The Influence of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra on Jung’s Red Book; Phylogenetic Recapitulation, the Eternal Recurrence, and Being and Becoming
Contents
1.0 Introduction P. 2-3
1.1 Thus Spoke Zarathustra P. 3-4
1.2 The Red Book P. 4-7
2.0 The Foundation of Jung’s Psychology P. 7-11
2.1 The Eternal Recurrence P. 12-15
2.2 Jung’s Knowledge of Kant and Early Understanding of Nietzsche P. 15-21
3.0 Identification and Virtual Reality P. 21-25
3.1 Practice: The Shadow and Inferiority P. 25-35
3.2 Theory: The Libido and the Archetypes – Aesthetics and Religion,
Fantasy and Ethics P. 35-45
4.0 Nietzsche and Jung’s Mirrors and Masks P. 45-47
5.0 Conclusion P. 47-48
1.0 Introduction
The influence of Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844-1900) philosophy on the psychology of Carl Jung (1875-1961) is undeniable. Yet the extent of Nietzsche’s influence is not easily definable. Naturally, a number of scholars have investigated the topic, with one of their primary areas of research being analyses of Jung’s interpretation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. However, much of this scholarship was authored prior to the eventual publication of The Red Book in 2009 and thus could not take into account the most important link between Jung and Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra during perhaps the most formative years of Jung’s personal and professional life. This dissertation will therefore attempt to build upon existing scholarship by confronting some aspects of this sizeable lacuna. More specifically, it will investigate the development and subsequent justification of Jung’s psychological theories as a response to his interpretation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra during this period by considering The Red Book as the arena in which many of these developments and justifications originated. This will be undertaken according to the following five steps:
1) An introduction to both Thus Spoke Zarathustra and The Red Book, focussing particularly on the personal and professional conditions each book was written under.
2) A description of what I consider to be the practical and theoretical foundational points of Jung’s psychology, and the manner in which these informed his interaction with Nietzsche’s philosophy.
3) A comparative practical analysis of key sections of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and The Red Book. This analysis will be followed by applying its findings to explain theoretical differences between Jung’s major academic publications that bookend The Red Book – namely, The Psychology of the Unconscious and Psychological Types. An important aspect will be to take Jung’s later seminars on Thus Spoke Zarathustra – which took place intermittently between May 1934 and February 1939 – into account, as an instructive indicator of Jung’s subsequently more developed opinion on the book. 4) An analysis of key omissions from Jung’s aforementioned seminars on Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, with the intention of examining Jung’s later presentation of Nietzsche in relation to his experiences as recorded in The Red Book.
5) And, finally, a summary of the overall findings.
In terms of methodology, of the existing scholarship previously mentioned, three books in particular have shaped this dissertation. In chronological order: Paul Bishop’s 1995 book The Dionysian Self: C.G. Jung’s Reception of Friedrich Nietzsche; Patricia Dixon’s 1999 book Nietzsche and Jung: Sailing a Deeper Night; and Lucy Huskinson’s 2004 book Nietzsche and Jung: The Whole Self in the Union of Opposites. All these authors analyse Nietzsche and Jung’s attempts to create a truly whole and inclusive self – the reconciliation of the conscious and unconscious aspects of an individual – from various, yet similar, perspectives. As would be expected, Bishop focusses on their interpretations and identifications with the Dionysian and subsequent relationship with the Apollonian, with a methodological emphasis on examining Jung’s marginal notes in his copies of Nietzsche’s works. Dixon’s thesis has a similar focus on the reconciliation of opposites yet suggests that – despite his criticisms – Jung tried to translate Nietzsche’s abstract philosophy into analytical psychology, misunderstanding him in the process. And, finally, Huskinson’s work examines how Nietzsche and Jung attempted to define – and subsequently attain – a cohesive whole in
terms of the human self. As a central aspect of this, Huskinson plays her interpretations of Nietzsche and Jung against each other at every stage of her investigation with interesting results.
All of these books have been useful, not least because of their differing and complementary approaches. However, Bishop and Huskinson’s books will be primarily referred to. The reason is simple: Dixon mainly focusses on Jung’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s more traditionally philosophical works; while, on the other hand – and although still taking Jung’s utilisation of Nietzsche’s philosophical works into account – Bishop and Huskinson focus more on Nietzsche and Jung’s personal developments. Accordingly, Thus Spoke Zarathustra is frequently analysed in their publications as a predominantly psychological work along with Jung’s seminars on the book – an approach more conducive to the purpose of this dissertation.
