Jean Baudrillard: Notes on a Biography by Emmanuelle Fantin and Bran Nicol (Part Two)

Reworked front cover image to Jean Baudrillard 

by Emmanuelle Fantin and Bran Nicol 

(Reaktion Books, 2025)

 

'Identity is a dream pathetic in its absurdity.' 

 

 

I.

 

There are several reasons why I like Baudrillard and feel a certain degree of kinship. For one thing, we both come from humble backgrounds ... 

 

If I insist on (but do not identify in terms of) my working class origin, Baudrillard deployed his rusticity "against the intellectual milieu he would inhait for the major part of his life" [21] and often cited his peasant-nature "in order to portray himself as an alien driven into the world of the elite" [21], but never comfortably at home there.  

 

And if he was a prolific writer - publishing over forty books - he retained a certain rural laziness in defiance of an industrial work ethic and its associated values, such as competitiveness and ambition (values which underpin academia as much as they do the world of commerce). 

 

Baudrillard really didn't give a shit about belonging or becoming a benign success: "'I'm something of a [...] barbarian at heart, and I do my best to stay that way'" [21] [a]. 

 

  

II. 

 

Another reason I like Baudrillard: his style of poetry is one I recognise and have tried to emulate; little fragments of language that trigger thoughts rather than feelings (Lawrence calls them pansies). Although his poetic influences - Hölderlin, Rimbaud and Artaud - are not mine and he is a naturally more lyrical writer than I am.    

 

They key point is: Baudrillard's poetic sensibility shaped his later theory which, like the work of other French theorists, is "close to philosophical thought, but more literary and speculative in spirit, and more interdisciplinary in method" [39]. 

 

I loved this style of thinking when I first encountered it in the 1990s and I still love it now; even if others are now returning to common sense and are so over writers like Baudrillard, Barthes, Derrida, et al. 

 

 

III. 

 

Like Sid Vicious, I was too busy playing with my Action Man to really know what was going on in Paris in May '68, but Baudrillard was very much, as a sociologist at Nanterre, Johnny-on-the-spot (if not exactly in the thick of the action). 

 

His attitude to the Situationists, however, was ambivalent: "He accepted Debord's broad definition of the society of the spectacle, but rejected its Marxist theoretical foundations, which he considered far too 'normative'." [45]

 

Baudrillard thought "a more advanced theory of how signs operate in the modern world was needed - to understand images not as travesties of reality but as reality themselves" [46].

 

"Nevertheless Baudrillard sympathized with the Situationists' anti-authoritarian impulses, appreciated their fusion of artistic practice and politics, and enjoyed their Hegelian strategy of 'immanent critique' and attacking from within." [46]

 

Thus, there would "remain something fundamentally 'situationist' about Baudrillard's work" [46] and he cheerfully accepted the image of himself as an intellectual terrorist; i.e., one who blows up ideas and shatters beliefs: I am not a man I am dynamite, as Nietzsche would say [b]. 

  

 

IV.   

 

Yet another reason I like Baudrillard is that he shares my fascination with objects and the way they relate to each other "as a system and a syntax, denoting a world that is more complex than it seems" [50].

 

However, Baudrillard wasn't merely interested in objects as signs and the role they played within human social interactions: 

 

"He was more concerned with the object itself. For him [...] the object allows us to choose a path away from the question of the subject [...] which always tended to be privileged in contemporary philosophy." [50]    

 

It's a slightly magical way of thinking; the object doesn't simply signify - it enchants. Baudrillard thus restores a sense of mystery to the things "we share our world with and normally take for granted" [51]: lamps, mirrors, clocks, chairs, etc. 

 

 

V. 

 

Was Baudrillard a bit of a fraud? 

 

That seems a bit harsh to me.  

 

Nevertheless, his self-presentation as a lone theorist on the outside of everything was "always characteristically ironic and performative" [62] and he participated in many collective projects. 

