On Nietzsche's Moustache

Not Vital: Nietzsche's Schnauz (1993)

Aluminium (70 x 140 x 40 cm)

Image via Galerie Nordenhake

 

'Thus the gentlest and most reasonable of men can, if he wears a large moustache, 

sit as it were in its shade and feel safe there ...' [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Understanding as he did the importance of first impressions, Nietzsche highly valued the protective and deceptive nature of his exuberantly styled facial hair. 

 

He even noted in one of his middle period books that a formidable moustache allows a gentle soul to mask their sensitive nature and be perceived as an "easily angered and occasionally violent" [2] military type and thus treated with more respect than is often shown to mild-mannered university professors. 

 

 

II.  

 

The style of 'tache adopted by Nietzsche as soon as hormones allowed, is known as a walrus moustache. It is characterised by thick, bushy whiskers that droop over the mouth and resemble the whiskers of the large marine mammal from which it takes its name. 

 

Nietzsche, of course, was not unusual in choosing to have a Schnurrbart of this type, as they were extremely popular among men in the latter half of the 19th century when he was doing his thing (revaluing values and so on).  

 

Soldiers, scientists, politicians, and poets - not just rogue German philosophers - favoured this rugged style regarded as a symbol of masculinity and, in Poland, a mark of nobility and traditionalism [3].     

 

 

III. 

 

Now, I have to confess, personally, I don't like this moustache - hate it, in fact.  

 

Nevertheless, I do like Nietzsche and I am interested at the moment in the work of the contemporary Swiss artist Not Vital who, in 1993, created a surreal aluminium sculpture titled Nietzsche's Schnauz ... 

 

Retrospectively asked about the piece in a conversation with the curator, critic and art historian Hans Ulrich Obrist - a longtime friend of the artist - Vital recalled:  

 

"When I first went to the Nietzsche-Haus in Sils Maria, what impressed me most about the death mask, drawings and photographs of Nietzsche, was this moustache that grew bigger throughout his life. In the end, you couldn't even see his mouth. That was fascinating: that this moustache would take over his face. So I made a sculpture of his moustache, and placed it in his bed. [4]

 

By isolating the facial hair, Vital's sculpture - part of a wider series exploring memory, identity, and the blurring of human and non-human forms - enables the moustache to assume a kind of object-autonomy. 

 

And, hearing Vital discuss how the 'tache appeared to take over Nietzsche's face, one is put in mind of the parasitoid entity (Manumala noxhydria) that attaches to the face of Kane (played by John Hurt) in Ridley Scott's Alien (1979).

 

Fortunately, the facehugging moustache didn't prove fatal to its host and, according to Nietzsche's own philosophy, whatever didn't kill him made him stronger ... [5] 

      

Notes

 

[1] Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge University Press, 1997), IV. 381, p. 171. 

 

[2] Ibid.

 

[3] Some readers may recall that Nietzsche often claimed descent from an aristocratic Polish family (although there seems to be no genealogical evidence available to support his claim). 

 

[4] Not Vital, in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist (14 April 2021). The transcript can be read on the Thaddaeus Ropac (London) website: click here. The interview also featured in Wallpaper and can be read on their website by clicking here.  

[5] See Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 'Maxims and Arrows' (8). 

 

 

Readers who enjoyed this short post might like to check out an excellent essay on Nietzsche's moustache available on the website nietzschesbody.com. The site is administered by Robrecht and I'm guessing this is the independent Nietzsche scholar, translator, and cultural critic Robrecht Vandemeulebroecke (apologies to both parties if I'm mistaken). 

      What this essay does well is bring home the fact that Nietzsche knew his moustache was distinctive and would become iconic: "Though not exactly unique, Nietzsche's whiskers were uncommon enough in intellectual circles to become something of a trademark, a fact of which he was not unaware." 

 

Ad Hominem à la Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900)

Master of the argumentum ad hominem

 

I.

 

Academic philosophers, who like to take a serious and professional approach to their discipline, hate ad hominem attacks. 

 

In other words, they believe that when addressing someone else's argument or position, one should always refrain from maliciously (and fallaciously) attacking the person or some attribute of the person who is making the argument. 

 

Always stick to the substance of what they say; don't question their motives, denigrate their character, or insult their looks. 

 

In other words, play the ball, not the man. To do otherwise, is just not cricket; something that even Aristotle appreciated [1]. 

 

 

II. 

Nietzsche, however, was not an academic philosopher. 

