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The Distinction Between Gregarious/Idiosyncratic in Klossowski’s ‘Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle'
By: daniel ohalloran

‘What we do in dreams we also do when we are awake: we invent and fabricate the person with whom we associate – and immediately forget we have done so.’ [2003:101]

This Nietzschean aphorism drives right to the heart of that which Klossowski is attempting to highlight about the notion of eternal return which is itself intimately tied to the notion of ‘gregarious thought and particular cases’[2005:5] . Through aphorisms such as these it appears, to Klossowski, that Nietzsche is suggesting, that the self is simply an invention of the mind and therefore consciousness within an individual becomes merely the product of that individual’s strongest drive or tonality which create a coherent unity[2005:37] . By interpreting Nietzsche’s philosophy in this manner it raises difficult questions about the notion of self as a fixed entity and as such motions Klossowski, to suggest that Nietzsche’s concept of eternal return requires a significantly different manner of interpretation than had been previously given. This new interpretation of the eternal return sees Klossowski take Nietzsche as a symptom of the eternal return, rather than its herald and therefore posits the previous interpretations as misinterpretations which render the eternal return as a vicious circle in which one becomes ensnared due to the existential nature of articulation. This is to say that he will see the notion of eternal return as an act of personal becoming which is beyond articulation. This is because to be capable of articulation one must take up a position and a human position, a perspective always requires the grounding notion of the existential ‘I’ to spring from, whereas the power of the eternal return lies within its freedom to become. This vicious circle is linked to gregariousness, as gregarious natures require the equilibrium caused by the fixation of principles, whereas the truly idiosyncratic nature is a chance which creates new valuations through the disequilibrium of the eternal return which can never be articulated and made into a principle otherwise it becomes a vicious circle. Therefore in seeking to explicate how Klossowski distinguishes the gregarious from the idiosyncratic it will also be necessary to understand the relationship these cases have to the eternal return in Klossowski’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s philosophy. In so doing it will also be possible to consider the troubling thought of the triple denial which occurs in post-structualist thought and explore this notion within the framework of Nietzsche’s philosophy. This at times troubling claim of a denial of God, goals and self will be seen by Klossowski, through his interpretation of the eternal return, as something which is scientifically demonstrable, as opposed to a secret revelation, although once it has been revealed it inevitably slips away due to its indefinable nature.

To highlight these claims it will be useful to consider the notion of an untimely man that resonates throughout Nietzsche’s philosophy, as it is relevant to much of what Klossowski is attempting to articulate and can be in part summed up through a paragraph from Heidegger’s ‘Introduction to Metaphysics’:

‘…philosophy is always the concern of the few. Which few? The ones who transform creatively, who unsettle things. It spreads only indirectly, on back roads that can never be charted in advance’ [2000:11]

These untimely few create values for the future by way of the originality of the values which they create yet this haunts them as they are destined to be misunderstood and it is only through the reading of their articulations by latter generations as a symptomlogy that new fixed points can be created within future ethics. It seems reasonable to claim from this point a first indicator towards Nietzsche’s notion of the untimely as being linked to the post-structualist denial of a fixed notion of self, this can be done through by reflecting upon the subtitle of his ‘Beyond Good and Evil’, which is named ‘Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future’. In naming this work as a prelude he seems to be attempting to free himself from the constraint of fixing principles, which would occur if he had named his work ‘A Future Philosophy’ and therefore it would appear that his aim is one of an illumination of a never before seen terrain upon which future values can be built. The terrain itself is that which is untimely and the philosopher is merely a chance occurrence of this terrain, the principles, values or articulations placed upon the terrain are done so within a time and belong to gregariousness, whereas the terrain is always untimely and therefore is idiosyncratic, as it valueless. This revelation of the groundless terrain upon which value is built has the consequence of making it possible to replace morality and its fixed ideologies with a peripatetic ethics of shifting values as, if the ground is removed one no longer needs to leap in order to move to new values the freedom of movement is secured by the lack of ground, analogous to the Earths gravity being turned off, Deleuze highlights this whilst discussing the work of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, as he states:

