Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x24gv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-30T19:09:55.709Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Appendix: Nietzsche I: Rhetoric + Metaphysics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2013

Paul de Man
Affiliation:
Yale University
Martin McQuillan
Affiliation:
London Graduate School & Kingston University, London
Get access

Summary

Several Nietzsche commentators have pointed out that Nietzsche's valorization of the critical, deconstructive processes that occupy such a prominent place in his work is ambivalent. In Ironie und Dichtung, Beda Alleman describes the seductive dangers of Nietzschean deconstruction as follows: ‘Es eröffnet sich hier (in the psychological demystification of Human all too Human) eine hervorragende Möglichkeit der Ironie, die ein angemessenes Spielfeld findet in der Spannung zwischen ‘Illusion’ und deren Auflösung, im aphoristischen Umschlag aus dem allgemein Geglaubten in eine geistreiche Enthüllung und in der Widerlegung des scheinbar allgemein Gültigen durch ein scheinbar noch allgemeiner Gültiges: der konventionell übernommenen Meinung durch die zum vornherein eigentlich feststehende verächtliche Absichtlichkeit aller menschlichen Meinungen.’ (I+D., 114) (m.i.) He goes on to comment that the a priori distrustful attitude towards human motives is too facile, too cheap an attitude to achieve philosophical dignity and he quotes Nietzsche's own derogatory remarks against ‘Die Art Seelenaushorchung und – Ausschnüffelung’ which he despises in Renan and in Sainte-Beuve. The attitude allows, at best, for flashes of wit – Alleman alludes to Lichtenberg and to French ‘moralists’ such as, presumably, la Rochefoucauld or Chamfort – but Nietzsche's own authority can be enlisted in condemning it as ‘tief Unvornehm’ despite its ‘vornehmer Anschein’, as ‘blasiert’, devoid of ‘echterer Adel’, in short, as a manifestation of the ‘weak’ nihilism that is consistently being condemned throughout the work.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Political Archive of Paul de Man
Property, Sovereignty and the Theotropic
, pp. 179 - 192
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Print publication year: 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×