 

He may have been the youngest person to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel, when appointed in 1869, aged 24, but he made his name as a philosopher only after resigning from the post ten years later (due to ill health) and becoming a fiercely independent thinker; one who cheerfully attacked his philosophical enemies - from Plato and Socrates to Kant and Hegel - directly employing an abusive model of ad hominem argument.      

 

As a psychologist, as a clinician, and as a genealogist, Nietzsche was far more interested in what made the individual (or an entire people) tick - what forces were at play within them - than in the validity of their arguments, or the falseness of their judgements. He valued those with healthy instincts over those whom he regarded as decadent, or those whose values betrayed their ressentiment.     

As many readers of Nietzsche have noted, his philosophy consists to a very large extent of speculative diagnoses, concerning the virtues and vices of those figures (or those cultures) that most excite his interest. This certainly makes him unusual amongst philosophers. 

There are times when ad hominem reasoning is not always fallacious; and there may even be times when it's relevant to question the personal conduct, character, or motives of an opponent. But it's highly debatable if Nietzsche is justified in dismissing Socrates, for example, on the grounds that his being monstrous of face proves he was also monstrous of soul [2]. 

 

Ugliness may be an objection, but is it really sufficient grounds to refute a persons thought?

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Aristotle is credited with first making the distinction between (legitimate) logical arguments and (illegitimate) personal attacks. In his work Sophistical Refutations, Aristotle showed the fallaciousness of placing the questioner rather than their argument under scrutiny. The proper thing for a philosopher to do, he wrote, is not to question the attributes of an intellectual opponent, but to address the weaknesses and ambiguities in their argument. 

      This isn't to say, however, that all ad hominem arguments are fallacious; one might, for example, adopt a dialectical strategy of using an opponents own ideas and assumptions against them. But the term ad hominem was by the beginning of the 20th century almost always linked to a logical fallacy and today, except within very specialised philosophical circles, the term ad hominem signifies an attack on the character of a person in an attempt to refute their argument.

 

[2] See Nietzsche, 'The Problem of Socrates' (3), in Twilight of the Idols. 

 

 

Musical bonus: 'Attack', taken from the debut album by Public Image Ltd. (Virgin Records, 1978): click here. Note this is the remastered version from 2011.  

 

 

On the Rise and Fall of Because

Image adapted from the sleeve to the Killing Joke album 

What's THIS for ...! (E.G. / Polydor Records, 1981) [1]

 

"He shall fall down into the pit called Because,

and there he shall perish with the dogs of Reason." [2]

 

 

I. 

 

Although the Age of Reason didn't really establish itself until a few hundred years later, it was already assembling its vocabulary in the late 14th-century, including that crucial term because, which enters into English at this date modelled on the French phrase par cause. 

 

It's one of those words that people who love the abstract concept of causality - i.e., the capacity of a to determine b - often use to close down further discussion: There's no point arguing because the facts clearly demonstrate ... 

 

Because is thus the ultimate explanation - the metaphysical answer to the equally metaphysical question why? - and it has become implicit in the logic and structure of everyday language. Indeed, one might even, like Nietzsche, suggest that it betrays the presence of God within language ... [3]

 

 

II.

 

However, those of us who have long been anticipating the fall of because - by which we mean the overcoming of metaphysics, rather than the abolition of reason - are amused by a recent development in the English speaking world that has got some grammar nazis upset ... 

 

For it seems that because is now being used in an ironic manner by the young to convey a certain vagueness about the exact reasons for anything. Thus, whereas traditionally, because is a subordinating conjunction which connects two parts of a sentence in which one (the subordinate) explains the other, now it's being used as a preposition (i.e. placed before nouns, verbs, adjectives, and interjections). 

 

And this new usage, not yet widespread but increasingly common - because social media - in some sense subverts the word's old grammatical function and authority, exposing the fact that we realise there's nothing we can really refer back to as a causal agent or fixed and final explanation of the world's chaos and mystery; i.e., that we know our rationale is often - like God - just a linguistic fiction that we hold on to because convenient and because comforting [4].   

 

As Megan Garber writes in The Atlantic, the word because hasn't fallen so much as exploded; it can now be used however the speaker chooses to use it, limited only by the confines of their own imagination: "So we get [...] people using 'because' not just to explain, but also to criticize, and sensationalize, and ironize [...]" [5]

 

 

 

III.     

 

So, what does all this signify exactly? That we're living in a post-Nietzschean (and post-Derridean) universe? Or that the Aeon of Horus has arrived as Aleister Crowley announced? 

Possibly. 

