Nietzsche's animal menagerie: lessons in

deep ecology.
Publication: Mosaic (Winnipeg) Format: Online
Publication Date: 01-DEC-06 Delivery: Immediate Online Access
Full Article Title: Nietzsche's animal menagerie: lessons in deep ecology.
(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)(Critical essay)

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Article Excerpt
By way of a philosophical examination of select animal images from
Nietzsche's animal menagerie, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, this essay develops
the thesis that Nietzsche's animal images provide lessons in deep ecology
insofar as they serve to move Zarathustra and the reader through the critical
transformations necessary for remaining faithful to the earth.

**********

May my animals lead me! --Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

As is well known, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche casts the principal

themes of his thought not in abstract concepts but in poetic images. Among
these images are Zarathustra's teachers. These teachers are also the
reader's teachers, for in reading, the reader undergoes the same
transforming lessons that Zarathustra experiences. In keeping with one of
the principal themes of the book--that man does not stand at the pinnacle of
nature but is a bridge between beast and overman--Zarathustra's most
influential teachers are not human beings. Nor are they overmen, for their
time has not yet arrived. Zarathustra's principal teachers are animals.

Given Nietzsche's extensive use of animal imagery in his major work and
elsewhere, it is safe to say that no other major literary figure since Aesop,
save Kipling and Steinbeck, has utilized animal imagery to the extent that
Nietzsche did. In the history of Western philosophy, moreover, no other
philosopher, as Jennifer Ham writes, "has donned animal masks and animal
speech more often than Nietzsche" (155).

Despite Nietzsche's copious use of animal imagery in his major work and
elsewhere, and despite his lifelong preoccupation with animal life and the
spiritualization of human animality, from the time of his collapse at the
hooves of a horse being flogged on a street in Turin in early January of
1889, up to the appearance of Martin Heidegger's work on Nietzsche in
1936, (1) few have tried to unpack the profound significance inherent in his
animal imagery. With Heidegger's focus on the philosophical significance of
Zarathustra's animals, especially the eagle and the serpent in his essay
"Who is Nietzsche's Zarathustra?" (66), certain authors began focusing
explicitly on Nietzsche's animal imagery, attempting to unpack its profound
philosophical significance. Examples of such authors are Gillis Deleuze,
Laurence Lampert, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Stanly Rosen, and the authors
of the recent anthology, A Nietzschean Bestiary: Becoming Animal Beyond
Docile and Brutal. (2) Although these authors do treat Nietzsche's animal
images as intrinsic to his thought, no author, to my knowledge, save Adrian
Del Caro, has focused explicitly on the ecological implications contained in
Nietzsche's animal imagery. According to Del Caro, Nietzsche's "consistently
grounded and increasingly elaborate Earth rhetoric [...] has only recently
begun to be explored" ("Nietzschean" 321).

Laurence Lampert is correct to point out that "the status of nature is one of
the questions that Zarathustra addresses and answers; it may even be said
to be the question that Zarathustra addresses" (22). Despite the fact that
Nietzsche is a major Western thinker whose central concern is the status of
nature, and despite the fact that our current environmental crisis is rooted in
the question of the status of nature, I have found only one book and nine
essays devoted exclusively to Nietzsche and ecological issues: Adrian Del
Caro's monumental book Grounding the Nietzsche Rhetoric of Earth; Max O.
Hallman's essay, "Nietzsche's Environmental Ethics" (3); Ralph R.
Acampora's two essays, "Using and Abusing Nietzsche for Environmental
Ethics" and "The Joyful Wisdom of Ecology" (4); Reinhart Mauer's essay,
"Ecological Nietzsche? The Will to Power and the Love of Things" (5);
Wilhelm Schmidt's essay, "Did he not Kiss the Horse? Nietzsche as
Ecological Philosopher"; Graham Parks's essay, "Staying Loyal to the Earth:
Nietzsche as an Ecological Thinker"; Martin Drenthen's essay, "The Paradox
of Environmental Ethics: Nietzsche's View of Nature and the Wild"; John G.
McGraw's essay, "Friedrich Nietzsche: Earth-Enthusiast Extraordinaire"; and
Luisa Bonesio's article, "La 'Saggezza selvatica'di Zarathustra"
("Zarathustra's Forest Wisdom" [trans. mine]). The consensus among these
authors, with the exception of Acampora, is that Nietzsche is of vital
importance to environmental philosophy. In keeping with the general spirit of
this first wave of scholarship on Nietzsche and ecology, Graham Parks
refers to Nietzsche as "one of the most powerful ecological thinkers of the
modern period" (167), while Del Caro designates him as "the West's first
major diagnostician of ecological ignorance" (Grounding x). I wish to begin to
show how the animals in Nietzsche's literary-philosophical masterpiece are
of the utmost importance to environmental studies, especially deep ecology.