 

The one thing he did place himself outside of in the early-mid '70s was Marxism, which he came to regard as "nothing other than the mirror-image of bourgeois society because it placed production at the centre of existence and thereby normalized the capitalist system" [65]. 

 

One of his most important works, L'échange symbolique et la mort (1976) [c], attempted a "radically different way of understanding society and culture by turning to both pre-capitalist systems as models and to a range of radical and eclectic French cultural theorists and writers, such as Georges Bataille, Marcel Mauss and Alfred Jarry" [65]. 

 

Now, excess and expenditure were key terms and Baudrillard spoke of sacrifice and death. The book thus consolidated his reputation as "a highly idiosyncratic and controversial thinker, inhabiting the margins of conventional sociology or philosophy" [65]. 

 

In brief: symbolic exchange is an alternative political economy to the one imagined by Marxism and it "confounds the system of complete exchangeability or reversibility of signs that defines modern capitalism" [66].     

 

It also lets death back into the game (as the ultimate challenge). 

 

I know that, thanks to The Matrix (1999) [d], if people can name one book by Baudrillard it's Simulacra and Simulation. But, if asked to name the one text that really sets the scene for his later work and in which he becomes "no longer just a leading representative of French theory but an enigmatic, provocative and, eventually, iconic figure" [67], then it would have to be Symbolic Exchange and Death.    

 

  

Notes

 

[a] Having said that, Fantin and Nicol say that Baudrillard "would always harbour a paradoxical sene of resentment that he was never fully accepted by the French philosophical establishment" (2025, p. 27).  

 

[b] See Nietzsche writing in Ecce Homo, 'Why I Am a Destiny' (1). In the following section (2), Nietzsche adds: "I know joy in destruction to a degree corresponding to my strength for destruction ..." I am quoting from the English translation by R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1979), p. 127.

      Baudrillard's self-characterisation as a terrorist can be found in Simulacres et Simulation (1981), where he writes: "I am a terrorist and nihilist in theory as the others are with their weapons. Theoretical violence, not truth, is the only resource left us." I am quoting from the English translation by Sheila Faria Glaser (University of Michigan Press, 1994), p. 163.   

 

[c] This work was translated into English as Symbolic Exchange and Death, by Iain Hamilton Grant (Sage Publications, 1993).

 

[d] In The Matrix (dir. the Wachowski's, 1999), the protagonist Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, hides a floppy disk inside a copy of Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation - and so it was author and book suddenly found a whole new level of fame. 

      However, Baudrillard being Baudrillard, he distanced himself from the enormously successful movie by declaring that it was 'the kind of film about the matrix that the matrix would have been able to produce'. See 'The Matrix Decoded: Le Nouvel Observateur Interview with Jean Baudrillard', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, 1/2 (July 2004). 

      The main issue Baudrillard had with the film was that, in his view, it completely missed the point of his work and confused the classical Platonic problem of illusion with the postmodern problem of simulation. For an interesting discussion of this, see the essay entitled 'Why Baudriilard Hated The Matrix: And Why He Was Wrong', on The Living Philosophy (17 April 2022): click here.      

 

 

To read part one of this post on Emmanuelle Fantin and Bran Nicol's biography of Jean Baudrillard, click here. 

 

Part three of this post can be read by clicking here. 

 

Part four of this post can be read by clicking here. 

 

 

Behold the Sausage (Or Incipit Parodia): A Foolish Response to Simon Solomon

The Three Jokers (SA/2025)

 

'I have a terrible fear I shall one day be pronounced holy ... 

I do not want to be a saint, rather even a buffoon ... Perhaps I am a buffoon ...' [1]

 

  

I. 

 

According to Simon Solomon, Nietzsche's final book, Ecce Homo (1908) [2], is an embarrassing catastrophe resulting from his tragic inability to reconcile free-spirited sincerity with his desire to consummate nihilism. As a consequence, says Solomon, he falls into the abyss and we are left with a work which is "rightly regarded as the catastrophic car-crash of his philosophical career" [3]. 

