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Transvaluations: Nietzsche in France 1872-1972
This study traces the transvaluations or transformations in value and meaning Nietzsche's work underwent during the first century of its reception in France. These transvaluations, Smith argues, resulted as various critics, both within and outside the philosophical establishment, contested Nietzsche's theories. He offers a historical perspective on the continuing importance of Nietzsche's work to contemporary debates within the arenas of philosophy and critical theory.
Hardcover
First published December 19, 1996
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October 26, 2019
While providing a valuable survey of the French reception of Nietzsche's thought and writings over the span of one hundred years, between 1872 and 1972 (and gesturing inconclusively beyond), Smith's book suffers at times from somewhat simplified misreadings of the thought of the philosophers he takes up.
There are moments, for example, when he appears to misread Nietzsche himself, especially concerning the relationship of interminable interpretation between nature and history. At times Smith seems to suggest that Nietzsche undermines history in order to affirm a return to a "natural" interpretation of thought and pulsional forces. This is a bit too reductive, however, as Nietzsche's writings seem to suggest that such a "naturalization" is always historically contextualized, re-territorialized, and thus caught up in an infinite cycling - an eternal recurrence producing difference.
And in relation to such infinite repetitions generating difference, there is a major fault in Smith's reading of Deleuze. This error is even more problematic in that Smith employs it in a critique of Deleuze's thought in his Nietzsche and Philosophy. Smith reads in Deleuze's mapping of active and reactive drives onto the master and slave moralities of The Genealogy of Morals an implicit essentialism which falls prey to a negative constitution in the style of Hegelian dialectics, to which Deleuze was vehemently antagonistic. But Smith fails to see that the affirmation of the active drives, of mastery, is not relationally founded upon the negation of the weak or passive slavishness of the reactive drives. Rather, it is the very self-affirmation, an absolute affirmation which bears no relation to the reactive drives, which defines the strength or power of the active drives. They are active because they do not react and determine themselves and their expression through negating other drives; their power arises or is emergently generated from within themselves, as an expression of the Will to Power. It is for this reason, even in Nietzsche's text which Deleuze is interpretating, that the masters and their morality are powerful and affirmative - because they determine themselves as 'good,' and only call what is slavish 'bad' in relation to their own self-affirmation. This is opposed to the slave morality, which is reactive because it is motivated not by affirmation but by ressentiment, by determining the masters as 'evil' before they then negate them in defining themselves as 'good.'
Thus it is clear that Smith's misreading of Nietzsche impeded his understanding of Deleuze's interpretation of Nietzsche, and that his attempt at critiquing Deleuze's thought falls short do to misunderstanding. If this is revelatory of anything, then, it is that one must be wary, must read carefully, critically, and slowly, thinking between and behind what is said, what is written, so as not to be led astray. This goes beyond Smith's text, of course - we might apply it to any and all readings, to every text that we encounter and are exposed to. Smith's book on Nietzsche in France can thus not only lay out for us a sketch of the historical territory determining the reading of Nietzsche, but it may also provide us with a pragmatic case for lending a suspiscious eye, ear, and mind to the general practice of reading and of its concomitant thought.
There are moments, for example, when he appears to misread Nietzsche himself, especially concerning the relationship of interminable interpretation between nature and history. At times Smith seems to suggest that Nietzsche undermines history in order to affirm a return to a "natural" interpretation of thought and pulsional forces. This is a bit too reductive, however, as Nietzsche's writings seem to suggest that such a "naturalization" is always historically contextualized, re-territorialized, and thus caught up in an infinite cycling - an eternal recurrence producing difference.
And in relation to such infinite repetitions generating difference, there is a major fault in Smith's reading of Deleuze. This error is even more problematic in that Smith employs it in a critique of Deleuze's thought in his Nietzsche and Philosophy. Smith reads in Deleuze's mapping of active and reactive drives onto the master and slave moralities of The Genealogy of Morals an implicit essentialism which falls prey to a negative constitution in the style of Hegelian dialectics, to which Deleuze was vehemently antagonistic. But Smith fails to see that the affirmation of the active drives, of mastery, is not relationally founded upon the negation of the weak or passive slavishness of the reactive drives. Rather, it is the very self-affirmation, an absolute affirmation which bears no relation to the reactive drives, which defines the strength or power of the active drives. They are active because they do not react and determine themselves and their expression through negating other drives; their power arises or is emergently generated from within themselves, as an expression of the Will to Power. It is for this reason, even in Nietzsche's text which Deleuze is interpretating, that the masters and their morality are powerful and affirmative - because they determine themselves as 'good,' and only call what is slavish 'bad' in relation to their own self-affirmation. This is opposed to the slave morality, which is reactive because it is motivated not by affirmation but by ressentiment, by determining the masters as 'evil' before they then negate them in defining themselves as 'good.'
Thus it is clear that Smith's misreading of Nietzsche impeded his understanding of Deleuze's interpretation of Nietzsche, and that his attempt at critiquing Deleuze's thought falls short do to misunderstanding. If this is revelatory of anything, then, it is that one must be wary, must read carefully, critically, and slowly, thinking between and behind what is said, what is written, so as not to be led astray. This goes beyond Smith's text, of course - we might apply it to any and all readings, to every text that we encounter and are exposed to. Smith's book on Nietzsche in France can thus not only lay out for us a sketch of the historical territory determining the reading of Nietzsche, but it may also provide us with a pragmatic case for lending a suspiscious eye, ear, and mind to the general practice of reading and of its concomitant thought.
Displaying 1 of 1 review