Nietzsche's Truth, Foucault's "resistance," and a Signifying Gunpowder

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Parisa and I decided to apply our multilayered analysis to Nietzsche's “Preface” of Beyond Good and Evil. While we were examining it for cultural identifications as Nietzsche established the premise of his text, we also wanted to explore the concept of Truth through this lens, as well, since it was where Nietzsche seemed to place the most importance in. I was also interested in using Nietzsche to better understand Foucault, as Muckelbauer noted that Nietzsche was especially influential for Foucault's theory. Through this lens, this exploration was surprisingly difficult given Foucault's notion of reading a scholar outside the “singularity” and instead having him serve as a multiplicity (Muckelbauer 74). Trying to take our cue from Mucekbauer's text, we examined the instances of culture with an eye towards Foucault's “resistance;” or the nebulous notion of “power” opposed to resistance, and we attempted to do this with productive reading.

Nietzsche's “Preface” serves as both an introduction to the text and a call to action for a revised philosophy. He is especially fighting the concept of the binary “good” and “evil” he attributes to platonic philosophy and sees carried out in the culture of European Christianity. As we unpacked this notion, we also saw a centrality in the search for Truth—something he said could not be found under the current climate of platonic philosophy. Nietzsche, at first inclination especially, seems to also be rallying against Christianity in Europe as it stood in 1855 as he compares it to platonic philosophy and links them both together (“for Christianity is Platonism for the people!” he concludes, in all caps). But, in seeing how Foucault's concept of “resistance” was framed, I also read this as a separation from Christianity. Instead of Marx's “opiate for the masses,” Nietzsche may also be calling for a re-framing of Christian thought, at least as it applies culturally. Just as he wants to unhinge European philosophy from the concepts of platonic thought, he may also want a conscious unlinking of European Christianity from the same binary. Both Christianity and Platonism are presented as the same for the people, so he may be calling for two separate (but just as relevant to Europe) evolutions of thought. If Nietzsche is defining culture as both the philosophical slant and religious conciseness of Europe at the time, this would be a co-evolution that would benefit the movement of both.

In the same vein, Nietzsche's adamant claim that Truth cannot be achieved in the current state of European philosophic thought (and simultaneously Christianity) is also a dis-identification of those cultures. If we look at how Gates approaches signifying in Black Rhetoric, we can see better understand a weird move that Nietzsche makes at the end where he notes that “The German's invented gunpowder—all credit to them! But they again made things square—they invented printing.” Why does Nietzsche claim that the German's invented gunpowder, and why does he do it here? Before this turn, he points out that there is a “bending bow” of a social movement happening in Europe, and higher goals could be achieved using this movement. We have two concepts being discussed, but the images don't quite match up. He is bringing up both violence and learning in one analogy—that much is clear, but his movement reminds me of the white gangsters in the jazz club and Gates' notation of “killer music” and “murdering it on the stage.” I think Nietzsche's move is the same here; he is predicting a revolution, but he is warning that unless it is an intellectual one, it will be an otherwise violent one. Here, he is again reinforcing the cultural shift he wants to bring about, and his misidentification of Germany as the birthplace of gunpowder is a purposefully done rhetorical move to present the dual idea of misinformation in both the Christian Church and the platonic philosophic fruitless search for Truth.

Or maybe he really thinks gunpowder was invented in Germany.