ODYSSEUS CONTRA ACHILLES

Nietzsche explains that Homer provided the Greeks not only with a religious and moral education but also with heroes who embodied that education: Achilles and, especially, Odysseus.

Nietzsche highlights the ferociously passionate character of Achilles. Achilles is the man of “great passion” who abandons self-control and gives free rein to his anger and desires (HATH 1:211). The “angry Achilles” exhibits the most terrible wrath against the living and also the dead Hector - “the abyss of hatred” - for, in his eyes, revenge “is sweeter than honey.”^[637] But Achilles also loves life passionately, and, although he embraces the revenge that will shorten his life, he laments his own “short­lived” life, and mourns “the leaflike change and vicissitudes of the race of men and the decline of the heroic age” (BT 3). In Nietzsche's account, rather than exhaust and torture himself by waging war against his pas­sions, Achilles embraces them and thereby achieves a superlative strength of soul. Accordingly, when explaining the emergence of a priestly aristoc­racy, Nietzsche suggests that only “a very Achilles of a free mind [der Freigeisterei]” would be capable of opposing the formidable force of piety effectively (GM ι.6; see also BT 15).

Even though Nietzsche indicates that Achilles was, in the eyes of the Greeks, ostensibly “the greatest hero” (BT 3) Nietzsche contends that the Greeks admired Odysseus more, as their “ideal”:

Greek Ideal - What did the Greeks admire in Odysseus? Above all, his capacity for lying and for cunning and terrible retribution; his being equal to circum­stances; when need be, his appearing nobler than the noblest one; his being able to be whatever one wants [was man will]; heroic perseverance; having all means at his command; possession of mind [Geist] - his mind is the admiration of the gods, they smile when they think of it - : all this is the Greek ideal! (D 306; see Odyssey 5.180-183, 13.287-295)

Nietzsche suggests here that what renders Odysseus so admirable, as the “Greek ideal,” even more than Achilles, is the single-mindedness of his passion to triumph over his adversaries and his willingness and capacity to do anything and to be anything to fulfill that passion (consider D 430).

As Nietzsche emphasizes, Odysseus, like Achilles, seeks retribution against his enemies but, unlike Achilles, he inflicts such retribution with unflinching determination (D 306, GM 1.14). Achilles is a man of pas­sion, but a man of multiple, divided passions: he seeks vengeance but also, for example, loves life, loves his friends and family, and feels compassion for his enemies. Accordingly, Achilles agonizes over his decision to punish his fellow Achaians for their ingratitude. As Nietzsche underscores by citing a line from a remorseful speech by Achilles, Achilles regrets that he succumbed to the sweet pleasure of vengeful wrath against the Achaians (GM 1.14; Iliad 18.97-111). Moreover, Achilles ultimately overcomes his wrath against the Trojan Hector, returns his corpse to his father Priam, and grants Priam and the Trojans a 12-day truce for the funeral of Hector.^[639] In contrast, Odysseus’s retribution truly is “terrible,” as Nietzsche notes, because it is relentless and pitiless. To be sure, in Homer’s account, Odysseus’s desire for retribution against his rivals in Ithaca is not simply relentless, since, as we have noted above, Odysseus forgets Ithaca for the year he spends with the beautiful goddess Circe and he forgets Ithaca for a portion of his eight years with the beautiful goddess Calypso (10.467-472, 5.153).^[640] However, once he decides to return to Ithaca, Odysseus never hesitates in his resolve to destroy the suitors of his wife Penelope, never regrets his slaughter of them, never expresses any compassion whatsoever for his victims, seeks to kill “all” of their surviv­ing fathers and other relatives, and is only stopped from doing so by the intervention of the gods.^[641] Achilles is torn by his passions; he wonders, for example, if he should return home to his beloved father rather than seek honor and victory in the Trojan war.^[642] Odysseus, on the other hand, in Nietzsche’s account, does not hesitate to sacrifice the well-being of his mother in his passionate quest for honor and victory at Troy: “It is only in the underworld that we are shown something of the gloomy background to all those adventurer’s joys that surround Odysseus and his kind like an eternal shimmering of the sea - and once we are shown the background we never again forget it: the mother of Odysseus died of grief and of longing for her child” (D 562).^[643]

Achilles does not even pursue victory over his enemies single-mindedly because, while he wants to achieve victory over his enemies, he wants to do so as a truly noble human being; he therefore, for example, decries deception as a means to achieving such victory.⁶¹ More generally, Achilles seeks honor but he also seeks to be truly worthy of honor, and hence to be truly virtuous.