The term "deep ecology" was coined in 1972 by the Norwegian philosopher
Arne Naess, in a paper delivered in Bucharest. It was in that essay that
Naess first distinguished deep ecology from shallow ecology. Shallow
ecology, he claimed, is anthropocentric and "focuses on the health and
affluence of people in the developed world." Deep ecology, by contrast,
"views humanity as inseparable from nature" (De Jonge 1). Since Naess's
1972 essay, the deep ecology movement has continued to gain momentum,
expanding in a variety of ways. Eccy de Jonge designates four ways of
viewing the deep ecology movement:

(i) as a deep questioning of the relationship between human beings and

nature; (ii) as a metaphysics of ethics rather than an environmental ethics;
(iii) as a political movement whose premises are both descriptive and
normative; and (iv) as an activist approach to dealing with the ongoing
destruction of natural entities. Some commentators advocate deep ecology
along the lines of (i), others along the lines of (ii) and so on.[...] Arne Naess
has argued in different papers at different times that deep ecology can be
regarded exclusively in terms of any of the four approaches. (2-3)

I propose to show that Nietzsche's animals in Thus Spoke Zarathustra

provide lessons in deep ecology in all four ways designated by Eccy de
Jonge, insofar as: they signify deep thinking concerning the relationship
between humanity and nature; they advocate an earth-centred ethics
grounded in a metaphysics of the will to power; they teach a theory of "great
politics" rooted in the creation of earth-centred values; and they reveal the
reversal in the hierarchy of forces--from reactive to active--necessary for
actively dealing with environmental devastation. I will support this thesis
through an interpretation of a small number of animal images from the great
animal menagerie that Nietzsche offers in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, showing
that the transformation in the development of humanity called for by deep
ecology will arise neither from revolutionary political rhetoric, nor from
modern science, but from an overcoming of the triumph of reactive force.

The principal doctrines of Thus Spoke Zarathustra have been examined

from a number of perspectives. What has not been given due consideration,
however, is the overall theme of the book. This central theme is sounded
explicitly at the beginning of the work in Section 3 of the Prologue, it recurs
explicitly and in disguised forms throughout the book, and it echoes
enigmatically at the end. Like musical variations on a theme, it defines the
work as a whole. This central theme, is deeply ecological, for it is a
discourse [logos] concerning the development of humanity's fundamental
relation to its home [oikos]--the earth.

The key passage sounding this central theme for the first time reads: "Ich
beschwore euch, meine Bruder, bleibt der Erde treu und glaubt Denen nicht,
welche euch von uberirdischen Hoffnungen reden! Giftmischer sind es, ob
sie es wissen oder nicht" (Also 15) ("I beseech you my brothers remain
faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of
otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they whether they know it or not"
[Thus 125]). The style of the passage is evangelical, while its message
overcomes Christian anthropocentricism and inverts Christian hope for an
otherworld. But the significance of this central theme is far from being limited
to Nietzsche's critique of Christianity.

Laurence Lampert is correct to call the Prologue to Thus Spoke Zarathustra

"A Hermit's Folly." What is foolish about Zarathustra's initial encounter with
the people is his naive belief that he would find "ears" for his teaching. "Like
a bee that has gathered too much honey" (Thus 122), Zarathustra is looking
for disciples with hands outstretched, ready to receive the gift of wisdom he
gained while living for ten years with animals in the forest (Bonesio). Instead
of finding disciples actively receptive to his teaching, by the end of the
Prologue, Zarathustra finds himself holding what is most passive--a corpse.