1.1 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Firstly, a brief introduction regarding the background of the books concerned. Thus Spoke Zarathustra was written in four parts between 1883 and 1885, during the last decade of Nietzsche’s intellectual life. As Dixon has noted, beginning with health problems in 1879 that forced him to resign his academic position in Basle, Nietzsche’s personal and professional lives became increasingly lonelier as he haemorrhaged friends and
acquaintances.1 The publication of The Birth of Tragedy in 1872 began this gradual process
of attrition after extremely critical reviews effectively ostracised him from the academic community. The subsequent publication of Human, All Too Human in 1878 alienated many of Nietzsche’s remaining supporters, including his greatest friend, the composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883), whose friendship Nietzsche would never find an adequate replacement for. Indeed, Nietzsche’s attempts to alleviate his sorrow at the loss of his friendship with Wagner ended in further alienation when his friendships with Lou Salomé (1861-1937) and Paul Rée (1849-1901) – who were inclined towards somewhat unconventional open relationships – disintegrated in 1882 after Nietzsche proposed a more traditional relationship with Salomé.
To be sure, Nietzsche maintained correspondences with various other people, for example the Protestant theologian Franz Overbeck (1837-1905) and his occasional scribe Johann Köselitz a.k.a. Paul Gast (1854-1918). Yet, despite their friendships, from Nietzsche’s perspective they could not provide the same personal and intellectual stimulation as a Wagner or a Salomé. As Nietzsche stated in a letter to his sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche
(1846-1935), dated the 20th of May 1885:
I have never had a confidant and friend with whom I could share what occupies me, distresses me, or elevates me… I have found nobody who could have the same
distress of heart and conscience that I have.2
1 Patricia Dixon, Nietzsche and Jung: Sailing a Deeper Night (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1999), 255-258. 2
Regardless of other contributory factors, Dixon theorises that this loneliness was a
significant contributor to Nietzsche’s eventual mental collapse in 1889.3 It can also be
interpreted as the primary motivational factor behind Nietzsche’s authorship of Thus Spoke Zarathustra – an attempt to locate and attract like-minded individuals on both personal and professional levels via a unique and startling book. Of course, any attraction would have been predicated on understanding the ultimate message of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which was nothing less than a warning of what Nietzsche considered the greatest imminent threat to the general future of humanity – albeit from a predominantly European perspective – namely, the encroachment of human nihilism. This threat took many forms in Nietzsche’s work but, at least in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, his primary concern was the Last Human Being – a theoretical and somewhat exaggerated future condition of human nihilism posed in ‘Zarathustra’s Prologue’, where humanity is characterised as wholly complacent, safe, passive, valueless, with no existential challenges, where nothing out of the ordinary ever arises.
1.2 The Red Book
The Red Book was written by Jung during a similar timescale, between the years of 1914 and 1917, although embellished from notes originally recorded in The Black Books between November 1913 and June 1916. Its authorship occurred during a period of what would transpire to be a personal and professional midlife crisis, which appears to have had three main causes, all with their supposed origin in Jung’s dreams and other fantasy experiences. Perhaps the most significant was Jung’s apprehension of an armed conflict in Europe during the months leading up to the First World War. As Wouter Hanegraaff has pointed out, one
did not need powers of premonition to intuit the dangerous situation that was developing.4
Nevertheless, in October 1913, Jung assigned great importance to a vision he experienced when travelling by train from Zürich to Schaffhausen to visit his mother-in-law on the occasion of her seventy-fifth birthday. In Jung’s own words:
I saw a terrible flood that covered all the northern and low-lying lands between the North Sea and the Alps. It reached from England up to Russia, and from the coast of the North Sea right up to the Alps. I saw yellow waves, swimming rubble, and the
death of countless thousands.5
As Sonu Shamdasani notes, this is the first of Jung’s dreams or fantasy experiences that he regarded as a premonition of WWI, and it was clearly something that preoccupied him. Indeed, Shamdasani has identified up to eleven further dreams or fantasy experiences
which Jung could have interpreted as premonitions of the onset of WWI.6 One might
contend that such an understandable trepidation regarding extreme human conflict is contradictory to Nietzsche’s railing against the Last Human Being. But, although Nietzsche
3
Dixon, Nietzsche and Jung, 257.
4 Wouter Hanegraaff, ‘The Great War of the Soul: Divine and Human Madness in Carl Gustav Jung’s Liber
Novus’, 2.
5 Carl Jung trans. Mark Kyburz, John Peck, and Sonu Shamdasani, The Red Book: Liber Novus (New York &
London: W.W. Norton, 2009), 231l.
6
could have had no premonition of WWI, a hubris similar to that which Jung identified as the
precursor for WWI7 was nevertheless condemned by Nietzsche – firstly in The Birth of
Tragedy in general terms,8 and later in Human, All Too Human in relation to Napoleon9 – as another extreme form of human nihilism. This nihilism shares an essential quality with the nihilism of the Last Human Being – namely, passivity. But, in this case, passivity manifests as a fatalistic belief in one’s own inevitable success – struggle and self-criticism are supplanted by a complacency and passivity similar to that of the Last Human Being.