What accounts for Odysseus’s distinctive greatness, in Nietzsche’s account, is his mind, a mind admired even by the gods (D 306). It is his mind that enables him to control such passions as anger or love that might come into conflict with his overriding passion for victory (D 199, 562). Nietzsche suggests that it may also be Odysseus’s mind that enables him to recognize that the gods are indifferent to human beings and therefore that, since humans are on their own and left to their own devices, they must strive for their well-being by any means necessary, good or evil, noble or ignoble.

Nietzsche himself evidently admires Odysseus more than Achilles.^[646] In his published writings, he mentions Odysseus (12)^[647] more than Achilles (9),^[648] and he refers much more to the poem Odysseus dominates, the Odyssey (27),^[649] than to the poem Achilles dominates, the Iliad (6).^[650] The key reason for Nietzsche’s preference seems to be the greater affinity of Odysseus’s mind with the free, philosophic mind. Nietzsche identifies Odysseus’s clear-sighted and severe willingness to cause suffering to others, if necessary, in pursuit of his goals with that of the Free Minds in pursuit of their goal. Just as Odysseus must break the heart of his mother in order to pursue adventure and glory for himself, so must the Free Mind break the hearts of loved ones in order to seek knowledge:

A higher and freer viewpoint, it seems to me, is to look beyond these immediate consequences to others and under certain circumstances to pursue more distant goals even at the cost of the suffering of others - for example, to pursue knowledge even though one realizes that our free-spiritedness [unsere Freigeisterei] will at first and as an immediate consequence plunge others into doubt, grief, and even worse things;

“the mother of Odysseus died of grief and of longing for her child.... Sorrow breaks the heart of those to whom it happens that he whom they love best deserts their faith - this is part of the tragedy that free minds [die freien Geister] produce and of which they are sometimes aware!” (D 146, 562).

Nietzsche’s account of Odysseus as a philosophic mind is clearly an idealized one. Homer’s Odysseus does not leave his family in Ithaca because he pursues knowledge as the Free Minds do, but rather because he seeks to assist the mighty king Agamemnon and to win glory for himself.^[652] Homer’s Odysseus does not face the prospect of leaving life as he faces the prospect of leaving Nausicaa - blessing it more than in love with it, as Nietzsche recommends - but rather bitterly laments the lost opportunity for gaining more glory.^[653] Homer’s Odysseus does not seek wisdom when he descends to Hades but rather seeks to learn how best to return home to regain his family and his kingdom.^[654] Most importantly, Homer’s Odysseus does not recognize the folly of relying on the indiffer­ent gods and conclude from their indifference that he must rely primarily on his mind, his cunning, and his versatility - as Nietzsche repeatedly suggests he does; instead Odysseus trusts entirely and blindly in the gods once he has returned to Ithaca, that is, during the entire second half of the Odyssey.^[655] It is Homer’s Achilles rather than Homer’s Odysseus who comes closest to freeing his mind from reliance on divine providence.

Nietzsche is evidently aware of the distinction between his Odysseus and Homer’s Odysseus. Only 3 of Nietzsche’s 27 references to the Odyssey are to the second half of the poem, when Odysseus arrives in Ithaca and thenceforth relies completely on the divine providence of Athena and Zeus rather than on his own judgment.^[657] Nietzsche uses Odysseus as a Homeric image of a free, philosophic mind rather than seriously argue, on the basis of Homer’s text, that Homer presented Odysseus as such a mind. One might wonder why Nietzsche does not use Achilles as the image of such a mind, since, as we have seen, Homer himself suggests that it is Achilles, of all his heroes, who comes closest to freeing himself from the spell of divine providence and hence to approach­ing the “profoundly unreligious” outlook of Homer himself (HATH 1:125). Apparently, for Nietzsche, as also for Plato’s Socrates, the characteristics of Odysseus at his best - his capacity for single- mindedness, his capacity for self-control, his restless inquisitiveness, his freedom from moral and religious attachments - come closer to the “psychic economy” of the philosopher than do the characteristics of Achilles even at his best.^[658]

