Blogging Nietzsche—Nietzsche's Poetry: "Against Arrogance"
Like many of Nietzsche’s poems, “Against Arrogance” (Nietzsche, The Gay Science, ‘Joke, Cunning, and Revenge’: Prelude in German Rhymes, No. 21) has a dual meaning—in this case, one practical and one philosophical:
21. Against Arrogance
Don’t let your ego swell too much,
A bubble bursts with just a touch.
On the one hand, Nietzsche’s poem “Against Arrogance” warns against the vain puffery of one’s ego, reminiscent of sage advice everywhere to remain humble and to know your own limitations. This practical interpretation of “Against Arrogance,” however, is undoubtedly not the only message Nietzsche intended to convey, given Nietzsche’s ongoing critique of the Cartesian ego and of Western rationalism in general.
Elsewhere in The Gay Science, Nietzsche gives a multifaceted critique of Western rationalism, modern science, and modern philosophy. According to Nietzsche, we are not disembodied Cartesian egos—nonphysical minds. Instead we are embodied beings with various biological and psychological needs, drives, and desires. Moreover, we are beings with an evolutionary history who invented knowledge as a means of making our existence more secure in a natural world that is fundamentally hostile to us.
But instead of recognizing our rational faculties as a relatively late development, Nietzsche claims that modern philosophers and modern scientists, indeed all of Western culture, have an over-inflated sense of the value of our rational faculties. Instead of thinking of our rational faculties—our minds or our “egos”—as contingent and based in the species-specific needs of humanity for survival and security, ignoring the ways in which we hold our own meaningful metaphors, interpretations, impulses, modern philosophers placed the “ego” on a pedestal as the pinnacle of humanity: our essence, our most prized characteristic, and what distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom, perhaps also the part of ourselves that was supposedly created in God’s image from the Judeo-Christian perspective.
All of this, according to Nietzsche, is vain intellectual puffery—puffery that is not justified by our evolution, our individualism, our embodiment, by the herd-like nature of of those in the Western intellectual and cultural tradition, and so on. Our true strength, according to Nietzsche, lies not in our egos, our rationality, our supposedly objective and universal essences, but rather in our strength as individuals, as creative agents, as authors oof our own lives with what Nietzsche calls “Will to Power,” our ability to break with the herd and to live our own (embodied) lives with our various drives—whether biological or in terms of our ambitions and authentically individual projects.
To be an ego in the sense of Descartes, or of any Western philosophical account of ourselves as rational beings, is to turn our back on our individual strengths while simultaneously letting our collective philosophical and cultural egos swell far much, like a bubble as Nietzsche says colorfully in “Against Arrogance.”
So what is the remedy to all of this ego-driven intellectual puffery? How can we avoid the trappings of holding our rationality (and the Judeo-Christian morality that Nietzsche feels steps in tandem with it) to be the best or most special parts of ourselves? Part of the answer is to remain intellectually humble, recognizing that even the most objective scientific or philosophical theory was developed from some internal, individual, or even cultural drive toward “knowledge.” To Nietzsche, this is only the illusion of objectivity, not genuine objectivity.
Another part of the answer is to become comfortable with other aspects of yourself besides your mind or intellect: your body with its needs and drives, your culture with its unique way of seeing the world, your own unique and individual artistically creative drives, your own historical situatedness and evolutionary contingency (instead of viewing oneself as the pinnacle of creation or the epitome of morality), and so on.
As you can see, Nietzsche had a much different view of the type of being mankind is compared to the majority of Western philosophers and theologians. Nietzsche’s view of mankind is far closer to the view of Darwin than to that of Descartes, holding that we are fundamentally a type of animal, and not a very well-suited animal at that. Yes, we evolved some unique abilities, but our reason leads us to make mistakes as often as it leads us to get it right. And our unique rational abilities are not our defining essence; they are our own species-specific and individual way of coping with the weaker parts of our nature, the fact that we don’t have fangs or claws or scales to protect ourselves.
Yes, we humans have an intellect, but we too often sacrifice our own individualism, our own biological needs, and our own unique forms of creative expression to the altar of objectivity and universality. We, sadly, paint ourselves with the same brush used to paint all of humanity—the same egoistic brush used by Descartes in his account of ourselves as rational beings. According to Descartes, we are not physical, embodied beings, but disembodied res cogitans—thinking things. The Cartesian view of personhood, according to Nietzsche, is a straightforward denial of the facts of the matter about human existence, a type of philosophical escapism or death-wish all too common to Western culture and Western religion in general, and the very kind of intellectual puffery he warns against in “Against Arrogance.”
So what happens when the bubble of Western culture, Western religion, Western philosophy, and Western science is burst—whether as a result of its own swelling and puffery or from internal or external forces? One could argue that the egoistic bubble Nietzsche refers to is as much a protective bubble as anything. You don’t have to deal with the challenges of being a unique or embodied individual by remaining safely within an intellectual bubble, by viewing yourself as a mind, as an intellect, as a soul, or as an ego. But when that bubble bursts, as it likely does for everyone at one point or another, you are forced to confront your own limitations, your own insatiable needs and drives, your own ambitions (whether lofty or base), and so on.
When the bubble bursts, you can no longer float in the air through an idealized dreamworld, as if through some Platonic or Pythagorean heaven. You must stand with your own two human feet on earthly ground and look yourself in the mirror, with all your weaknesses and baser passions staring you squarely in the face, but also with your vast individual strength, nobility, and human potential that Western culture has tried so hard to strip away.
So much is possible when the rationalist bubble of safety is burst: you are free to be yourself, to pursue your own projects and accomplishments, to be at one with your own body and at home in the natural world, to paint your own life like an artist or two write your own story like a composer of the grandest epic with you as the protagonist. But it takes courage to pop the bubble of the human ego and to become comfortable with yourself as a human animal.
For Further Reading:
The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche
Meditations on First Philosophy by René Descartes
