# 106. A Reply to the Above Remarks

Before I enter into the factual content of Dr. Horneffer's remarks, I must characterize the "love of truth" that currently prevails in the Nietzsche Archive. Dr. Horneffer says in his essay above: "Steiner holds out the prospect that Koegel will still defend himself." Any unbiased reader who does not reread my essay published on February ıo. February, this sentence must give the impression that I made my attack on the Nietzsche Archive and its current management in agreement with Dr. Koegel. *However, this is completely incorrect*. I literally wrote in my essay: "I do not have to defend Dr. Koegel. He can do that himself." In truth, Dr. Koegel knew *not the slightest thing* about my attack before it was printed. I have given the reasons for this attack myself at the end of my essay. There are none other than the purely *factual* ones given there. When I received Dr. Horneffer's manuscript, I thought the assertion that I held out the prospect of defending Dr. Koegel was based on a cursory reading of my attack. Since I wanted to avoid any unnecessary discussion in public, I wrote to Dr. Horneffer that his assertion was based on a complete error, that I could not have held out any prospect of Dr. Koegel when I wrote my essay. He would now have had the opportunity to delete the incorrect sentence in the proof sent to him later. *He did not ask for it*. Dr. Horneffer thus claims that I acted in agreement with Dr. Koegel, despite the fact that this assertion was described to him as *untrue*.

*Secondly*, Dr. Horneffer writes: "The motives for Steiner's appearance are completely visible. Steiner has already recognized the flawed nature of Koegel's compilation; however, he does not want to let this fact arise."

"That he had recognized the flawed nature of Koegel's work is clear from the following reasons: When reading Koegel's printed manuscript aloud, Steiner skipped over the things that did not fit in. Steiner, who admits this fact, explains that this was *pure coincidence*! However, Dr. Förster-Nietzsche will publish a passage from Steiner's letter in which he himself vividly laments the inadequacy of Koegel's work. No, Steiner had already recognized the untenability of Koegel's work at that time, but, threatened and intimidated by Koegel - evidence of this will also be provided - he did not have the courage to say so openly, which could have prevented this unfortunate publication." These accusations by Dr. Hornefler against me are of course based on allegations made by Mrs. Förster-Nietzsche. And I therefore feel compelled to return to the latter's letter to me dated September 23, 1898, which I already mentioned in my essay of February 10 of this year. In this letter you will find, among other assertions, the following, which now recur in Dr. Horneffer's essay: "I gave you the manuscript on the Second Coming in October 1896 for examination because I was so concerned about it. You yourself have repeatedly noted the incoherence of the content and justified and increased my concern. Nevertheless, you did not say a word to Dr. Koegel about your doubts about the composition of the manuscript, but on the contrary praised him for it. If you had had the courage to express your doubts to Dr. Koegel, a revision of the entire manuscript would have been unavoidable. But since you did not have this courage, I had to let things take their course. I lacked the scientific language to prove the errors." It must be said very clearly for once: ı. It is not true that Mrs. Förster-Nietzsche gave me the manuscript on the Second Coming for examination in October or at any other time. 2. it is equally untrue that I have stated the incoherence of the content on various occasions. Both assertions are an *invention* of Mrs. Förster-Nietzsche. Furthermore, it is untrue that I have been intimidated in any way by Dr. Koegel. Dr. Koegel did nothing more to me than write a letter after he had received the information mentioned in my attack through his sister, which he could not understand as anything other than proof of an intrigue on my part. On the contrary, it must be emphasized that I have never been in a position to undertake any "examination" of Koegel's work. If Mrs. Förster-Nietzsche intended such an examination - which, after all that has happened, I cannot assume - then it can only have been she who did not have the courage to have one carried out. I had to shed some light on the fairy tale of "intimidation", which was invented to cast a dubious light on my correct attitude in what was a very delicate situation at the time. How Mrs. Förster-Nietzsche intends to prove that I was threatened and intimidated by Koegel: let us wait and see, and then talk further; likewise the publication of the letters in which I vividly describe the inadequacy of Koegel's work. Koegel's work. I can wait and see; for I can only wish for full clarity on this matter, in which I am not aware of any wrongdoing.