What about the creator of Odysseus, Homer himself? Does Nietzsche consider Homer himself to be, not only the founder of Greek culture, but also a philosophic mind in his own right, a philosophic poet who hides his philosophic life, as Plato’s Socrates suggests?^[659] Nietzsche suggests that there are a number of ways in which Homer resembles one who lives a philosophic life. Even though Homer is the creator of the Greek gods, he is not himself pious but rather “profoundly unreligious” (HATH 1:125; see also WP 380). In Nietzsche’s account, Homer gave the Greeks their gods in part for their benefit - their ennoblement (HATH 1:114) - and also perhaps in part in order to protect himself from the envy of those around him: “To call someone ‘divine’ means: ‘here there is no need for us to compete’” (HATH 1:162; see also D 344; WP137).^[660] Similarly, even though Homer created his heroes, he is altogether different from his heroes, especially from his passionate Achilles (HATH 1:211; GM 3.4). Nietzsche counts Homer among those whose art constitutes “the surplus of a wise and harmonious conduct of life” (HATH 2:173) and offers a vivid account of the “happiness of Homer”:

To have refined senses and a refined sense of taste; to be accustomed to the most exquisite and very best things of the mind [Geistes] as if they were simply the right and most convenient nourishment; to enjoy a strong, bold, audacious soul; to go through life with a calm eye and a firm step, always prepared for the most extreme situations as for a feast, full of longing for undiscovered worlds and seas, humans and gods... who would not wish that all this might be his possession, his state? (GS 302)^[661]

Nevertheless, even though Nietzsche sketches a portrait of Homer as a figure akin to the philosophers - a religious skeptic, a dispassionate and wise man, a human being whose happiness consists of satisfying his inquisitive mind and fulfilling his longing for wisdom - Nietzsche never calls Homer a philosopher or offers as vivid a portrait of the philosophic Homer as he does of Plato - the royal and magnificent hermit of the mind - or Socrates - who, for example, exhibited “the heroism” of the “free mind” and whose “putting of the god to the test is one of the subtlest compromises between piety and the freedom of the mind that has ever been devised” (BGE 204; HATH 1:433, 3:72). Like Plato’s Socrates and his Protagoras, Nietzsche evidently concludes that, notwithstanding the greatness of Homer’s mind, he erred in hiding his own life of the mind - his own individual philosophic character or personality - so completely.^[662] As the young Nietzsche remarks in his inaugural lecture, Homer and Classical Philology, the original title of which was “On the Personality of Homer [Uber die Personlichkeit Homers],” those who live after Homer and study his works are unable “to grasp” a “personality”; find “nowhere the solid kernel of a powerful personality”; and conse­quently strive “in vain to solve that mysterious problem of the Homeric inaccessibility [Unerreichbarkeit]” (HCP 164-165/257-258). In stark con­trast with Homer, but like Plato, Nietzsche presents the powerful personal­ity of the philosopher front and center for his readers, as an object of wonder and examination, and as a source of inspiration.

The highest compliment Nietzsche pays to Homer is to imitate that “dei- fier” by himself deifying the philosophic life in the person of the god Dionysos: “gods too philosophize”; “Dionysos is a philosopher”; and Nietzsche reveals, three times, that he is the “disciple” of this philosopher god (BGE 295,296; TI 10.5; EC Preface.2; see also A 39).^[663] Nietzsche here imitates Homer by presenting a certain aspect of human nature as divine and thereby encouraging human beings to celebrate it. On the other hand, by presenting the god Dionysos as a philosopher, Nietzsche corrects Homer, albeit in a Homeric spirit, by adding an explicitly philosophic god hitherto missing from the pantheon of Homer’s gods. Here too, by explicitly presenting philosophy as a way of life that is noble and divine, Nietzsche imitates Plato, who explicitly celebrates philosophy throughout his works and whose Socrates explicitly presents philosophy as a way of life that is “wholly noble” and “divine” (see, for example, Republic 540c3, 500c9-dι; see also 486aι-6, 517d4-5).^[664]

Nietzsche’s project to resurrect homeric Greece?

