Daggers and Spears: Lu Xun and Nietzsche on Cultural Revolution

European Journal of Philosophy, 2023

This paper attributes to Nietzsche a theory of cultural development according to which pyramid societies—steeply hierarchical societies following a unified morality—systematically alternate with motley societies, which emerge when pyramid societies encounter other cultures or allow their strict mores to relax. Motley societies contain multiple value systems due to individual innovation or intercultural contact, and are less stringent in dictating individuals' roles. Consequently, many people are torn between incompatible values and lack direction, so they are drawn to a morality of mediocrity, which offers the modest goals of comfort and conformity. However, the need to mediate between conflicting values also tends to yield exceptional individuals who create new values, and can reshape the society into a new pyramid society governed by those values. I argue that Nietzsche favors neither type of society at the expense of the other, but believes the alternation itself is valuable: a pyramid society develops a value system to its full potential; then, when it encounters alternative values, the extraordinary individuals in the resulting motley society synthesize the competing systems into a fuller vision of human flourishing.

The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche

Intoduction to Tracy b. Strong, ed. NIETZSCHE AND POLITICS (Ashgate, 2009),

Cambridge New Companion to Nietzsche, 2019

1999

Chinese Journal of the Social Sciences, 2011

Despite the myriad differences distinguishing Zhuang Zi and Nietzsche - including their time periods, cultural contexts, and philosophical orientations-both were deconstructionists par excellence. Both practiced what Norris refers to as "extreme epistemological skepticism" and what Derrida views as a questioning of the untenable. In a truly radical way (tracing the etymology of "radical" to its Greek source, radix, or root), both were intent on getting to the root of reality. To do so they were willing and eminently able to probe, poke, and question the most dearly held assumptions and institutions of their respective cultures, as well as those of human beings in general. Their challenges constitute an expose, bearing the promise of disclosure and revelation. For example, in seeking to transcend the antagonistic ethical dualisms of the Confucian and Mohist schools, Zhuang Zi concludes: "if we want to right their wrongs and wrong their rights, then the best thing to use is clarity. . . . The torch of chaos and doubt- that is what the sage steers by." Similarly, Nietzsche refers to the Twilight of the Idols (Die Gotzen-Dammerung) (1888) as "a great declaration of war" aimed at "the sounding out of idols, ... not just idols of the age, but eternal idols, which are here touched with a hammer as with a tuning fork."8 The methods by which Zhuang Zi and Nietzsche pursue their respective deconstructive tasks point to a deeper issue of contrasting cultural assumptions and grounding principles.

This essay explores Lu Xun's attempt at amalgamating evolutionary theory and Nietzsches "aristocratic individualism" as a problematic and finally futile, but, nevertheless, literary fruitful, and historically and philosophically significant exercise.

Nietzsche-Studien, 1996