 

This last line makes one think of Ballard's famous 1973 novel and imagine Nietzsche as the nightmare angel of the philosophical highway, looking to develop not so much a new and perverse sexuality, but a Dionysian philosophy [4]. 

 

Only, of course, Ecce Homo is not a car crash and nor should it be read as a cautionary tale of psychopathology. And Nietzsche doesn't fall into the abyss so much as voluntarily leap into the absurd, becoming the clown or comedian he always wanted to be. 

 

In this respect, Nietzsche is more like Arthur Fleck than he is Robert Vaughan and whilst the subtitle of Ecce Homo is apt and memorable - Wie man wird, was man ist - it could also have been: I used to think that my life was a tragedy, but now I realise it's a fucking comedy [5]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, whilst Nietzsche is more Fleck than Vaughan, he is also far more of a silly sausage than the mentally ill clown played by Joaquin Phoenix. And by that I mean he has more in common with Hans Wurst [6] than Joker ...  

 

A popular comic character in Germany with a complex, multifaceted personality, Hans Wurst often featured in rural carnival celebrations during the 16th and 17th centuries. His humour was often coarse - lots of sexual innuendo and scatalogical references - and it certainly wasn't popular with everyone. Indeed, in the 1730s there were attempts to banish Hans from the German stage in order to improve the quality of comedy writing and protect public morality.  

 

This was initially met with resistance, however, German theatre gradually moved away from popular, improvised performances to the modern bourgeois artform we know today. And Hans Wurst morphed into the far more respectable stock character of the Harlequin; or, if he did appear, it was in puppet form as a German equivalent of Mr Punch.  

 

By the close of the 18th century, Emperor Joseph II had banned all buffoonery and burlesque and instructed theatre producers to concentrate on staging shows suitable for all to enjoy. However, Wurst's name lived on and he retained his place in the cultural imagination.     

 

 

III. 

 

So what has all this to do with Nietzsche? 

 

Well, in Ecce Homo Nietzsche says it's preferable to be thought of as Hans Wurst than as any kind of guru or holy figure: see the line quoted at the top of this post. 

 

Christine Battersby writes: 

 

"In his so-called 'late' period, Nietzsche denies that there is any underlying or sublime 'truth' that is covered over - and healed - by art. Instead, we are left with a play of surfaces, and with the affirmation of life as the new ideal. Indeed, in Ecce Homo Nietzsche takes an additional step as he aligns himself with the Hanswurst: with a mode of the ridiculous, the crude and the all-too-human - with that which is, above all, not elevated, self-denying or sublime in the Schopenhauerian sense." [7]

 

In sum: for Nietzsche, playfulness - not sincerity or systematicity - is the essential precondition of greatness. And so whilst other philosophers sing in praise of wisdom or mature reason, he sings in praise of childlike innocence and pure folly. 

 

But he also sings in praise of human baseness: for in adopting the persona of Hans Wurst in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche is "aligning himself not only with a mode of the ridiculous that is cut off from the sublime, but also with that which is morally repellent" [8].  

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1979), p. 126. 

 

[2] Although written in 1888, Ecce Homo was not published until eight years after Nietzsche's death in 1908. The subtitle of the work reveals its autobiographical aspect: How One Becomes What One Is.  

      As well as assessing his own life and contribution to philosophy, Nietzsche attempts to give us a new image of the philosopher; one who mocks the ascetic ideal that has hitherto dominated philosophy (i.e., a set of values that are a fundamental denial of life and which teach that meaning is to be found not in joy, but in suffering).

 

[3] See the comments left by Solomon on the posts 'Waxing Philosophical on Insincerity' (9 July 2018) - click here - and 'Haddaway, Man! An Open Letter to Peter Wolfendale' (22 November 2025): click here. 