In Beyond Good and Evil, as we have seen,^[665] Nietzsche describes the philosopher in two fundamentally different ways: as an actively political

philosopher devoted to the lasting political and moral betterment of humanity - “the philosopher as we understand him, we free minds - as the man of the most comprehensive responsibility for the over-all devel­opment of man” (61) - and as a solitary philosopher - a hermit of the mind, who “always,” “of necessity” contradicts “the ideal of today” - whatever that ideal may be - and who therefore seems to deny the possibility of a lasting political and moral betterment of humanity as a whole (204, 212). In certain respects, Nietzsche himself comes to sight as an actively political philosopher who seeks, through his writings, to reverse the overall degeneration of humanity threatened by the triumph of Christianity - “the greatest misfortune of humanity so far” (TI 9.47; see also A 47) - and of Christianity’s heir, “the democratic movement,” and to create a better future for humanity by successfully reviving “the classical ideal” - “the noble mode of evaluating all things” - as the Renaissance and Napoleon had attempted to do, but failed.^[666] Such a practical “work” or “task” or “project”^[667] to replace anti-natural Christian and post-Christian society and culture - for the aim of Christianity, “a form of mortal enmity against reality that has never been surpassed,” is “to devalue nature” (A 27, 38) - with a non-Christian, aristocratic, neo-Homeric society and culture - in harmony not only with “the desire for victory and eminence [that] is an inextinguishable trait of human nature” but more generally with “the reality of all that is human” (HATH 3:226, 2:220) - is first visible, according to Nietzsche, in The Birth of Tragedy. Writing in his last book about his first book, he comments: “Everything in this essay points to the future: the impending return of the Greek mind [der Wiederkunft des griechischen Geistes], the necessity of counter-Alexanders who will retie the Gordian knot of Greek culture” (EH 3.BT.4).^[668]

Nietzsche’s project of resurrecting Homeric culture is most visible in the titles of two of his mature works: Beyond Good and Evil and The Antichrist. The first title appears - in the light of Aphorism 260 in which he discusses master and slave morality - to call for moving beyond the slave morality of “good” and “evil” and toward the master morality of “good” and bad”; the second title appears to call for the destruction of the most potent form of slave morality, the Christianity through which the slave takes revenge against the noble values of antiquity.^[669] Master morality identifies, as we have seen,^[670] the “good” with such noble, brave, and strong human beings as the “Homeric heroes” Achilles and Odysseus, who are confident in their power to ensure, on their own, that justice is done, that good is requited with good and evil with evil (GM 1.11; HATH 1:45). Master morality identifies the “bad” or “base” with those, perhaps like Thersites, who are too weak in character and strength to impose their will and enforce justice. Slave morality, on the other hand, the morality of “good” and “evil,” identifies the “good” with those humans who are kind, humble, and weak; who are easily taken advantage of, oppressed by, and enslaved by the ruthless, proud, and fearsome strong - those identified as “good” in “the other morality,” but now identified as “evil”; and who come to recognize their need for a higher, divine being to enforce the justice - the “revenge” - they are incapable of enforcing themselves (GM 1.11, 1.13-15).

In a passage of On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche suggests that “beyond good and evil” means, not beyond all morality, but beyond a specifically slave morality. Nietzsche explains that, “ [t]he two opposing values ‘good and bad,’ ‘good and evil’ have been engaged in a fearful struggle on earth for thousands of years” and that “[t]he symbol of this struggle, inscribed in letters legible across all human history, is ‘Rome against Judea, Judea against Rome’” - in other words, as he indicates, the “classical ideal” of ancient Rome and especially of Greece, from “the Homeric heroes” to Periclean Athens, the “highest culture,” against Christianity (GM 1.16, 1.11). Nietzsche then turns to consider the ques­tion of what should be done now that Christianity has triumphed against the classical ideal as represented first by ancient Greece and Rome, then by the Renaissance, and most recently by Napoleon:

Must the ancient fire not some day flare up much more terribly, after much longer preparation? More: must one not desire it with all one’s might? even will it? even promote it? Whoever begins at this point, like my reader, to reflect and pursue his train of thought will not soon come to the end of it - reason enough for me to come to an end, assuming that it has long since been abundantly clear what I want [was ich will], what I want with that dangerous slogan that is inscribed at the head of my last book Beyond Good and Evil... At least this does not mean “Beyond Good and Bad.” (GM 1.16-17 - the ellipsis is in the text)

Nietzsche appears to suggest here that his aim is to achieve a moral revolution by reversing the victory of Christianity over Greco-Roman antiquity and specifically by replacing the slave morality of “good” and “evil” with the master morality of “good” and “bad.”^[671] Evidently, slave morality is a type of morality that has long existed - “for thousands of years” (GM 1.16) - but Nietzsche suggests that the most important form is Christianity: “Christianity was made... for the great mass of slaves” (D 546); “one cannot find a greater contrast than that between a master morality and the morality of Christian value concepts” (CW Epilogue). “Beyond good and evil” therefore would seem to mean “beyond slave Christian morality” and toward the master morality of “good” and “bad” as exemplified, for example, by the Homeric heroes.