‘…it is a question of producing within the work a movement capable of affecting the mind outside of all representation; it is a question of making movement itself a work, without interposition; of substituting direct signs for mediate representations’ [2004:9]

This is why ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ is a prelude as it does not give principles upon which to build a future philosophy as previous philosophies had done but rather it attempts to remove the previously restricted ground upon which valuations were placed so as to allow future philosophers the freedom to create values. It will therefore be possible to show that Klossowski’s understanding of Nietzschean philosophy is consistent through a thorough exposition of Klossowski’s distinction between gregarious and idiosyncratic natures, in conjunction with an explanation of Nietzsche’s notion of untimely men.

Key to Klossowski’s understanding of the distinction between gregarious and idiosyncratic natures is the claim that there is a denial of agency at the heart of Nietzsche’s philosophy, that the self is merely ‘a prolonged extremity of chaos’ [2005:26] and as such Nietzsche himself must be interpreted as a symptom of this chaos as his conscious articulations are the expression of an attempt to create an equilibrium within the inner chaos, as he states:

‘…we never have done with declaring to ourselves what the impulse can indeed will: this is the phantasm. But under its own constraint we simulate what it ‘means’ for our declaration: this is the simulacrum’ [2005:200]

Here Klossowski is attempting to show that what Nietzsche is, is a filter for his inner drives and impulses and as such what he articulates or rather his simulacra are the symptoms by which these impulses can be interpreted. This is why Klossowski feels that a society based upon a fixed notion of culture is in fact a cultureless society [2005:6] as the very nature of culture is developmental and linked to perpetual becoming that cannot be fixed within a simulacrum. This conceptualisation of culture stems from the gregarious in nature and will be labelled by Klossowski as, ‘a combat against culture’. In the opening chapter of ‘Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle’ Klossowski begins by somewhat paraphrasing Nietzsche’s discussion on the possibility of philosophers from ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ [2003:131/132] and attempts to highlight that through the Nietzschean notion of esoteric valuations one can establish the philosophical life without the need for specialisation or knowledge so unbounded that a single mind could not possibly absorb it all [2003:131]. This is due to the fact that if value is something which is established esoterically, as Nietzsche claims it is, then it follows that values are not dependent upon the outside world and as such the philosopher becomes a ‘chance’ [2005:2] which is to say a filter that reveals the inner dynamics of value creation. These creators of values or chances are the idiosyncratic, they are particular cases through which cultural development occurs but they are opposed throughout history by the gregarious masses that seek a state of equilibrium and an end to culture through the fixation of values. This attempt at a cultural extinction is caused by the need within the slave caste, as Nietzsche would name it, to fix values, whereas Klossowski will claim that ‘it is inequality alone that makes culture possible: inequality and struggle [between different groups of affects][2005:8]. Klossowski will use this social symptom to highlight the two cases of eternal return within Nietzschean philosophy and also show how this radical, new conception of value as a creation can be placed in opposition to the previous exoteric conception which renders value and meaning as locatable and separate from the individual within concepts, as in the case of Platonic forms, which even though esoterically locatable are in fact exoteric in nature due to the eternal nature of the value that they possess. Once Klossowski has brought to light this denial of teleology which is to say has posited genuine culture as without purpose he moves to show how this is intimately linked to the individual and moves to make the troubling denial of self.

The idea that 'a concept of culture' is a contradiction in terms, is comparable, for Klossowski, with the idea of a self which is fixed. This is because if an individual develops throughout its lifetime and yet still retains a fixed, immutable concept of itself this allows no room for the opening up of the ground required for the development of new values and as new values do in fact seem to emerge throughout history this fixed notion of ‘I’ will be for Klossowski the creation of a simulacrum. Within these idols mankind will seek to find equilibrium within the disequilibrium, which is the violent inner world of tonalities that creates values and in seeking to be free from this constant upheaval will in a manner of speaking seek, as Faust did, a fixed point in time so perfect that they never wish to leave[2006:137]. This symptom revealed within the gregarious masses cannot account for cultural development and the introduction of new value systems as these require the idiosyncratic nature of a particular case to emerge and yet these lordly value creators seem to be dominated throughout most of history by the gregarious who constantly react to the newly created values and seek to fix them in place. This fixing of values is the reason that Nietzsche labels the gregarious as a slave caste, as they are forced to make themselves subjects to the ground of the lords that create values, they are given the very ground of their existence by another that has created the very values that they seek to fix in place. This is how Nietzsche is able to posit a reverse Darwinism, as the slaves are slaves to values, values which are created by lords, this has no relation in its key aspects to a political power, the idiosyncratic case opens a new ground for valuation in which the gregarious slaves seek to drop anchor so as to fix these values. This also the case in terms of the inner workings of the human agent as Klossowski states:

