The twin themes of tenderness and warmheartedness dominate in Lawrence's late work. In Lady Chatterley's Lover, for example, challenged by Connie to say what he believes in, Mellors famously tells her:
"'I believe in being warm-hearted. I believe especially in being warm-hearted in love, in fucking with a warm heart. I believe if men could fuck with warm hearts, and the women take it warm-heartedly, everything would come all right. It’s all this cold-hearted fucking that is death and idiocy.'"
I don't know if that's true or not. But I do know that Nietzsche problematizes the notion of warm-heartedness in Human, All Too Human - particularly in relation to Christ, whom he regards during this mid-period of his writing as not only the noblest human being, but also he who possesses the warmest of hearts.
For Nietzsche, however, this warmth of heart led Christ into the fatal error of over-identifying with the poor and meek in spirit and thus ultimately promoting an enfeebled morality full of ressentiment and base stupidity.
And where did this unintelligent goodness get him? Nailed to a cross. For when warm-heartedness is made into an ideal, it ultimately results in self-sacrifice - an issue that Lawrence often discussed in his critique of Christianity (see for example the novel Aaron's Rod).
So we should be wary of the claim made by Oliver Mellors that warm-heartedness will eventually make everything come good; though, to be fair, he constructs a libidinal practice rather than a moral teaching upon his belief. Thus, whilst Christ beseeches us to love our neighbour, Mellors busies himself fucking a little flame into being between himself and Connie; just as the flowers are fucked into being between sun and earth.
And Nietzsche? Nietzsche teaches us the philosophical importance of coldness and cruelty and demonstrates how the highest intelligence and the warmest of hearts cannot coexist in the same individual.
Notes
D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), Ch. 14.
Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Cambridge University Press, 1986), Sections 475 and 235.
I am grateful to Keith Ansell-Pearson, whose new book on Nietzsche's mid-period writings - Nietzsche's Search for Philosophy, (Bloomsbury, 2018) - inspired this post. See Ch. 1 of this work in particular, 'Cooling Down the Human Mind', pp. 17-45.
Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Cambridge University Press, 1986), Sections 475 and 235.
I am grateful to Keith Ansell-Pearson, whose new book on Nietzsche's mid-period writings - Nietzsche's Search for Philosophy, (Bloomsbury, 2018) - inspired this post. See Ch. 1 of this work in particular, 'Cooling Down the Human Mind', pp. 17-45.
Does it never occur to the writer that Nietzsche might (at least sometimes) be a bad teacher? For someone who sees no problems in abandoning the law of non-contradiction and granting himself licence to shapeshift/contradict himself almost every day of the week, it seems, it's difficult to understand why he or any of us should suppose that compassion and intelligence can't coexist (however these abstractions are to be measured). Plenty of people are cruel and stupid, while others may be bright but also humane.
ReplyDeleteTo play devil's advocate, from a Christian viewpoint (and doubtless it was only because Nietzsche admired and envied the Nazarene so highly that he attempted to marry him to Dionysos in his own person/signature at the end), Christ's death (or a Christian might say rebirth) was the very apotheosis of mortal-divine accomplishment - a superman who was sacrificed (i.e. made sacred) by the evil and stupidity of men.
As for Nietzsche, to pose the same question to him on his behalf that Stephen poses to Christ, where did his teaching 'get HIM'? A paraodic final book, madness, and early death!