Another significant contributor to Jung’s midlife crisis began in 1912, with his eventual personal and professional break from Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Although the reasons for the break are numerous and complex – the publication of The Psychology of the Unconscious in 1912 essentially ensured a reconciliation was impossible – one particular example of their correspondence during the same year is relevant. Jung had begun to experience a series of dreams that neither he nor Freud could supposedly interpret. However, the first of these has a rather obvious and superficial explanation which Jung later clarified in The Black Books. Again, in Jung’s own words:
I was in a southern town, on a rising street with narrow half landings. It was twelve o'clock midday – bright sunshine. An old Austrian customs guard or someone similar passes by me, lost in thought. Someone says, "that is one who cannot die. He died already 30-40 years ago, but has not yet managed to decompose." I was very surprised. Here a striking figure came, a knight of powerful build, clad in yellowish armor. He looks solid and inscrutable and nothing impresses him. On his back he
carries a red Maltese cross. He has continued to exist from the 12th century and daily
between 12 and 1 o'clock midday he takes the same route. No one marvels at these two apparitions, but I was extremely surprised.
I hold back my interpretive skills. As regards the old Austrian, Freud occurred to me; as regards the knight, I myself.
Inside, a voice calls, "It is all empty and disgusting." I must bear it.10
The entire passage has been quoted at length to demonstrate, both the rather obvious symbolism that the decrepit Austrian customs official and the powerful knight represent, but also the symbolism that is borrowed from Thus Spoke Zarathustra and which is also obvious to anyone with a familiarity with the book. This symbolism concerns the knight’s repeated daily existence between 12 and 1 o’clock and his relation to the Austrian customs official. In fact, midday or noon is often invoked in Nietzsche’s writings. The most relevant explanation for the importance of this time can be found in his 1888 book Twilight of the Idols. Here, Nietzsche caricatures the ideal Platonic forms as undergoing a series of errors and degradations until finally reaching the embarrassing stage of an obsolete figure blushing with shame in the morning sunlight of the material world. However, when noon arrives, so
7
Carl Jung trans. Richard and Clara Winston, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (New York: Random House, 1989), 235.
8 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy in Friedrich Nietzsche trans. Ronald Speirs, The Birth of Tragedy and
Other Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 74.
9 Friedrich Nietzsche trans. Gary Handwerk, Human, All Too Human I: A Book for Free Spirits (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1995), 126.
10
begins the triumphant “moment of shortest shadow; end of longest error; high point of
humanity; incipit Zarathustra”.11 By aligning his dream with one of Nietzsche’s most
recognisable proclamations, Jung appears to be confrontationally positioning Freud and himself as the Last Human Being and Overman respectively.
As Bishop notes, it is unknown whether – despite both of their unlikely public statements to the contrary – Freud privately admitted to Jung that he was indeed familiar with Nietzsche’s
writings.12 Yet, assuming this dubious circumstance was the case, it is possible that Jung was
characterising his growing discontent with Freud with one that also reflected his burgeoning interest in Nietzsche; one intended – maybe provocatively – to induce a recognition from Freud of a familiarity with Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Indeed, Huskinson accepts this basic premise – namely, that Jung’s unreciprocated interest in Nietzsche significantly contributed to the end of their relationship, but also provided Jung with a figure to fall back on once
their relationship had concluded and his midlife crisis had begun.13 A precursor to this can
be seen in a letter Jung wrote to Freud on the 3rd of March 1912, wherein he quotes the
following inflammatory lines from Thus Spoke Zarathustra when discussing the imminent publication of The Psychology of the Unconscious:
One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil. And why, then, should you not pluck at my laurels?
You respect me; but how if one day your respect should tumble? Take care that a falling statue does not strike you dead!
You had not yet sought yourselves when you found me. Thus do all believers--.
Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves;
and only when you have all denied me will I return to you.14
The final contributor to Jung’s incipient midlife crisis also had its origin in a dream from 1912. In this case, the contents of the dream are of lesser importance as they are rather nebulous – what matters is Jung’s interpretation. And, ultimately, his conclusion was to interpret the dream as permission to embark on an affair with Toni Wolff (1888-1953) who would, during this period, become Jung’s closest confidant. Emma Jung (1882-1955), Carl Jung’s wife, seems to have grudgingly tolerated this emerging triangular relationship, although it necessitated some further significant sacrifices on her behalf. Since she rarely knew when Wolff would be present at their house, she could not invite friends or relatives to visit as frequently as before her husband’s extra-marital relationship had begun. Furthermore, Jung’s break with Freud removed the only person she could converse with on this delicate matter, as the Jungs’ social position coupled with Carl Jung’s professional connections made such confidential friendships in Switzerland essentially impossible. It is,
11 Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, or How to Philosophize with a Hammer in Friedrich Nietzsche trans.