'To understand Nietzsche, it is important to see this reversal brought about by the organism: the most fragile organ it has developed comes to dominate the body, one might say, because of its very fragility.’ [2005:21]

This inner dynamic in which the weak brain harnesses and dominates the chaotic power of the multifarious impulses is an inversion of this societal example and is also the point at which the significance of the eternal return is revealed. The eternal return creates a tension within the individual between memory and forgetting. This is to say that the eternal becoming of man, which is the ground for value creation, is forgotten so as to maintain lucidity and replaced by the false notion of a constant self, which is the existentialisation of the eternal return, namely the vicious circle. To overcome this false stasis one must recognise the eternal return as a means of freeing oneself momentarily from the ground so as to be able to create values, this is the erectile power of particular cases’ [2005:5] they are able to erect new value systems through the momentary freedom the revelation of the eternal return brings, this is highlighted by Klossowski in the following way:

'At the moment the eternal return is revealed to me, I cease to be myself "hic et nunc" and am susceptible to becoming innumerable others, knowing that I shall forget this revelation once I am outside the memory of myself' [2005:45]

This highlights that the structure of the individual is capable of change at every moment in which the eternal return is revealed yet in order to retain lucidity it is necessary to forget the very revelation that caused the change in the first place. This is to say that, in order to produce a memory of the eternal return it is necessary to give it a sign within language and in doing so ground it, thus forgetting the very thing which imbues it with force, namely its power to highlight the goal-lessness of all existence and as such remove the ground revealing the availability of an infinity of goals, to be or not to be, created. Although this idea that the eternal return goes beyond the notion of a fixed agency and thus dissolves previous conceptions of self is problematic in its inexplicability, this problem is described by Klossowski in the following way:

‘A single circuit brings me back to the code of everyday signs, and then makes me depart, again leaving me at the mercy of the sign, as soon as I try to explain to myself’ [2005:50]

As soon as an explanation of the return is attempted one is inevitably forced to do this through language and as such one is returned to the code of everyday signs that house the values that the return supposedly frees one from, Klossowski describes this as language fixing discontinuous states [2005:32]. Although this type of value fixing falsely leads to an understanding that value is a fixed entity and therefore it is possible to make judgement claims which contain definite truth and falsity. This is the reason that Klossowski feels that language is the revelation of a symptom of this eternal return, as he states:

‘We cannot renounce language, nor our intentions, nor our willing; but we could evaluate this willing and these intentions in a different manner than we have hitherto evaluated them – namely, as subject to the ‘law’ of the vicious circle’ [2005:41]

This appears to be why Klossowski is using Nietzsche and his mental health as an example of a symptomology of the eternal return, as it cannot be directly revealed without creating a vicious circle it must be interpreted through symptoms. This is to say that through an interpretation of Nietzsche’s own vicious circle the fundamental goal-lessness of existence is revealed in a way that is impossible for one to reveal to oneself, this is a point that Nietzsche highlights in the following passage:

‘There must be a kind of aversion in me to believing anything definite about myself. – Is there perhaps a riddle concealed here? Probably; but fortunately one not for my own teeth’ [2003:213]

Klossowski takes up this riddle and unravels the indefinite self of Nietzsche as Nietzsche never would be able to, as if Nietzsche were to attempt to do it he would have to from a point of self referral and this ultimately would lead him back into a language of everyday signs and consequently restrict him to the very ground that he was attempting to remove, the belief in anything definitive about himself.