      I fear that Solomon has a rather old-fashioned view of Ecce Homo; one that buys into the idea that it is the product "of a mind no longer master of its fantasies" and that it should be regarded as a work of insanity. The line quoted is from the Introduction to R. J. Hollingdale's translation (Penguin Books, 1979), p. 7. 

      Far from being the car crash he says it is, I see it as Nietzsche's most fun book and, as Hollingdale concedes, despite its "obvious failings and shortcomings", when "considered purely as an essay in the art of writing, it is among the most beautiful books in German" (ibid., p. 8). 

      See my post of 15 October 2013: 'Ecce Homo: How One Becomes as Queer as One Is' - click here. And see also my essay of this title (also known as Carry On Nietzsche) in Visions of Excess and Other Essays (Blind Cupid Press, 2009), pp. 255-280.   

 

[4] I'm referring here to J. G. Ballard's Crash (Jonathan Cape, 1973).  

 

[5] This is a line spoken by the protagonist of the film Joker (dir. Todd Phillips, 2019), Arthur Fleck, played (brilliantly) by Joquin Phoenix. Click here to watch the scene in which this line is delivered.

 

[6] The name Hans Wurst literally translates into English as John (or Jack, if you prefer the diminutive) Sausage. 

 

[7] Christine Battersby, '"Behold the Buffoon": Dada, Nietzsche's Ecce Homo and the Sublime', Tate Papers, No. 13 (Spring, 2010): click here.

      As Battersby reminds us, Schopenhauer was interested in how the ridiculous [lächerlich] relates to the sublime and claims that the genuinely humorous is not in conflict with the latter, but is complementary, and that the most serious people often laugh easily. 

      However, Schopenhauer draws a sharp distinction between true humour and that which is merey komisch - such as the bawdy rubbish given us by Hans Wurst and which amuses only the lower classes who lack the ability to appreciate the sublime with any intensity. Nietzsche, however, sides with the ordinary people who know, like D. H. Lawrence, that a little bawdiness keeps life sane and wholesome; see his poem 'What's sane and what isn't', in The Poems Vol. III, ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2018), p. 1614. 

[8] Christine Battersby, as cited above. 

      In other words, whilst Schopenhauer ties the humorous to the sublime, Nietzsche ties the comic to the monstrous and criminal and to the fact that man has physical needs and limitations (this is evidenced by other references to Hans Wurst in Nietzsche's late notebooks). 

      Essentially, this is the Nietzsche embraced by Bataille in his idiosyncratic reading of the latter. Obviously the French author was influenced by other thinkers, but, as he once confessed: "A peu d'exceptions près, ma compagnie sur terre est celle de Nietzsche ..." See 'On Nietzsche', (Continuum, 2004), p. 3, where the line is translated by Bruce Boone as: "Except for a few exceptions, my company on earth is mostly Nietzsche ..."         

 

 

For a related post to this one - 'Don't You Know Jesus Christ Is a Sausage?' (18 April, 2020) - which also references this essay by Battersby - please click here.

 

Musical bonus: Serge Gainsbourg, 'Ecce homo', taken from the album Mauvaises nouvelles des étoiles (Mercury Records / Universal Music Group, 1981): click here.  

      I'm not sure what Nietzsche would have made of this track, but I like to think the title if nothing else would make him smile.   

 

 

Lest We Forget the Old Creature's Birthday

  The inside of this card reads:  

 

Sobald ein Mensch auf die Welt kommt, ist er schon alt genug zu sterben ... [1]

 

Tout ce qui existe naît sans raison, se prolonge par faiblesse et meurt par hasard ... [2]

 

 

This Wednesday, lest we forget, is Nietzsche's birthday: he was born in Röcken, Germany, on 15 October 1844 [3]. 

 

And whilst the village he was born in has now been absorbed into the expanding town of Lützen, a few miles southwest of Leipzig, the actual house he was born in still stands, next to the church where his father was a pastor, and is now part of a memorial site that includes his grave [4].  

