94. Kurt Eisner “Psychopathia Spiritualis. Friedrich Nietzsche and the Apostles of the Future”

A mind of such bold, grotesque thought as Friedrich Nietzsche's must necessarily evoke contradictory feelings in those who study it closely and lovingly. His unconditional admirers certainly understand the least of his proud ideas. But Kurt Eisner does not belong in this category. His admiration does not silence the contradiction that arises from his own significant individuality; not even the irony that Nietzsche's one-sidedness provokes. Alongside ruthlessly approving sentences such as: "Nietzsche's Zarathustra is only a work of art like Faust", or: "The songs of Zarathustra flow broadly and powerfully like Wagner's streams of music. Philosophy is here set to music, thought to sound, not evaporated, no, reheated", others say: "Nietzsche is a true reactionary, because his forward is a backward. And because he is a reactionary, the future will spurn him", or: "Nietzsche's doctrine rests on rotten ground, through his own fault". Eisner is quite sympathetic to Nietzsche's noble way of thinking, but not to its anti-democratic character. The development of the select few should not be bought at the price of the oppression and stultification of large masses. Eisner wanted to aristocratize the masses. "True aristocratism is only possible with true altruism." "Democracy must become a pan-aristocracy." In contrast to Nietzsche, Eisner wanted the community to be placed above the individual. "The herd instinct is health, the ego instinct is degeneration." Eisner counters Nietzsche's motto: "Get tough!" with "Get soft!". The former corresponds to the ruthless "through" of the individual's power content, the latter to the selfless striving of the personality, which also respects the person in the other individual as an equal.

With such a penetrating understanding of Nietzsche, with such an unbiased critique of the thinker-poet, Eisner's judgment of the "Nietzsche-affinity" can of course only be a completely devastating one. Nowhere has the herd-like nature of a following taken on such a characteristic character as in the Nietzsche herd. The contempt for the herd-like has become a wild herd roar. There has never been a more droll following than Nietzsche's. They, these howlers, do not know what the value of the master's works lies in. The secret lies in the fact that illnesses and deformities stimulate thought more than full, fresh health. The diseases of the mind make important contributions to psychology. The charm of Nietzsche's ideas lies in the abnormal guise in which they appear. Through outward appearances one becomes aware of many things that one would otherwise pass by. This is what happened to me with Nietzsche's ideas. Most of their content did not seem new to me. I had already formed it in me before I got to know Nietzsche. But as I went through Nietzsche's mind, these ideas seemed to me distorted, caricatured. A flow of thought that was healthy in itself had to force its way through a rocky cliff that did violence to its calm course. Nietzsche was never a philosophical problem for me, but always a psychological one.

Because this is my position on the strangest spirit of modern times, I must describe Kurt Eisner's writing as very sympathetic to me and recommend it to the widest circle of readers, even if I cannot agree with some of what it contains.