Judith Norman, The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 171.
12
Paul Bishop, The Dionysian Self: C.G. Jung’s Reception of Friedrich Nietzsche (Berlin & New York: De Gruyter, 1995), 195.
13
Lucy Huskinson, Nietzsche and Jung: The Whole Self in the Union of Opposites (Hove & New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2004), 148.
14 William McGuire ed. Ralph Manheim & R.F.C. Hull trans. The Freud/Jung Letters: The Correspondence
therefore, unsurprising that, despite maintaining public appearances, Emma is described as
having “seethed with an anger” that she would not discuss or explain.15
Thus, beginning in 1912, Jung’s personal and professional lives experienced a substantial degree of turmoil. His relationship with Freud was irreparably damaged, with the majority of
his professional contacts choosing to cleave to Freud;16 his relationship with his wife was
being severely strained; and, finally, the immanent and eventual outbreak of WWI was a deeply traumatic psychological experience for him. Therefore, while Dixon contrasts
Nietzsche’s torturous loneliness with Jung’s comparative fame,17 the difference between
their circumstances is not as far removed as she – or Jung – portrays it. Indeed, in his (semi)autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung presents his family and career as a bulwark that prevented him from fully succumbing to something similar to Nietzsche’s
madness.18 However, this circumstance is somewhat doubtful, considering the distances
that were developing between Jung and his family and professional contacts. Yet, as Barbara Hannah, Jung’s personal secretary, states in her 1976 biographical memoir: “I think he was doubtful that he could have survived this most difficult of all journey had he been entirely
alone in it”.19 In this context, it is perhaps relevant to mention that Wolff was the only
contemporary allowed access to The Black Books and, therefore, prevented Jung from being
“entirely alone”.20 In any case, while it is indeed true that Jung’s personal relationships and
fame far exceeded those of Nietzsche, the three factors mentioned above diminished these until Jung began to identify with Nietzsche – loneliness is relative, after all – to the point where Jung worried about losing his sanity in a similar manner. It is from this perspective that Jung’s most significant interaction with Nietzsche begins.
2.0 The Foundation of Jung’s Psychology
In the previous section, a number of convergent personal and professional crises were described as leading to a situation whereby Jung began to identify with Nietzsche. However, for Jung, identifying with Nietzsche extended beyond a simple affinity for an influential individual. As this section will demonstrate, Jung gradually began to assimilate a number of influential individuals into his self, many of which preceded and accompanied significant innovations regarding his conceptualisation of psychology. Indeed, this section will contend that the psychological assimilation of influential individuals became the primary foundational point of Jung’s psychology from a practical perspective. Such a practice’s importance can be observed with varying degrees of clarity in both The Psychology of the Unconscious and Psychological Types yet, throughout his entire oeuvre, Jung rarely mentions it in relation to himself. Nevertheless, it is apparent that the same concept of assimilating influential individuals is later described by Jung during the latter half of his career in relation to his patients. Accordingly, a degree of transposition can be applied
15
Deirdre Bair, Jung: A Biography (London: Little, Brown and Company, 2003), 250-251.
16
Carl Jung, Introduction to Jungian Psychology: Notes of the Seminar on Analytical Psychology Given in 1925 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 25.
17
Dixon, Nietzsche and Jung, 255.
18 Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 189.
19 Barbara Hannah, Jung, His Life and Work: A Biographical Memoir (New York: Perigee Books, 1981), 120. 20
between Jung and his patients, who ultimately appear to act as proxies through which Jung explicated his theories without betraying too much personal involvement. As Jung states in his 1925 ‘Seminar on Analytical Psychology’:
I drew all my empirical material from my patients, but the solution of the problem I
drew from the inside, from my observations of the unconscious process.21
And indeed, as Jung would also state in the same seminar, during the events leading up to his midlife crisis in 1912, he was unconsciously assimilating aspects of his case-studies into his self. Perhaps the most significant of these was the case of Miss Frank Miller, a woman Jung never met but whom he encountered in the works of fellow psychologist Théodore Flournoy (1854-1920) and whose fantasies subsequently provided the foundation upon which The Psychology of the Unconscious was built. Essentially, Jung’s conclusion of the Miller’s fantasies describes a woman clinging to an internal childlike world of fantasy while simultaneously denying the challenges posed by external adult society. In other words – and with the retrospective utilisation of later terminology – Jung suggested that she was over-attached to a particular archetype and repressing others, with the projected result being the general detriment of her mental health. However, as Jung stated seven years later during his ‘Seminar on Analytical Psychology’, he retrospectively judged himself to have been suffering from a somewhat inverse, although equally repressive, condition. As a rigorously intellectual thinker, Jung summarised his early opinion of fantasy as something “repellent… a form of thinking I held to be altogether impure, a sort of incestuous intercourse, thoroughly
immoral from an intellectual viewpoint”.22 Yet, after analysing the Miller fantasies, Jung
notes that he subsequently began to analyse his own hitherto repressed fantasy function alongside that of Miller’s. After adapting Miller’s fantasies into a symbolic mythological framework conducive to his own personality, Jung successfully assimilated the previously repressed fantastical aspect that Miller represented into his self. Thus, according to a rather conceited statement, Jung considered himself to have:
...found a lump of clay, turned it into gold and put it in my pocket. I got Miller into
myself and strengthened my fantasy power by the mythological material.23
Furthermore, Jung came to believe that the body and soul of an individual contain ancestral components of the collective unconscious that stretch backwards through time, from the present day, through the Middle Ages and classical antiquity, until finally reaching
primitivity.24 In The Psychology of the Unconscious, this psychological heritage is introduced
regarding Freudian dream analysis to suggest a phylogenetic link between the fantastical and mythological thinking of primitive cultures and children. As Jung states:
This train of thought is not a strange one for us, but quite familiar through our knowledge of comparative anatomy and the history of development, which show us how the structure and function of the human body are the results of a series of embryonic changes which correspond to similar changes in the history of the race.