 

Not that Nietzsche was one to make a huge fuss over his birthday; indeed, in 1880, he even forgot it entirely, explaining to his friend Franz Overbeck in a letter that his head was too full of other thoughts (thoughts that made him wonder why anything should matter to him). 

 

Having said that, however, there are Nietzsche scholars who argue that Nietzsche did very much like birthdays; not least because it was a time of gifts and of cake, but also because they signified the beginning of another year and the opportunity to make a fresh start. 

 

After his own mother apparently forgot his 44th birthday in 1888 - his last before his mental breakdown in January 1889 - he sent her a postcard humorously reprimanding her: The old mother has forgotten the old creature's birthday!  

 

This was that perfect day on which everything ripened and he told himself the story of his life ... [5] 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Heidegger doesn't do birthday greetings, but if he did, I'm sure he'd say something like this; it's a line from the late medieval text Der Ackermann aus Böhmen (c. 1400), by Johannes von Tepl, quoted in Sein und Zeit (1927).   

 

[2] And this equally amusing existential birthday greeting is by Jean-Paul Sartre, taken from his 1938 novel La Nausée.

 

[3] The same date as King Friedrich Wilhelm IV was born in 1795; a Prussian monarch very much admired by Nietzsche's father and after whom he was named. As Nietzsche would later write in Ecce Homo, this had one main advantage; throughout his childhood it was a day of public rejoicing. See section 3 of  Ecce Homo, 'Why I Am So Wise'. 

      Lest we forget, Michel Foucault, was also born on 15 October (1926); a philosopher who, by his own admission, tried "as far as possible, on a certain number of issues, to see with the help of Nietzsche's texts ..." 

      See Michel Foucault, 'The Return of Morality', trans John Johnston in Foucault Live (Interviews, 1961-1984), ed. by Sylvère Lotringer (Semiotext(e), 1996), pp. 465-73. The line quoted from is on p. 471. 

      And see also my post on being simply a Nietzschean à la Foucault, published on 14 August 2020: click here.

 

[4] The Nietzsche-Gedenkstätte: click here for details (in English).  

      This should not be confused with the Nietzsche-Haus in Sils Maria, Switzerland, where Nietzsche spent seven summers in the 1880s, and which is also now a museum (opened in 1960 and overseen by the Nietzsche House Sils-Maria Foundation): click here.

 

[5] Ecce Homo is the last original book written by Nietzsche before his death in 1900. It was written in late 1888, but not published until 1908. The book offers Nietzsche's own (self-mocking) interpretation of his work and his significance as a thinker.  

 

 

Dyspepsia: Notes on Nietzsche, Insomnia and Indigestion

Hans Olde: Nietzsche on his Sick-Bed (c. 1899) 

Goethe-Nationalmuseum (Weimer)

 

 

In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche defines philosophy as a seeking out of everything that has previously been exiled by morality [1]. This includes the little things that are nearest to us; things that are familiar and trusted, rather than alien and questionable, and not so much exiled as overlooked by those who concern themselves with grand ideals or what theologians think of as the first and last things. 

 

What this means in practice is that you must (a) treat your shadow with respect and (b) be concerned with everyday activities such as eating and sleeping, the latter described by Nietzsche as an art (for the sake of which one must stay awake all day). 

 

The problem - as Nietzsche was all-too-acutely aware [2] - is that it can be extremely difficult to eat well and sleep soundly; dyspepsia and insomnia are such common problems today as to be almost defining characteristics of modern life. In fact, a significant proportion of the UK population seem to regularly wash down the chalky remains of Rennie tablets with caramel flavoured liquid Nytol [3]. 

 

Perhaps that's why some religious people like to pray before mealtimes and bedtime; not because they are truly thankful for what they are about to receive or for the day that's been, but in the hope that an insincere expression of gratitude will aid digestion and ensure a solid eight hours kip.