It is clear from the general context of the Prologue that Zarathustra's

exhortation to remain faithful to the earth is premature. It is a command
arriving, as Nietzsche felt he himself arrived, ahead of his time.
Consequently, it falls on deaf ears. Like Nietzsche, the exhortation is born
posthumously. It is also quite clear from the context of this key passage that
Nietzsche's intent in the Prologue is to convey the idea that modern
humanity is ignorant of both its disloyalty to the earth and the root cause of
its disloyalty.

Zarathustra, the advocate of life, emphatically proclaims a gospel of the love

of life (Higgins) based on fidelity to the earth because he knows that he must
convince the people to overcome their earth-denying attitude. Infatuated by
ascetic ideals set above life, modern humans ceaselessly judge earthly life
from the standpoint of otherworldly, metaphysical ideals. Although they are
terrestrial beings, although they name themselves after the earth [humus],
they have become extraterrestrials (Del Caro, Grounding 55, 80, 108, 240,
254). Zarathustra is telling the people that extraterrestrial values are
poisonous insofar as they arise out of a negation, devaluation, and aversion
to the basic temporal character of earthly life. Their "highest" values, as well
as their mode of moral valuation--reacting to evil by not acting as the
dangerous evil ones act--evince the triumph of reactive force over active
force. Human animals have become overly domesticated, sick animals
precisely because of their world-denying anthropocentrism. Del Caro
underscores Nietzsche's repudiation of the presumption of "the human as
value measure of all things, as 'world judge' [...] [which] Nietzsche regards
as a 'monstrous insipidity'" (401).

Zarathustra continues to inform the people about what is most dreadful:

"Once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God died and these
sinners died with him. To sin against the earth is now the most dreadful
thing" (Thus 125). Here, the word "God" does not mean merely the Christian
God, it means the whole realm of the suprasensible and with it all
extraterrestrial values and ideals. The death of God signifies the annihilation
of the suprasensible and all trans-temporal values placed above life used to
judge life. With the effacement of such ideals, the sin against God becomes
moot. The sinners against God also vanish with the death of God, for with
the recognition that transtemporal ideals are in fact empty fictions arising out
of resentment against earthly life, to sin against an empty fiction makes no
sense. With the death of God, a more dreadful sin and a more insidious
conspiracy may be recognized: the great sin against the earth and the
conspiracy against earthly life. This most dreadful sin is unknowingly
committed and this conspiracy is inadvertently pledged anew each time a
reactive individual or a reactive community pays homage to or acts in
accordance with extraterrestrial ideals, such as a purely transcendent,
creator God, unchanging truth, being, ego, or the values of conventional
morality.

Hearing Zarathustra beseech the people to remain faithful to the earth and
not to listen to the poison mixers, Zarathustra invites further inquiry into
Nietzsche's conception of the sickness characteristic of humanity. Ham
provides a good introduction to Nietzsche's view of how and why humans
have become the "sick animal" due to over-domestication (155-59). I wish to
add to Ham's account by underscoring Nietzsche's understanding of human
sickness in terms of the triumph of reactive force. Given Nietzsche's profuse
usage of animal imagery in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, this is possible by
virtue of a reading of a strange animal image: a contagious skin disease.
The passage containing this disturbing animal image appears, like
distressing news from the dermatologist, in the section from Part II of Thus
Spoke Zarathustra entitled "On Great Events."

After five days absence from the blessed isles, where Zarathustra and his
disciples were staying, a time during which Zarathustra was reported to have
visited a nearby island where a fire-spewing mountain smokes continually
(Thus 241), Zarathustra reappears among his disciples and recounts his
encounter with the fire hound. Nietzsche, as narrator, tells of Zarathustra's
conversation with the fire hound: "'The earth,' [Zarathustra] said, 'has a skin,
and this skin has a disease. One of these diseases, for example, is called
man'" (242). The first thing we should notice about this alarming
characterization of humanity is that it concerns humanity's essence. Man is
not portrayed as possessing a disease that might be cured one day, perhaps
by political revolution or by a paradigm shift in science. Man is the disease!
Second, this disease that is man is a disease of the earth. That is to say, like
all parasitical diseases, it feeds off its host, while at the same time,
insidiously threatens the life and well being of its host.