 

Or it could just mean that a generation who have grown up texting and tweeting are so lazy (and self-absorbed) that they can't be bothered to finish their thoughts and sentences, or waste time providing long and complex explanations: because emoji and the will to abbreviate ...?   

 

Notes

 

[1] The Killing Joke album What's THIS for ...! (1981) is one of the great post-punk albums and the opening track of Side A - 'The Fall of Because' - is a personal favourite. I'm assuming they took the title of the song from a line by Aleister Crowley (see note 2 below). Click here to listen to the 2005 digitally remastered version provided to YouTube by Universal Music Group.    

 

[2] Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law (1909), II. 27. See also III. 20, where Crowley actually uses the phrase 'fall of because'.

      For those who don't know, this work - often referred to by enthusiasts with the Classical Latin title Liber AL vel Legis - is the central sacred text of Crowley's new religion (Thelema). According to Crowley, it was dictated to him by a supernatural being who called himself Aiwass, speaking through his new wife, Rose Edith Kelly, during their honeymoon in Egypt, in 1904. 

      With publication of this text, Crowley announced the arrival of a new phase in the spiritual evolution of mankind, to be known as the Aeon of Horus. The key teaching of the book - and this new age - is: Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law, meaning that adherents of Thelema should seek out and follow their own singular path in life (like a star). 

      As for what Crowley means by the fall of because, I suspect he's simply indicating that the Age of Horus is post-Enlightenment and thus open to the possibility that there are more things in heaven and earth than are understood within the framework of modern science, or Western reason.       

 

[3] See Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, where he famously writes in the chapter entitled 'Reason in Philosophy' (5): "I fear we are not getting rid of God because we still believe in grammar ..."

       For Nietzsche, our faith in causal relationships (as a form of agency) is based upon a number of mistaken beliefs and correcting these four great errors will play a significant part in what he terms the revaluation of all values. 

      The reason, says Nietzsche, that we like to think events have causes (and actions have actors behind them), is because it's reassuring. Further, to trace something unknown (and thus threatening) back to something we can explain and make familiar is empowering. Essentially, we look to find ourselves in everything (even in God). See the chapter entitled 'The Four Great Errors', in Twilight of the Idols.   

   

[4] See note 3 above.

 

[5] Megan Garber, 'English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet', The Atlantic (19 Nov 2013): click here to read online. Readers interested in this topic might also like the post entitled 'Because and effect' (21 July 2014) by Patricia T. O'Conner and Stewart Kellerman on their Grammarphobia blog: click here.

 

 

From the Archives ... A Brief Style Guide for the Nietzschean Woman

"We are the smart set, a world apart set 

We are the neatest, ergo elitist." [1] 

 

As Derrida pointed out, the question of style and the question of woman almost become one and the same question within Nietzsche's philosophy - particularly when thought in relation to the question of Truth [2].   

Perhaps that's what I was thinking of when, in 2004, I wrote this brief style guide for the Nietzschean woman - anticipating my Philosophy on the Catwalk project ...

 

1. Burn all soft-cotton frocks as these invariably suggest Laura Ashley and her ersatz brand of pseudo-traditional fashion. The key point for the Nietzschean woman of today is to look smart and well-groomed; to demonstrate she has both discipline and breeding. 

2. Always wear a hat and gloves when out of doors. It does not matter if you are wearing the most beautiful Chanel outfit, if you lack these things you will look like a member of the herd. 

3. Stockings should also always be worn. Even during the hottest summer days, the Nietzschean woman does not parade around with bare legs; nor on the coldest of cold winter nights does she ever think of pulling on woolly socks. Tights, of course, are utterly infra dig - a sordid remnant of the 1960s. 

 

4. Make-up is a necessity and should be worn with pride and defiance so that one looks striking and dramatic; clearly defined lips, eyes luxuriantly shadowed, brows pencilled with firm, think curves; cheekbones emphasised with rouge. A face without make up looks offensively bare and contrary to what our idealists believe, Truth does not love to go naked. 

 

There is, of course, much more to Nietzschean style than this. But any woman who sticks to the above will already have gone a long way towards a revaluation of values and protecting herself from viral infections: For has a woman who knows herself to be well dressed ever caught a cold? [3] 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm quoting here from an English version of a Berlin cabaret song - Das Gesellschaftlied (1931) - written by Mischa Spoliansky (music) and Marcellus Schiffer (lyrics) and performed by Ute Lemper (Decca, 1996): click here.   

 

[2] See Jacques Derrida, Spurs, trans. Barbara Harlow, (The University of Chicago Press, 1979). And to read my take on this work, click here.  

 

[3] Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 'Maxims and Arrows', 25.