 

Notes

 

[1] See section 3 of the Foreword to Nietzsche's Ecce Homo. See also 'The Wanderer and His Shadow', in Human, All Too Human (Vol. II Part 2), where Nietzsche introduces the notion of the nearest things and alludes to the vital importance of sleep, diet, and the creation of routines and habits by which to structure the day.      

 

[2] Nietzsche's health issues are extensively documented and well-known. As well as suffering from insomnia and gastrointestinal problems, he also experienced blinding headaches and these things combined not only resulted in chronic exhaustion, but doubtless contributed to his later physical and mental breakdown.   

 

[3] Research indicates that a majority of British adults - over 80% - have experienced some form of gastrointestinal problem in the past 12 months, including (but not limited to) bloating, indigestion, and heartburn. Usually this is due to stress, poor diet, a lack of sleep, or a combination of these and other factors. 

      Meanwhile, around 1-in-3 adults claim to suffer from insomnia and two thirds say they suffer from disrupted sleep patterns, with a quarter getting no more than five hours sleep on an average night. Of these, 13% take sleeping tablets to help them nod off, whilst another 13% use alcohol as a sleep aid (a traditional nightcap being the favoured method amongst the over 55s).  

 

Don't You Know Jesus Christ is a Sausage?

incipit parodia: je m’ens fous

I.

Flicking through the pages of Paul Gorman's magnificent new biography of Malcolm McLaren, I was pleased to be reminded of an amusing incident that occurred during the filming of a little watched reality TV series called The Baron in May 2007, which culminated with the Sex Pistol being threatened by a mob of angry villagers after he insulted them, their community, and their Saviour.  

The show was set in the small fishing village of Gardenstown, Aberdeenshire, and co-starred the actor/comedian Mike Reid and former Hear'Say singer Suzanne Shaw. Each contestant was competing for the courtesy title of 13th Baron of Troup, as chosen by the locals via a public vote.    

Gorman writes:

"Within a few days, McLaren had alienated villagers [...] and annoyed one fisherman in particular by painting the encircled anarchist 'A' on the side of his boat.
      This was small beer, but the election address enabled McLaren to provoke the jeering villagers en masse. He opened his speech by describing their home as 'absolutely boring, the worst place I've ever been to in my entire life ...' 
      To growing catcalls and boos, McLaren played up the pantomime aspects of his character by announcing his aim to become 'the wickedest, baddest, most hooligan-ish and sexiest Baron ever ...'
      McLaren also proposed the annual construction of a folkloric wickerman on the beach. He suggested the villagers should sit around this at night and 'take lots of drugs and drink yourselves stupid'. At this point Gardenstown harbourmaster Michael Watt leapt to the stage and attempted to manhandle the candidate away from the microphone. Eventually he succeeded, but not before McLaren shouted, 'I'd like to transform Gardenstown into a heathen's paradise,' and finished with the exclamation, 'Don't you know Jesus Christ is a sausage?'"

It was this final statement that tipped things over the edge and prompted the production company's security team to intervene and escort Malcolm out of town for his own safety:

"Not that the harbourmaster, the townsfolk, the TV crew or the viewers were to know, but in uttering the blasphemy McLaren was, in fact, quoting from a stunt by the early twentieth-century German Dadaist prankster Johannes Baader." [1]


II.

Johannes Baader, was, actually, not merely a merry prankster, but a certified madman, having been declared legally insane in 1917 after suffering with manic depression. So his outrageous public performances and statements - in which he often assumed mythic identities à la Nietzsche in his post-breakdown letters - were not merely stunts. 

In the same year as he was certified insane, Baader was appointed head of a society founded by fellow Dadaist Raoul Hausmann called Christus GmbH (or, in English, Christ Ltd.). The idea was to recruit members who, for a 50 mark fee, would be accorded Christ-like status rendering them free from all earthly authority and unfit for military service.  