Nietzsche has Zarathustra characterize man in this way for two reasons:
man is essentially a reactive being; and, the species activity of man is
essentially a becoming-reactive of force. Man is a skin disease, a surface
sickness spreading its contagion by mechanisms such as guilt, sin,
redemption, bad conscience, and ascetic ideals, infecting other active types
(artists, free spirits, nobles, sovereign individuals) who are not yet infected.
As a skin disease, the infection is superficial. But, like all skin diseases of the
most dangerous variety, if not treated properly, it may well result in the
fatality of the whole organism, which, in this case, is earthly life itself.
Nietzsche often thought of himself as a cultural physician (Ahern). Like all
good physicians, a diagnosis must be based on three kinds of knowledge:
knowledge of the nature of the disease, knowledge of how the disease
spreads, and knowledge of the root cause of the disease. Only then can the
physician offer an effective treatment. Let us briefly address Nietzsche's
threefold anthropological diagnosis.

According to Nietzsche, all living organisms are constellations of forces. The

forces comprising these constellations are of two basic varieties: active and
reactive. Active forces, by their very nature, are superior to reactive forces,
for they possess an inner conatus: a will to self-enhancement. Active force
does not need reactive force to act, but acts from out of itself. Active forces
are naturally commanding forces. Reactive forces, on the contrary, are
inferior to active forces. They are inferior because they can only react either
to other reactive forces or to active forces. Reactive forces are naturally
obeying forces, which function primarily by securing mechanical means and
final ends. They bend their efforts towards fulfilling utilitarian tasks necessary
for self-preservation by adapting to the environment, by limiting. Active
forces, on the other hand, are spontaneous, aggressive, expansive form-
engendering forces. They provide new interpretations and new directions for
life, often risking self-preservation. Far from adapting to the environment,
active forces transform their surroundings in new ways. Active and reactive
are the basic qualities expressing the relation of force with force.

In all healthy bodies, that is to say, all bodies capable not only of survival but
also of growth, active forces command while reactive forces obey. When
active forces lose their power to command and reactive forces triumph over
active force, the organism becomes sick. It is not that active forces are
healthy and reactive forces are unhealthy. Reactive forces are just as much
a part of a healthy organism as active forces are part of a diseased body. It
all depends on which kind of force is ruling the organism. When active forces
command reactive forces, the organism is healthy and ascending. When the
reverse occurs, it becomes inwardly sick.

Nietzsche's idea of sickness is rooted in his understanding of the manner in

which reactive forces escape being acted. Naturally inferior forces escape
being acted in a plurality of ways. All of these ways, however, have one thing
in common: reactive forces separate active forces from what they can do.
Reactive forces triumph over active forces not by forming a superior force,
but by separating active forces from what they can do (Deleuze, Nietzsche
39-71). The contagion spreads as a becoming-reactive.

The myriad ways in which reactive forces are separated from what they can
do are well beyond the scope of this essay. Here, it is enough if we consider
one way active forces are separated from what they can do: by disabling the
active power of forgetting (Positives Hemmungsvermogen) (Nietzsche, Gay
491). In healthy organisms, unconscious reactive memory traces are actively
repressed. This enables consciousness to respond to external stimuli
instead of experiencing reactive memory traces associated with external
stimuli. When this active mechanism is functioning, consciousness
possesses innocence and freshness. In healthy organisms, this active,
plastic, curative force serves to hold reactive memory traces in the
unconscious where they belong. In the reactive type, however, this
mechanism is no longer operative. It is separated from what it can do. The
result of this inability to actively forget is unhappiness, feelings of impotence,
depression, self-abasement, and, most importantly, an inability to be actively
receptive to the present moment. The reactive type suffers from
metaphysical dyspepsia. He or she cannot be done with anything. Reactive
traces continuously invade his or her consciousness because they escape
being acted.