21
Jung, ‘Analytical Psychology’, 34.
22 Jung, ‘Analytical Psychology’, 28. 23 Jung, ‘Analytical Psychology’, 32. 24
Therefore, the supposition is justified that ontogenesis corresponds in psychology to phylogenesis. Consequently, it would be true, as well, that the state of infantile thinking in the child's psychic life, as well as in dreams, is nothing but a re-echo of
the prehistoric and the ancient.25
The references to ontogenesis, phylogenesis and embryonic development are obviously terms borrowed from the biologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919). One of Haeckel’s most important propositions was the now-rejected hypothesis of the theory of recapitulation, which contended that during the embryonic development of an animal, the embryo progressed through the evolutionary stages of its ancestors until birth or hatching. As Joseph Cambray has stated, Haeckel’s theory of recapitulation was central to Freud’s
understanding of psychology.26 It is, therefore, hardly surprising that Jung also utilised
Haeckel’s theory – indeed, Cambray notes many similarities between specific mandala paintings in The Red Book and examples of Haeckel’s rather artistically stylised depictions of
nature.27 But, by transposing Haeckel’s theory of recapitulation from the biological to the
psychological, Freud and Jung re-oriented what was an automatic and linear process for Haeckel – fertilisation to gestation – into an active interaction with history.
One of the major milestones of Jung’s phylogenetic approach to psychology as a recapitulation of history, is that of Meister Eckhart (1260-1328), whom Jung later credited
with anticipating the discovery of the unconscious.28 It is perhaps telling that, in the same
1925 seminar where Jung divulged his assimilation of Miss Frank Miller’s personality into his self, he also reinterpreted the dream from 1912 that heralded his split with Freud. Here, the “knight of powerful build” that confronts the “old Austrian customs guard” is not Jung, per se, but Meister Eckhart himself. Jung describes this knight/Eckhart as representing a time “when many ideas blossomed, only to be killed again, but they are coming again to life
now”.29 And, indeed, in Jung’s 1951 book Aion, Eckhart and his theories are described in the
following manner:
Well might the writings of this Master lie buried for six hundred years, for "his time was not yet come." Only in the nineteenth century did he find a public at all capable
of appreciating the grandeur of his mind.30
Although Jung never described himself as having recapitulated anybody, including Nietzsche or Meister Eckhart, the integral role of such a process regarding Jungian psychology is explicitly described during the later alchemical stage of his career in relation to Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) – another great Germanic figure whose recapitulation was necessary for psychological development. The importance of psychological recapitulation can be seen,
25
Carl Jung trans. Beatrice Hinkle, The Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transformations and
Symbolisms of the Libido; A Contribution to the History of the Evolution of Thought (New York: Dodd, Mead and
Company, 1949), 28.
26
Joseph Cambray, ‘The Red Book: Entrances and Exits’, in Thomas Kirsch & George Hogenson eds., The Red
Book: Reflections on C.G. Jung’s Liber Novus (New York: Routledge, 2014), 40.
27 Cambray, ‘The Red Book’, 43-45. 28
Carl Jung trans. R.F.C. Hull, The Collected Works of Carl Jung vol. 9 part II – Aion: Researches into the
Phenomenology of the Self, 2nd edition (New York: Princeton University Press, 1968), 193-194.