This groundlessness upon which values stand and its illumination through untimely men is what Klossowski is describing when he speaks of ‘the erectile power of particular cases’ . Whereas the gregarious at the very least require a grounding notion of the ‘I’, the claim that Klossowski is making about the idiosyncratic is that through the revelation of the eternal return the idiosyncratic case is aware that no such ground exists in reality and so the groundlessness of valuations is revealed. Although this is not the advocating of a limited political society of idiosyncratic cases through which future values are established. In fact it follows from the positing of the eternal return as something which is scientifically demonstrable that it’s revelation is possible for all people, this is not to say that it will be revealed, just that it is a possibility that all people are capable of the idiosyncratic moment required of value creating being. This is because that if certain individuals were to create values and then fix them in place they would unavoidably cause a state of equilibrium. This can only be avoided by acknowledging a law of constant disruption of equilibrium [2005:91] in which each time a new idiosyncratic, particular case erects new values it unavoidably, by way of its articulation, becomes gregarious. Therefore, it requires in order to maintain, a law of disequilibrium, that a new particular case rises up to disrupt this newly formed static state.

He is only able to make this claim through the denial of agency as, if one denies the existence of a fixed ‘I’ it then follows that the chance occurrences which are described by Nietzsche in his writings and referred to by Klossowski as idiosyncratic cases, cease to be Godlike value creators, as each occurrence may appear as the tonality of a different soul due to the shifting nature of personality that Klossowski posits. This is to say that in everyday existence in order to maintain a cohesion of personality it is necessary that one is gregarious in the sense that gregariousness is linked to the sign of the vicious circle and this sign as it is linked to a code of everyday signs is required so as to maintain the function of an existential agency. But, as this agency is not unchanging in its constitution, each and every individual is capable of being a chance through which the eternal return is interpretable and therefore untimely men are not masters in political sense and therefore in a sense ethical leaders, but rather they are preludes to future philosophies. They do not set out values for future generations they illuminate the endless horizons in which any value can be created like bolts of lighting and in so doing remove the ground of all previous valuations, as Zarathustra declares throughout, they are the destroyers of old values [2003:139]. This is why Nietzsche’s notion of untimely men correlates with Klossowski’s interpretation, because if one existentialises these men and thus reduces them to a select few that acquire a revelation, as if from God, then one is immediately restricting that which cannot be restricted. Whereas, if the grounding concept of agency is removed from the interpretation of the eternal return then all grounds of restriction have been removed and the groundlessness of existence, in which new values can be created unfolds.

Bibliography

Deleuze, G, 2004, ‘Difference and Repetition’, Continuum, London

Deleuze, G, 2005, ‘Nietzsche and Philosophy, Continuum, London

Deleuze, G, 1988, ‘Spinoza Practical Philosophy’, City Lights Books, San Francisco

Heidegger, M, 2000, ‘Introduction to Metaphysics’, Yale University Press, London

Klossowski, P, 2005, ‘Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle’, Continuum, London

Nietzsche, F, 2003, ‘Beyond Good and Evil’, Penguin, London

Nietzsche, F, 1998, ‘On the Genealogy of Morality’, Hackett, Cambridge

Nietzsche, F, 2006, ‘The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols and Other Writings’, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Nietzsche, F, 2006, ‘The Gay Science’, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Nietzsche, F, 2003, ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’, Penguin, London

Wittgenstein, L, 2007, ‘Philosophical Investigations’, Blackwell, Oxford

Internet Resources

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche-moral-political/

http://notebookeleven.razorsmile.org/2006/12/19/logos-phusis-and-appearances-notes-on-reading-heideggers-introduction-to-metaphysics/

http://www.webcom.com/~paf/ereignis.html

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/

http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpdeleuze6.htm

http://www.iep.utm.edu/n/nihilism.htm

http://www.iep.utm.edu/h/heraclit.htm

http://www.iep.utm.edu/h/heidegge.htm

Article Source: http://journal.ilovephilosophy.com

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