I come to a third assertion, which Dr. Horneffer faithfully parrots from Mrs. Förster-Nietzsche: "Dr. Rudolf teiner, who lived in Weimar at the time and was envisaged as *co-editor* of the Nietzsche Archive, as a philosophical complement to Dr. Koegel, a project that later came to nothing...". If "in prospect" is somehow supposed to imply that I would have agreed to such a proposal, then I must reject such an implication in the strongest possible terms. This "prospect" existed only in Mrs. Förster-Nietzsche's imagination. When she spoke to me of such a thing, I never said anything other than what can be summarized in the words: " *Even if* I wanted to - because I never wanted to - it would be impossible to stage such a co-editorship", because according to the existing contracts between Nietzsche's heirs and the Naumann company (the publishers of Nietzsche's works), this was impossible at the time. I could never be considered as Dr. Koegel's co-editor. And at that time it was merely courtesy against Mrs. Förster-Nietzsche that I listened to her fantasies, which went off into the blue. She then used the fact that I had listened to her to involve me in a completely improper manner in the matter, with which I officially had nothing to do whatsoever.

And because I had nothing to do, because I had no mandate from anyone to examine Koegel's work, no such examination ever took place. There could never have been any official collaboration with Dr. Koegel for the very reason that I explained in my attack (dated 10 February) with the words: "I do not agree with him on some points, and we have had many a controversy." I also expressed myself quite clearly in the sentence: "Someone else might have made the arrangement somewhat differently than Dr. Koegel." Well, it is probably not difficult to guess that by such an other I also mean myself. I cannot know what would have become of the "Wiederkunft des Gleichen" if I had been the editor; probably not quite the same as what it has become through Dr. Koegel.

I just don't understand one thing. I could now boast so wonderfully that, without seeing Nietzsche's manuscripts, I recognized the flawed nature of Koegel's work. I need not have feared the objection that I should have prevented the publication. For I had no possibility of such an objection in my relationship with the Nietzsche Archive, which was as unofficial as possible. Dr. Koegel and the Naumann company could have forced the publication of Koegel's work at any moment. I could therefore rest happily on the laurel that would be woven for me by the untruth that I had recognized the badness of Koegel's editorship *if I wanted*. Now I prefer the truth and leave the representation of untruth to others.

When I heard in the spring of 1898 that the volume with the "Return of the Same" had to be withdrawn from the book trade because of the inadequacy of Koegel's work, I thought: this assertion was well-founded. I remembered that during the lecture for Dr. Servaes I had skimmed over some of Koegel's manuscript. I openly confess that I now had the feeling that my skimming had sprung from a correct view of the matter at the time. I believed this until Dr. Horneffer's paper appeared. It was only *this* paper that taught me that Dr. Koegel's errors were not as substantial as had been proclaimed by the Nietzsche Archive. And this brings me to Dr. Horneffer's above reply. First, he accuses me of not having looked at Nietzsche's manuscripts before I made the attack, but I did not need to see the manuscripts for what I had to say. In order to prove to Dr. Hornefler that he misinterprets Nietzsche's aphorisms, an inspection of the manuscripts was of no use to me. For I do have the wording of these aphorisms. I will now turn to aphorism 70 (in Koegel's edition), which Dr. Hornefler mentions in his reply. It reads: "The essence of every action is as unpalatable to man as the essence of every food: he would rather starve than eat it, so strong is his disgust for the most part. He needs *seasoning*, we must be seduced to all food: and so also to all actions. The *taste* and its relation to hunger, and its relation to the needs of the organism! Moral judgments are the condiments. Here as there, however, taste is regarded as something that determines the *value of nourishment, value of action*: the greatest error! How does taste change? When does it become indolent and unfree? When is it tyrannical? - And likewise with the judgments of good and evil: a physiological fact is the cause of every change in moral taste; but this physiological change is not something that necessarily demands what is *useful* to the organism at all times. Rather, the *history* of *taste* is a history in itself, and degenerations of the whole are just as much the consequences of this taste as progress. Healthy taste, diseased taste, - these are false distinctions, - there are innumerable possibilities of development: whatever leads to one is healthy: but it may be contrary to another development. Only with regard to an ideal that is to be attained is there a sense of "healthy and "ill". The ideal, however, is always highly changeable, even in the individual (that of the child and the man!) - and the *knowledge* of what is necessary to achieve it is almost entirely lacking." What are we talking about here? It is said that our taste does not choose that which is useful to the organism for physical reasons, but that which is made pleasant to it by seasoning. Moral judgments relate to the actual natural impulse of human action in the same way that condiments relate to the natural needs of the organism. We need seasoning so that we choose this and not that food. We need a moral judgment in order to perform this or that action. But it is the greatest error if we believe that this moral judgment determines the advantageousness of the action. It is also the greatest error to believe that the good taste caused by seasoning determines the nutritional value of

