
Instead one can – especially in the early writings – detect an understanding of the unconscious which aligns Nietzsche with a tradition of thought from early Romanticism to Schopenhauer, a concept with which he assumed his learned audience would be familiar.
But at the same time he began – in his unpublished observations, and under the influence of contemporary scientific and linguistic theories – to bestow his own meaning upon this conception of the unconscious.
This stream of thought led, in connection with his theory of the drives, to a somatic understanding of the unconscious in his middle period.
As I will argue, Nietzsche’s middleperiod writings already pointed towards the dissolution of the concept of the unconscious, a process that was finally completed in Nietzsche’s late writings on the will to power.
The attempt to elucidate Nietzsche’s understanding of the unconscious has to deal with a twofold problem: first, Nietzsche refers to other theories without giving any references; second, his concept undergoes a constant development and therefore evades any fixed definition.
Thus, one is confronted with some basic questions of Nietzsche philology, which have to be clarified in advance of my undertaking.
At the outset, one needs to ask whether there is a unity to be found in the various phases of Nietzsche’s thought.
From the beginnings of Nietzsche research, commentators have tried to divide Nietzsche’s works into different phases in order to bridge obvious contradictions.2
Nietzsche’s attempt in 1886 to write forewords to his previous works seems to be an indication of his awareness of the alleged inconsistencies.
In opposition to Nietzsche scholarship which tried to find in Nietzsche’s writings
a consistent process of development, Karl Jaspers was the first to declare the breaks and discrepancies to be a crucial characteristic of Nietzsche’s philosophy,3 something which was later also taken on board by French poststructuralist thinkers interpreting Nietzsche’s style as an expression of perspectivism.4
With regard to Nietzsche’s conceptualizations of the unconscious, this means taking into consideration the conflicting features of this concept within his work, which undergoes a series of transformations, beginning with the early writings – The Birth of Tragedy (Die Geburt der Tragödie, 1872) and Untimely Meditations (Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen, 1873–6) – through the middle period (with its emphasis on the body), and ending with Nietzsche’s late reflections on the will to power.
A philologically sound approach therefore necessitates revealing the underlying connections between these distinct conceptions, by examining the influences exerted by Nietzsche’s reading and by his engagement with questions in philosophy and science that were prevalent during his lifetime.
It is indeed vital to notice that Nietzsche’s reflections – and this is of special importance for those on the unconscious – did not come out of the blue, but were grounded in the philosophical, scientific and historical contexts of his time.
The mystical emphasis on Nietzsche’s independent uniqueness along the lines of a “cult of genius” – one might think of the Stefan George circle here5 – was rejected by the detailed study of Nietzsche’s sources, initiated by the editors of the critical edition, Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari.
Only on the basis of these results can Nietzsche’s philosophy adequately be investigated.6
Last but not least, this undertaking must also assess the significance of Nietzsche’s unpublished writings (the Nachlass) for his thinking, especially as one finds a different conception of the unconscious in these sources.
This is especially the case for Nietzsche’s late period, where the unconscious was to be understood against the background of the theory of the will to power.
Here, one has to consider very carefully to what extent these fragments offer a valid basis for an interpretation.
Heidegger’s approach, according to which the Nachlass represents Nietzsche’s actual philosophy, is far too superficial.7
On the other hand, the restriction of the Nachlass to the role of being a mere supplement to the published writings – as Maudemarie Clarke contends – is equally one-sided.8
According to this principle, On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense (Ueber Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne, 1873) would be insignificant as it obviously contradicts Nietzsche’s other published writings at this time.
Nietzsche retrospectively stated that he had refrained from publishing the text in 1873 because of its radical nature.
But, as we shall see, this small unpublished text contains some remarkable insights into Nietzsche’s understanding of the unconscious.
The Nachlass will therefore be used to clarify the contents of the published writings, but if a Nachlass text stands alone without corresponding to the published material, it must also be taken into consideration.
It is, however, quite often impossible to assess whether a fragment is an abandoned
experiment of thought or a vital clue that would supplement one’s understanding of a key text.
As such a judgment concerning the significance of any given fragment from the Nachlass can only be made upon the basis of a hermeneutical prejudice, a fact which therefore demands a high level of vigilance when dealing with the Nachlass.
In the following I will attempt to read Nietzsche’s different conceptions of the unconscious against the backdrop of his perspectivism, which means giving no privilege to any of them, regardless of their place within Nietzsche’s philosophical development.
Of course, this does not absolve me of the obligation to examine the links between those different understandings or interpretations, but it is in accordance with Nietzsche’s theory of the will to power, which – as we shall see – not only relativizes the concept of the unconscious, but actually dissolves it. ~Martin Liebscher, Thinking the Unconscious, Page 241-244