The scandal for which Baader is best remembered, however - and which McLaren was re-enacting - happened on 17 November, 1918. Baader entered Berlin Cathedral and disrupted the sermon by shouting out (amongst other things): Christus ist euch Wurst! He was briefly arrested, though this didn't deter him from declaring himself the President of the Universe shortly afterwards.
   

What, readers might ask, did he mean by this - on the face of it - ludicrous statement?

In order to make sense of it, one must know something about the German tradition of buffoonery known as Hanswurst and also be familiar with Nietzsche's philosophy ...


III.

In one sense, Baader was simply re-announcing the Death of God; basically saying that Christ had become turned into a cheap commodity and something to be easily consumed; no longer a figure to be taken seriously, Jesus was just another clown in the religious circus known as the Church. 

But he was perhaps also alluding to the fact that, in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche says it's preferable to be thought of as Hans Wurst - or a silly sausage, as we might say in English - than as any kind of guru or holy man. Christine Battersby notes:

"In his so-called 'late' period, Nietzsche denies that there is any underlying or sublime 'truth' that is covered over - and healed - by art. Instead, we are left with a play of surfaces, and with the affirmation of life as the new ideal. Indeed, in Ecce Homo Nietzsche takes an additional step as he aligns himself with the Hanswurst: with a mode of the ridiculous, the crude and the all-too-human - with that which is, above all, not elevated, self-denying or sublime in the Schopenhauerian sense." [2]
 
So, it's arguable that calling Jesus a sausage isn't intended as an insult, but as a compliment; it's conceiving of Jesus as trickster and as a comedian of the ascetic ideal, rather than as the martyred figure on the Cross (all tears, and nails, and thorns); a punk Jesus that even McLaren might have found attractive, disguised in a pointed green hat, causing chaos and committing monstrous action and crime.    

Notes

[1] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, (Constable, 2020), pp. 756-57.

[2] Christine Battersby, 'Behold the Buffoon: Dada, Nietzsche's Ecce Homo and the Sublime', in The Art of the Sublime, ed. Nigel Llewellyn and Christine Riding, (Tate Research Publication, January 2013): click here.

It's interesting to recall that Greggs the bakers had to apologise in 2017 for swapping Jesus for a sausage roll in a promotional image of the nativity scene; it's an idea, it seems, that just keeps giving!  

To watch a clip from the final episode of The Baron, uploaded to YouTube, in which Malcolm delivers his sausage remark, click here.  

On Saints and Satyrs: Why It's Preferable to Have Horns than a Halo

St. Anthony encountering a satyr 

Fresco from the Skete of St. Demetrios, 

the Holy Monastery of Vatopedi, 

Mount Athos, Greece  

I.

Nietzsche cheerfully claims in the Preface to Ecce Homo that he's the very opposite in nature to the kind of individual who has traditionally been regarded as virtuous and that he prides himself on this fact: I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus and I would rather be a satyr than a saint.

He doesn't aim for the moral improvement of humanity or long to see men and women with halos. On the contrary, he'd rather individuals grew horns and found their best strength in the evil that exists as a potency within us (and also a power outside us) over which we have no final control; a potency often thought of in terms of either animality or the daimonic.

Let me expand upon these ideas before, in part two of this post, Dr. Símón Solomon explains why it is that the figure of the saint never quite departs from Nietzsche's text and why his relationship with the holy fool is often ambiguous and perplexing.

II. 

Zarathustra famously says that man needs what is most evil in him for what is best in him.

Of course, evil isn't being used here as a moral term. Rather, it refers to a healthy expression of will to power, or what Freud (negatively) terms man's primary hostility - i.e., that which is permeated with a death drive and perpetually threatening chaos and destruction if not mediated by the power of Love.