29 Jung, ‘Analytical Psychology’, 39. 30
firstly in his insistence that Boehme and Paracelsus irreparably divorced Protestant mysticism and natural science, thus removing the symbolism of alchemy from the academic
and wider public consciousness;31 and secondly, in a more practical manner, during his 1934
lecture ‘A Study of the Process of Individuation’ (and which was substantially revised in 1950). This study contains one of Jung’s most important exemplars: a fifty-five-year-old
Danish patient – Miss X – whom Jung began treating in 1928;32 and is perhaps most famous
for the 24 paintings that Miss X painted, which Jung contextualised as her gradual process of individuation and which have, to a certain point, become emblematic thereof. Essentially, Jung suggests that, before any progress can be made, Miss X must experience and recapitulate the psychological states that served as progenitors to the conditions of her contemporary society. A vital aspect of this process of recapitulation is the necessity for evolution and subsequent re-orientation of previous psychological states – what was previously acceptable is not necessarily so for the present. And, accordingly, Jung re-orients what was the final rubedo stage of Boehme’s alchemical speculations to the initial nigredo
stage of Miss X’s process of individuation.33
Taking his description of Miss X and Boehme into account, by coming to equate a character he had previously identified as himself with Meister Eckhart – crucially, only the anticipator of the unconscious, not the discoverer – it would seem that Jung is aligning his own individuation with this process of phylogenetic recapitulation. This is especially so, as Jung’s understanding of Meister Eckhart appears to be intimately connected to his eventual comprehension of the Miller fantasies and his assimilation of the fantastic symbolic properties that, from his perspective, she personified. As Jung states in his 1921 book Psychological Types (although developed during the relevant period of 1913 to
1917/1918):34
…symbols are shaped energies, determining ideas whose affective power is just as great as their spiritual value. When, says Eckhart, the soul is in God it is not "blissful," for when this organ of perception is overwhelmed by the divine dynamis it is by no means a happy state. But when God is in the soul, i.e., when the soul becomes a vessel for the unconscious and makes itself an image or symbol of it, this is a truly
happy state.35
In other words: when one is dominated by the fantastic archetypical properties of the unconscious, one ends up a neurotic, like Miss Miller; on the other hand, when one assimilates an archetype via an external compartmentalising symbol, one is strengthened as Jung considered himself to have been.
Accordingly, although Jung’s phylogenetic process of psychological development was not as advanced in Psychological Types as later demonstrated by his explication of Miss X’s process
31
Carl Jung, ‘Religious Ideas in Alchemy’ in Carl Jung trans. R.F.C. Hull, The Collected Works of Carl Jung, vol. 12
– Psychology and Alchemy, 2nd edition (New York: Princeton University Press, 1968), 227 & 450.
32
Carl Jung, ‘A Study in the Process of Individuation’ in Jung, Collected Works, vol. 9 part I – The Archetypes
and the Collective Unconscious, 2nd edition (New York: Princeton University Press, 1969), 290-291.
33
Jung, ‘A Study in the Process of Individuation’, 300-302.
34 Carl Jung trans. R.F.C. Hull, The Collected Works of Carl Jung vol. 6I – Psychological Types (New York:
Princeton University Press, 1976), v.
35
of individuation, it is presented in a slightly more developed manner in contrast to The Psychology of the Unconscious. This can be seen when Jung introduces two figures whom he considered to have directly and substantially influenced the contemporary psychological situation as he perceived it – namely, Wagner and Nietzsche. In Jung’s opinion, both gathered insight from the Middle Ages but, whereas Wagner is condemned for having retreated into a historic fantasy world of grail legends, Nietzsche is judged to have seized upon the heroic Medieval concept of a master caste and morality and propelled it into the future. Jung found it significant that both Germanic visionaries returned to the Middle Ages for inspiration, which gives him cause to propose Meister Eckhart as the catalyst for this mystical Germanic tradition, seemingly through osmosis alone. It seems that, by describing Wagner and Nietzsche in this manner, Jung is suggesting that both attempted to recapitulate aspects of the Middle Ages – consciously or otherwise – before ultimately failing for different reasons. These reasons are quite nebulously described – Wagner because he overemphasised love to the detriment of power and Nietzsche vice versa – but lead to one of the more important points in Psychological Types: because of their failures, a return to the Middle Ages was necessary for Jung, as it was an “age [that] left behind a question which still remains to be answered”. This unanswered question is also afforded only a vague description as “possibly… the germ of a new orientation to life, in other words, a nascent symbol”, yet is stated in relation to Meister Eckhart’s “purely psychological and
relativistic conception of God and of his relation to man”.36 Indeed, Jung’s preoccupation
with the Middle Ages, unanswered questions, and the relativistic psychological relationship between god and humanity is not a particularly new innovation and can be traced to his
earliest writings from his student lectures some twenty years previously.37
As Jung states in relation to Miss X, while a conscious realisation of the internalisation of psychological ancestors is not required, the evolving nature of an individual’s relationship with these figures – or, at least, the psychological states they represent – has a profound effect on the manner in which the archetypes are understood and expressed. For example, Jung explains Miss X’s apparently unconscious utilisation of the archetypical figure of Mercury in her paintings as a “spontaneous emergence” of Boehme’s characterisation of
Mercury, rather than coincidence or cryptomnesia.38 This would seem to make the
psychologised recapitulation of historical figures – and addressing what he identified as the unanswered questions they left behind – the foundational point of Jung’s psychology in practical terms. For Jung himself, the most immediate of these ancestral figures in 1912 was, of course, Nietzsche. And, as will be seen, Nietzsche provided the basis for Jung’s understanding of the imagoes (the precursors of the archetypes) and libido in The Psychology of the Unconscious – something which is reflected during the first two-thirds of The Red Book. However, this focus on Nietzsche is eventually and quite dramatically departed from during the last third of The Red Book, after a specifically stated intention to return to the Middle Ages. In fact, this intention is described as a necessity – one born from having only indirectly experienced the Middle Ages through others, by which Jung’s allusive
description of Nietzsche’s attempted recapitulation is presumably meant.39 Although
36 Jung, Psychological Types, 241-242. 37
Carl Jung trans. Jan van Heurck, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung: Supplementary Volume A – The Zofingia
Lectures (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 94.