food is decisive. The history of morality, like the history of taste, is a story in itself. Just as we indulge in basic errors in order to master reality, we indulge in moral errors in order to do this or that. If some impulse leads me to accomplish something, and I believe that I am doing it because I am obeying a certain moral precept, I have committed an error in the sphere of action, of affects, just as I have committed an error when I look at two things, which can never be quite the same, from the point of view of equality. Just take a look at aphorism 21 of the "Joyful Science": "For the education and *incorporation* of virtuous habits, a series of effects of virtue are brought out which make virtue and private advantage appear to be conjoined, - and there is indeed such a conjoining! Blind industriousness, for example, this typical virtue of a tool, is presented as the path to wealth and honor and as the most salutary poison against boredom and *passions*: but its danger, its supreme peril, is concealed. Education proceeds in this way throughout: it seeks to determine the individual through a series of stimuli and advantages to a way of thinking and acting which, when it has become habit, instinct and passion, prevails in him and over him *against his ultimate advantage*, but "for the general good"." Take aphorism 13 of the same "happy science": "It depends on how one is accustomed to *seasoning* one's life ... one always seeks this or that seasoning according to one's temperament." It must be clear to anyone who really delves into the matter that these are related trains of thought. In the "happy science" written in January 1882, many a thought is taken from the manuscript of August 1881. All these thoughts represent how the *incorporation* of habits, instincts, *passions* happens with the help of *moral errors*. Dr. *Hornefer* puts the matter simply: this aphorism 70 says: "that morality can only be understood physiologically. All moral judgments are judgments of taste. There is no such thing as healthy and sick taste, it depends on the goal" and he adds to this *banal* interpretation: "I am at a loss to understand how this can be brought under incorporation of the passions." (Cf. E. Horneffer, "Nietzsche, Lehre von der Ewigen Wiederkunft" p. 38.) In the above reply, however, he accuses me of "raping" Nietzsche's thought, which he cannot go along with. But I say to him that anyone who sees nothing different from Horneffer in Aph. 70 is quite incapable of interpreting Nietzsche. It is simply dullness to see nothing here but "On the whole it is a matter of *morals and moral judgments*." No, it is about the extent to which morality inculcates fundamentally erroneous passions, instincts and habits.

I am actually reluctant to get involved in anything further with such an incompetent opponent, especially as he, like all people who are incompetent, suffers from an excessive scholarly conceit. But he should not be able to say again: I am concealing some of his inanities. He distorts and twists what I have said in the most incredible way. I have maintained that the disposition entitled "The Return of the Same" cannot be a disposition on Zarathustra, "for it does not contain the main idea for the sake of which Zarathustra is written: the idea of the superman." And I say that if Nietzsche, in a letter to Peter Gast on September 3, 1883, brings this disposition into a closer relationship to Zarathustra than it can be brought *in terms of its content*, *he is mistaken*. Whoever does not admit that Nietzsche is often inaccurate when he makes statements about his works after some time is not to be argued with, for such a one denies indisputable facts. In "Ecce homo" Nietzsche makes statements about earlier works that do not at all correspond to the intentions he had when he wrote them. I have said quite precisely how I think that the plan to write a work on the "Second Coming" developed into the other Zarathustra. At the beginning of August, Nietzsche was planning a work on the "Second Coming of the. Same". The disposition, which bears the title "The Second Coming of the Same", corresponds to this writing. The aphorisms that Nietzsche wrote down are preparatory work for it. What of these aphorisms would actually have been used, whether any of the notes would have been used at all, we can know nothing about that. Of course, if Nietzsche had completed the writing on the "Second Coming", it would have had a different form than an editor can give it from the first preliminary works, but Nietzsche departed from this writing. Very gradually, the idea of the "superman" came to the fore. Zarathustra came into being. You see: this assumption of mine does not even contradict what Nietzsche says: "The basic composition of the work (i.e. of Zarathustra), the eternal idea of return, this highest formula of affirmation that can be achieved at all - belongs to August 1881". This basic composition has become a completely different work from what it was originally intended for. I would like to ask Dr. Horneffer whether it is "preserving scientific decency" to make what you want out of your opponent's assertions. To find an opponent's serious objections "ridiculous" is arrogant - but is it also "decent"? Dr. Horneffer, for example, says that he finds it "ridiculous" to state a contradiction in his assertion: "that Nietzsche's plan to write a prosaic treatise on the return of the same can only have existed for a very short time, that it did exist." Well, I will tell him that I presented this monstrosity of an assertion to very thoughtful readers. They did not quite agree with me, but they all agreed that a master of style did not write this sentence.

Unfortunately, I do not have the space today to respond to Dr. Hornefler's claim: "If you want to refute me, you have to refute my reconstruction of the sketch or draft on which Koegel based his book." This "reconstruction" will be illuminated in the next issue. Then there will also be an opportunity to uncover the underlying true reasons for the whole campaign of return. Because there are such things.