Nietzsche, however, feels it is Love - or moral idealism - that, in its attempt to negate difference and becoming, is fundamentally nihilistic. He argues that the restrictions placed on man's instinctual life and the frustration of his most active forces ultimately has the effect of weakening him and ensuring the becoming-reactive of these forces.

Marcuse calls this the fatal dialectic of civilization and D. H. Lawrence notes: "We think love and benevolence will cure anything. Where as love and benevolence are our poison." Of course, it's true that man has been made into an interesting animal via this moral poisoning - Nietzsche readily admits this - but so too he has been made sick and full of self-loathing.    

Ultimately, what I'm suggesting here is that if man were allowed to develop a pair of horns, then he'd be stronger and happier - if a little bone-headed - and, as a consequence, superior to the righteous but resentful creature he is today.

Those who wish for men to be saints and have halos above their heads, subscribe to a model of light-headed humanism that, in restricting the desire for power, has created an unhappy species of herd animal that is, to paraphrase Nick Land, sordid, passive, and cowardly.  

Notes

Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1988).

Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Walter Kaufmann in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. Walter Kaufmann, (Penguin Books, 1976), p. 330.

Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, (Beacon Press, 1955). 

D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 114.


For a sister post to this one by Símón Solomon, click here.

Why I Write Such Excellent Posts

Friedrich Nietzsche: Little Thinker - 

Übertoy by The Unemployed Philosopher's Guild

I am one thing: this blog is another ...

Before I speak of the posts themselves, let me address the question of their being understood or not understood. I shall do so in a cursory manner; for the time hasn't arrived for this question. My time hasn't come yet either: some of us are born posthumously.

One day, perhaps, scholars will critically assess Torpedo the Ark. But I'd be queerly mistaken if I expected to find a large number of readers for my posts today. The fact that I presently have so few followers and that no one quite knows how to comment actually makes perfect sense.      

Not that I should like to underestimate the pleasure I have derived from the innocence with which some of the posts have been read. Often, those who think they have understood something in my work - not only about the subject being discussed, but about me as the author of the text - have merely adapted something in it so as to best reflect their own image or ideal.

Others, who seem to understand absolutely nothing about the blog or the spirit in which it's written, deny there is anything in it worth considering at all; they dismiss the posts as merely clever exercises in style.

Of course, I do have some exceptionally smart readers. But I must confess that I rejoice more in the thought of those who do not read me and faithfully follow those intellectual stars of social media who are very much of this time. Torpedo the Ark is for the few and it is read at a certain cost. For be warned, other blogs - particularly philosophical blogs - may lose their attraction after reading this one.

In other words, regular reading of Torpedo the Ark refines (some might say spoils) one's taste and restricts one's ability to enjoy other writers. For there are no finer posts than mine; they occasionally attain to the high point of intellectual endeavour: cynicism.

To capture their meaning one must possess the most delicate sense of irony and the lightest of touches. Any kind of moral seriousness or sincerity excludes one from the space in which they unfold; one needs quick wits and nimble fingers.

The beautiful souls - false from top to bottom - do not know in the least what to make of my posts - consequently, they regard the blog as beneath them. But I no more write for beautiful souls than I do for those who are made ugly with resentment.

When I try to imagine the character of a torpedophile I always picture a monster of courage and curiosity - in short, a thought adventurer who is happy to wander outside the gate into that realm of dangerous knowledge of which Zarathustra speaks ...  

Notes

This post is part pastiche, part homage, and part new (mis)translation of the chapter 'Warum ich so gute Bücher schreibe' in Nietzsche's Ecce Homo: Wie man wird, was man ist, (written in 1888 and first published in 1908). 

Click here to access the full text (in German), part of the Digital Critical Edition of Nietzsche's Works and Letters (eKGWB), ed. Paolo D'Iorio and published by Nietzsche Source: click here for further details of this edition.    

English translations of Nietzsche's Ecce Homo have been made by (amongst others) R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1986) and Duncan Large, (Oxford University Press, 2007).