38 Jung, ‘A Study in the Process of Individuation’, 308 fn. 61. 39
Meister Eckhart is never directly referred to in The Red Book, it will nevertheless become apparent that Eckhart was an influential figure, who informed significant developments between Jung’s psychology as recorded in The Psychology of the Unconscious and Psychological Types.
However, as Hanegraaff correctly notes, The Red Book contains no references to many of the staples of later Jungian psychology – for example, the collective unconscious,
archetypes, and so on.40 Yet, on a superficial level, the fact that they are never mentioned is
perhaps not such a sizeable issue. After all, in his private recordings, why would Jung feel the need to enter into lengthy and ultimately superfluous clarifications of constructs he was encountering and – to an extent – familiar with, when there was no wider audience intended? Indeed, already integral terms of Jungian psychology – in particular, the libido and imagoes – are also completely unmentioned. Thus, despite the absence of any academic terminology whatsoever, this dissertation will contend that The Red Book nevertheless appears to be the arena in which Jung encountered and explored concepts such as the imagoes/archetypes and the collective unconscious which, as stated, were shaped by the internalisation and recapitulation of the historical and culturally specific figures Jung considered essential for one’s individuation.
2.1 The Eternal Recurrence
Unlike any other historical figure Jung refers to in the context of a psychological recapitulation, there was one major aspect of Nietzsche’s philosophy that presented a significant difficulty – namely, the eternal recurrence. Despite Jung emphasising Nietzsche’s supposedly forward-thinking nature in Psychological Types, one could equally classify Nietzsche’s thought as largely “backwards-looking” as, for example, Judith Norman does in her introduction to Nietzsche’s autobiography Ecco Homo (written in 1888, but not
published until 1908).41 The tension between these perspectives permeates Nietzsche’s
doctrine of the eternal recurrence, which he himself considered to be “the basic idea of [his]
work” in Ecce Homo.42 However, as with much of Nietzsche’s philosophy, the precise
manner in which the eternal recurrence was proposed to function was never explained in detail.
Initially, the eternal recurrence was proposed by Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in a chapter entitled ‘The Convalescent’, although previously hinted at in ‘On the Vision and the Riddle’. Here, the animals in Zarathustra’s cave embellish Nietzsche/Zarathustra’s rudimentary description of the eternal recurrence with the following words:
‘Now I die and disappear,’ you [Zarathustra] would say, ‘and in an instant I will be a nothing. Souls are as mortal as bodies.
But the knot of causes in which I am entangled recurs – it will create me again! I myself belong to the causes of the eternal recurrence.
40
Hanegraaff, ‘Great War of the Soul’, 6.
41 Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo: How to Become What You Are in Nietzsche trans. Norman, The Anti-Christ,
Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, xviii.
42
I will return, with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with this snake – not to a new life or a better life or a similar life:
– I will return to this same and selfsame life, in what is greatest as well as in what is smallest, to once again teach the eternal recurrence of all things –
– to once again speak the word about the great earth of noon and human beings, to once again proclaim the overman to mankind.
I spoke my word, I break under my word: thus my eternal fate wills it – as proclaimer I perish!