Nietzsche suggests that the practical project to overcome Christian morality and return to Homeric morality requires, not only the repudi­ation of Christianity, but also the repudiation of Plato and Socrates. For “Christianity is Platonism for ‘the people’” (BGE Pre). Moreover, it is Socrates, “the most questionable phenomenon of antiquity,” who des­troyed the Greek character, and therewith, it would seem, the master morality of Homeric Greece, through his critique of Homer and the tragic poets (BT 13). Socrates and Plato are “symptoms of degeneration, tools of the Greek dissolution, pseudo-Greek, anti-Greek” (TI 2.2). In contrast with Thucydides, who is the last representative of the Greece founded by Homer, “the last revelation of that strong, severe, hard factuality which was instinctive for the older Hellenes,” and whose “nature” displays “courage [Mut] in the face of reality [Realitat],” “Plato is a coward [Feigling] before reality” (TI 10.2; see also D 168, 448). In order to revive the Greek culture and society founded by Homer that was in harmony with “the reality [Wirklichkeit] of all that is human,” (HATH 2:220), the authority of Socrates and Plato must itself be negated (see GM 3.25). Insofar as Nietzsche seeks to rescue humanity from the legacy of Christianity by reviving the master morality of the Homeric heroes and pre-Platonic, Homeric civilization as a whole, Nietzsche’s endorsement of Homer against Plato would seem to be absolute and unqualified.^[672]

Finally, since master morality is the morality of “the ruling group,” “the noble, powerful, high-stationed and high-minded,” “in contradis­tinction to all the low, low-minded, common and plebeian” (BGE 260; GM ³.2), a revival of master morality would seem to require a revival of an inegalitarian, aristocratic society of some form, akin to the aristocratic society of the Homeric heroes: “Every enhancement [Erhohung] of the type ‘man’ has so far been the work of an aristocratic society” (see BGE 257; see also HATH 1:439). Insofar as Nietzsche truly is a philosopher who feels responsible for the “the future of Europe” and the “overall development of man,” it would seem that he must favor not only a moral revolution but also a political revolution as part of his project for the permanent development of humanity (BGE 61, 251). Does Nietzsche set forth such a political project in his writings?

The closest Nietzsche comes to articulating clearly such a specifically political project in his writings is in two passages in Beyond Good and Evil. First he expresses the heartfelt wish for

such an increase in the menace of Russia that Europe would have to resolve to become menacing, too, namely, to acquire one will by means of a new caste that would rule Europe, a long, terrible will of its own that would be able to cast its goals millennia hence - so the long-drawn-out comedy of its petty provincialism [Kleinstaaterei] and its dynastic as well as democratic fragmentation of the will [Vielwollerei] could come to a close. (208)

Later, after commenting that “it might be useful and fair” to “expel the anti-Semitic screamers” from Germany in order to allow for the intermar­riage of European Jews with “officers of the nobility” from the Mark (that is, the Mark Brandenburg, the region around Berlin), Nietzsche remarks: “But here it is proper to break off my cheerful Germanomania and holiday oratory; for I am beginning to touch on what is serious for me, the ‘European problem’ as I understand it, the cultivation of a new caste that will rule Europe” (251; see D 205). In these two passages, Nietzsche seems to advocate, quite specifically, the replacement of the separate democratic and dynastic political orders of Europe in the late nineteenth century with a united, multinational Europe led by a post­Christian military elite that strives to uphold a new European civilization against the forces represented especially by the Christian Russian Empire, German anti-Semitism, and German nationalism. If we consider these passages along with his discussions in the rest of Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morality, Twilight of the Idols, and The Antichrist, we may conclude that Nietzsche’s practical project for the overall development of humanity entails a moral and political revolution that will result in a united Europe - including perhaps the countries throughout the world dominated by European influence (BGE 202) - ruled for “millennia” by a transnational warrior elite that will be guided by master rather than slave morality, and that will follow the authority of Homer and Homeric Greece (as interpreted by Nietzsche) over the authority of Plato, Platonism, and Christianity.