AboutMichael J. Motta Expertise Existentialism, existential psychology, political philosophy; some value theory and ethics. Interdisciplinary approach to the social sciences and humanities: some background in abnormal psychology, expressionist art, and modern literature. I'd defer to other experts especially in areas such as analytic philosophy and philosophy of science.
Experience Tutor, Michigan State University, Student-Athlete Support Services, 2002-2005.
Teaching Assistant, Binghamton University, Department of Philosophy, 1995. Organizations American Civil Liberties Union
Publications The Society for Laingian Studies (giardino delle parole),
Lansing State Journal, Grand Ledge Independent, beTurtle.com, Property Investor Magazine, Grand Rapids Press, eHow.com
Education/Credentials Graduate study, Binghamton University, Department of Philosophy, 1993-95.
MA in Philosophy, Michigan State University, College of Arts and Letters, 1991. Master's thesis: "Nietzsche's 'Hothouse For Strange And Choice Plants'".
BA in Social Science, Michigan State University, James Madison College, 1989.
Study abroad: Cambridge University, Trinity College, Cambridge, England, 1988.
Awards and Honors Clifford D. Clark Fellow, Binghamton University, 1993-95.
Department of Philosophy Fellowship, Michigan State University, 1991.
National Merit Scholar, Michigan State University, 1985-1989.
Question Hello. I have been reading the book called "Why I am So Wise" by Friedrich Nietzsche. I am currently reading through the section entitled "Why I am so clever". He is speaking about how nutriment, climate and place can affect a person and how the grow into either a thinking, intelligent person, or another mindless person. While reading this, I can't help but wonder what he is really talking about. Is he really talking about what foods someone eats and where one lives, or are these just metaphors for something else? I have a feeling that they are in fact metaphorical, but I am not sure. I can't seem to be able to read on with this question unanswered. Thank you for your time,
Joey.
Answer Hi Joey.
Thanks for your question. First, I think you mean the book is "Ecce Homo", and "Why I Am So Wise" and "Why I Am So Clever" are chapters.
Your uncertainty about whether to take Nietzsche's prescriptions literally or metaphorically is well-founded. I'd suggest that they are overdetermined, that they are to be understood both literally and metaphorically. In reading works of literature and philosophy, the first temptation is to take these kinds of details as if they are metaphor; after all, writers and philosophers are writers and philosophers, literary men, men of thought - they are not physicians. However, a good part of Nietzsche's project consisted in revitalizing the body, bringing the body back to its rightful place of importance in Western discourse.
Christian-Platonic morality had rejected the body, or at the very least placed it well beneath mind and soul. For Nietzsche, this mind/body split was one of the many mistakes in dualistic thinking from Plato to Descartes and beyond in the philosophical tradition, as well as in the soul/body split in Christianity. Nietzsche wants us to know that we are our bodies, we must listen to our bodies and we must tend to our bodies, we must not continue the sickness of the ascetic ideal. Our bodies will tell us about what foods they want, which climates in which they thrive best. This should be listened to rather than cast aside as lowly brute instinct. This is a literal interpretation and a valid interpretation.
The metaphor part I think comes in when we again consider that Nietzsche is trying to implode traditional Western dualism. The will of the body ought not be separated from the will of the mind - they are connected not just via some organ such as the pineal gland of Descartes, but rather they are intertwined and "one". Hence one's physiology, and by extension, one's diet and climate, is bound together with one's thoughts, one's philosophies, one's artistic production. Likewise one's unconscious reveals itself in one's manifest ways and ideas. Prefiguring Freud, Nietzsche writes in Section 16 of "Beyond Good and Evil": “It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy has hitherto been: a confession on the part of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir”. Instinct and the body speak in philosophy, so material is not to be segregated from spiritual, the concrete is not to be separated from the abstract, the literal overlaps with the metaphorical.
So, for example, Nietzsche preferred the rarefied air of the mountains of Sils-Maria because he felt it helped him to think more clearly. Clean, crisp, thin air = healthy and jaunty philosophy. A diet that is heavy might tend toward too heavy a philosophy - a philosophy that can't dance. A diet that is too light might tend toward a philosophy that is too emaciated, that lacks vigor. One paradox though is that Nietzsche was not a healthy man, yet he bespoke a philosophy of health. Some think of Nietzsche as a hypochondriac, but to me, that's like calling someone paranoid when people really ARE out to get him! I think if I were as chronically ill as Nietzsche apparently was, given what little I know of nineteenth century medicine (that in some regards it was worse than medicine in preceding centuries), I would obsess too!
So, in summary, the main things to remember are that Nietzsche truly was concerned about the body (both his own and its place in Western philosophy) and he liked to trade on dual meanings, double entendre, overdetermination. What I suggest you get out of all this is his emphasis on the body, and then the body's relationship to literary/philosophical/artistic production.
