Pathos of distance

Friedrich Nietzsche, 1882 (photograph by Gustav Adolf Schultze )

The pathos of distance is a motif that emerges in Friedrich Nietzsche's later writings and has a strong catchphrase character. It expresses the feeling of noble superiority and determines a position from which the aristocratic , high-minded person takes the right to "create values" and "coin names of values."

details

The judgment as to whether something is good does not come from those to whom goodness has been shown, but from the good themselves, the mighty, superior and distinguished. They felt their actions in contrast to the "low-minded" as the first rank, while usefulness was nothing to them. This is - as Nietzsche explains in the Genealogy of Morals - "especially with regard to such a hot welling out of the highest ranking, ranking-differentiating value judgments as foreign and inappropriate as possible."

The "pathos of refinement and distance" as the "permanent and dominant overall and basic feeling of a higher ruling species in relation to a lower species" is the "origin of the opposition between good and bad."

The pathos of distance as a “feeling of difference in rank” deepens the contrast to everything that is perceived as mean, low and rabble. The aristocratic society has raised the human type. If a society believes in hierarchies and value differences, it also needs slavery . Without that pathos that arises from the “ingrained distinction of the classes” and the “constant practice in obeying and commanding, holding down and keeping away”, that “other more mysterious pathos could not grow at all.” Here, beyond good and evil , Nietzsche refers to the inner-soul expansion of distance , which amounts to more distant and extensive states and thus to the exaltation of the human type and his "self-overcoming". This pathos aims at the revaluation of values , which is ultimately based on the will to power .

background

Above all, Nietzsche opposes the usefulness of the doctrines of virtue by John Stuart Mills and Herbert Spencer and distances himself from traditional ideas of rational and teleological systems thinking.

For Volker Gerhardt, the motif is already laid out in Nietzsche's early works and its cultural-creating, "because individualizing" meaning of interpersonal distancing can be recognized. Nietzsche advocated the great individual early on, valued the aristocratic disposition and condemned demands for equality and general promises of happiness. In his essay On the Pathos of Truth from 1872, Nietzsche describes the conflict between the “great” in “world history”, which necessarily deserves fame, and the “used, small, mean” that stands in its way as “ terrible struggle of culture ”. In the birth of tragedy , pathos appears as an overarching counter-concept to action. In pathos as the pure presence of the event, the later criticized distinction between perpetrator and deed, internal motive and (external) consequence has been overcome. Since it is the direct expression of a mental state, it combines Nietzsche's two counterconceptions, which are critical of morality: pathos as an alternative to the concept of action and distance as a basic requirement for aristocratic virtue.

Nietzsche does not simply equate nobility with power or higher castes, but advocates a “spiritual aristocracy” that is tough on itself, can endure suffering and thus does not measure the right to distance from the randomness of external positions, but from the design of its own existence .

Effect and reception

The term was initially taken up in a moral and cultural critical sense and as a counter-term to the leveled society of modernity. While for Georg Simmel it corresponded to the structure of the ideal of refinement, "that it is not the affirmation to the outside, but the self-contained being" that determines the rank of the human being, Kurt Braatz sees refinement less as a sociological category than a psychological condition and goes away a three-dimensionality of the pathos of distance by dividing it vertically, horizontally and temporally.

In the field of aesthetics , Nietzsche's conception had a lasting effect; As in sociology and psychology , the term pathos is mostly dispensed with and only distance is spoken of.

So used Theodor W. Adorno the phrase in his writings on literature , for example in relation to Stefan George and Thomas Mann . When interpreting a poem from the cycle The Seventh Ring , he wrote that George saw himself as a descendant of Nietzsche's pathos of distance. The problematic are the works that “have something in common with the sphere of calamity” and contradict the aesthetic content. His “alliance liturgies” would fit in “despite or because of the pathos of the distance to the solstice celebrations and campfires of hordes of youth moving about”. On the other hand, what is artistically questionable is actually atoned for, which points to the abysmal in his work. For example, Count von Stauffenberg , a member of the George circle , who attempted the murder of a tyrant and who sacrificed himself, might have seen George's poem about the perpetrator from the Carpet of Life cycle before his act . Historians point out that he let himself be reinforced in his plan against Adolf Hitler by the poem Der Widerchrist . Writes Joachim Fest , Stauffenberg had recited it in the weeks before the assassination by preference.

literature

• Sven Brömsel: Pathos of distance . In: Henning Ottmann (ed.): Nietzsche manual. Life, work, effect . Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2000. p. 299. ISBN 3-476-01330-8 .
• Volker Gerhardt : Pathos and Distance. Studies on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Reclam, 1988.

Web links

• Historical subject book

References and comments

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Sven Brömsel: Pathos of Distance . In: Henning Ottmann (ed.): Nietzsche manual. Life, work, effect . Metzler, Stuttgart 2000, p. 299, ISBN 3-476-01330-8 .
2. ^ ^{A b} Friedrich Nietzsche: On the genealogy of morality . In: Ders .: KSA . Volume 5. Dtv, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-423-30155-4 , p. 259.
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Volker Gerhardt : Pathos of the distance . In: Joachim Ritter u. a. (Ed.): Historical dictionary of philosophy . Volume 7. Schwabe-Verlag, Basel 1989, pp. 199-200.
4. ↑ Friedrich Nietzsche: About the Pathos of Truth Zeno.org
5. ^ Theodor W. Adorno: Notes on literature. Talk about poetry and society . In: Ders .: Collected writings . Volume 11. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 2003, p. 64, ISBN 978-3-518-29311-9 .
6. ^ Theodor W. Adorno: Notes on literature. George . In: Ders .: Collected writings . Volume 11. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 2003, p. 524, ISBN 978-3-518-29311-9 .
7. ↑ Gerhard Schulz : The antichrist . In: Marcel Reich-Ranicki (Ed.): From Arno Holz to Rainer Maria Rilke (1000 German poems and their interpretations; Volume 5). Insel, Frankfurt / M. 1994, p. 83, ISBN 3-458-16632-7 .
8. ↑ Joachim Fest : Eve (Chapter 8). In: Ders .: Coup d'état. The long way to July 20th . 5th edition. Siedler, Berlin 2004, p. 144, ISBN 3-88680-810-6 .