With the reactive type, memory becomes a festering wound. Consciousness

suffers a sclerosis. It loses its innocence and freshness. In Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, Nietzsche uses animal imagery, "spider and "tarantula," two
poisonous insects, to represent this venomous memory of the reactive type.
The individual of resentment inwardly blames the world, especially what is
most powerful and noble, for his or her inner suffering, in order to
compensate for his or her inability to escape from the reactive memory
traces associating with external excitations. Consequently, he or she
becomes incapable of genuine admiration, respect, and love (Deleuze,
Nietzsche 117). Even when the reactive type appears to offer gratitude
toward what is most admirable and worthy of respect and love, precisely
then, reactive traces invade consciousness. Beneath the surface is
disparagement.

Now, if the reactive type is the ruling form of human life on earth and if this
dominating life form is unable to admire, to respect, and to love, then it
follows that the dominating human life form on earth is incapable of
admiration, respect, and love for what is most worthy of admiration--the
earth. Del Caro connects this Deleuzean reading of Nietzsche's idea of
sickness with our becoming extraterrestrials. Quoting Deleuze, she writes:
"man inhabits only the dark side of the earth, of which he only understands
the becoming-reactive which permeates and constitutes it," commenting,
"indeed, the negative mood characterized by our habituation of the earth's
'dark side' can be conceptualized even further in the same direction: humans
are extraterrestrials" (Grounding 80).

The reason why human extraterrestrials feel and know reactively, the reason
the becoming-reactive of force seems to be the only relation of force with
force is that, for Nietzsche, humans are essentially reactive. Becoming
reactive is constitutive of man. The triumph of reactive force is not merely an
aberration of human nature, nor is it a pathological psychological trait. It is
what defines the human. This is why Nietzsche calls man the "skin disease"
of the earth and not a diseased earthling. Another sensibility--one that has
overcome the No to life, including the No that sounds like a Yes, the "Y-ea-
ha" of the Ass, the apparent affirmation of the higher men, the "yes" that
does not know how to say No--would no longer be all-too-human.

The section of Thus Spoke Zarathustra containing the image of the fire
hound is the same section containing the image of "skin disease" of the
earth. The section is entitled "On Great Events" because its primary teaching
is to illustrate the differences between political changes that only seem to be
great and the source of truly great political change (Ansell-Pearson 147-62).
This section provides an example of why Nietzsche should be taken
seriously as a political thinker as Conway has shown in Nietzsche and the
Political. Implied in these animal images is a lesson in deep ecology, for in
distinguishing between authentic and inauthentic revolutionary change, they
serve to reveal the deeper foundations of revolutionary change. Since the
image of the fire hound occurs in the same dramatic context as the image of
the skin disease, it is important to see the connection between the two. Let
us recall the full passage quoted in part above: "'The earth,' he said, 'has a
skin, and this skin has a disease. One of these diseases, for example, is
called 'man.' And the other one of these diseases is called 'fire hound': about
him men have told each other, and believed many lies'" (Thus 242).
Zarathustra claims that the other skin disease is the fire hound.

Addressing his disciples, Zarathustra continues to recount his encounter with

the fire hound: "'Out with you, fire hound! Out from your depth!' I cried. 'And
confess how deep this depth is!'" We should notice that Zarathustra's
primary concern with the fire hound involves genealogy: sounding out its
depth. From what depth does all the loud snorting of the fire hound resound?
The next line offers the first clue as to who the fire hound is: "You drink
copiously from the sea: your salty eloquence shows that." The fire hound is
the one who uses "salty eloquence"; that is to say, strong revolutionary
rhetoric. Zarathustra continues, "for a hound of the depth you take your
nourishment too much from the surface." Despite the fact that he appears to
speak from the depths, like the "skin disease" that is man, the spewing of the
fire hound resounds from the surface. The "naked truth" that Zarathustra
tries to reveal to his overly awestruck disciples is that the salty bellowing of
the fire hound is in fact mendacious and superficial.

It is quite clear from the text that follows that the