The hour has now come for the one who goes under to bless himself. Thus – ends Zarathustra’s going under!’ –43
This quote would seem to suggest that Nietzsche considered the significance of the eternal recurrence to be a realisation and affirmation of an absolute property of a mechanistic philosophy. Indeed, although none of his published works explicitly make this claim, it is revealed in his unpublished notebooks that Nietzsche initially attempted to prove the eternal recurrence in a scientifically objective manner before ultimately abandoning the task.44
The repercussions of such a literal repetition regarding Jung’s proposition of experiencing and recapitulating a Nietzschean state of psychology are potentially quite dangerous. This is especially so if one ascribes, as Jung did, Nietzsche’s philosophical and psychological beliefs as being solely responsible for his mental collapse. Simply put: if one is intending to experience such a Nietzschean state, complete with a literal interpretation of the eternal recurrence, what prevents one from repeating Nietzsche’s madness? Of course, the point of recapitulating various figures was not to repeat psychological states as an automatic biological practice, but to address what Jung considered to be fundamental psychological mistakes at the heart of individuals’ theories. Yet, for example, while Jung may have diagnosed Boehme as being responsible for a number of significant psychological issues, Boehme never suffered a permanent mental collapse. Thus, while experiencing Boehme may indeed lead to a number of painful crises, recapitulation is nevertheless possible as one is still mentally cognisant, something juxtaposed by Nietzsche’s eleven years of infirmity prior to his eventual death.
In contrast, the eternal recurrence is presented differently in the second, re-drafted version of The Gay Science (published in 1887, after both Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil):
The heaviest weight. – What if some day or night a demon were to steal into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it you will have to live once again and innumerable times again; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unspeakably small or great in your life must return to you, all in the same succession and sequence – even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this
43
Friedrich Nietzsche trans. Adrian Del Caro, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 178.
44 Lawrence Hatab, Nietzsche’s Life Sentence: Coming to Terms with Eternal Recurrence (New York & London:
moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!’ Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god, and
never have I heard anything more divine.'45
In this case, the prefix “what if” suggests a hypothetical question, symbolic of cultivating an abstract ideal, rather than an absolute mechanical certainty.
These two quotes from Thus Spoke Zarathustra and The Gay Science present a small example of typical Nietzschean imprecision, indicative of a larger trend that has, of course, resulted in a multitude of differing interpretations. Perhaps the most interesting investigation of Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence is Lawrence Hatab’s 2005 book Nietzsche’s Life Sentence. To establish the premise of his book, Hatab summarises what he identifies as the three typical interpretations of the eternal recurrence:
1. Those that concede eternal recurrence as some kind of literal claim about the world, but that see such a claim as either false or injurious to other basic elements of Nietzsche’s thought.
2. Those that redescribe eternal recurrence as a metaphorical or symbolic expression of some insight or philosophical position that has nothing to do with literal repetition.
3. Those that construe eternal recurrence as an ethical imperative that can guide action.46
In relation to the previously given examples from Thus Spoke Zarathustra and The Gay Science, the former quite clearly corresponds to Hatab’s first mode of interpreting the eternal recurrence. The latter is less obvious, but corresponds to Hatab’s second mode of interpretation, where the eternal recurrence is relegated to the level of a hypothetical thought experiment – one that removes the literal aspect and thereby transforms it into what is effectively an abstract, contemplative practice.
Hatab’s third and final mode of interpretation is slightly more difficult to describe but is contextualised as potentially complementing either of his first two modes of interpretation. In short: the eternal recurrence is proposed to act as an individualistic version of Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) categorical imperatives. According to this rather unorthodox interpretation, instead of attempting to formulate universal imperatives, one should rather concentrate on the ethical validity of one’s individual actions as personal imperatives to be eternally repeated. As Hatab states:
Unlike a Kantian test of universality and rational consistency, the concentrating effect of repetition can simply generate a powerful focus on an individual’s choices and possibilities; it can thus prompt a reflective posture that overcomes careless or
45 Friedrich Nietzsche trans. Adrian Del Caro, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an
Appendix of Songs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 194.
46
thoughtless behaviour because of the psychological impact of considering the
eternally repeated “record” of a certain course of action.47
Of course, the intensity of this “psychological impact” depends on whether one understands any repetition of action literally or symbolically.
Ultimately, the first two typical interpretations of the eternal recurrence Hatab poses are ostensibly mutually exclusive, yet he presents an intriguing and convincing argument for their reconciliation. The manner by which Hatab attempts this reconciliation is greatly relevant to Jung’s understanding of the eternal recurrence in The Red Book and will accordingly be explored in more detail in section 3.0. However, for the present, it is perhaps sufficient to mention only that such a reconciliation between these two seemingly diametrically opposed interpretations of the eternal recurrence can, in fact, be observed in Nietzsche’s own work. Indeed, Hatab identifies Thus Spoke Zarathustra as the primary arena
for this reconciliation48 – the previously cited quote is, while unequivocal in its proposition
of a mechanistic interpretation of the eternal recurrence, only the statement of Zarathustra’s animal disciples and, after all, not the man himself. Due to the poetic nature of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the nuances that allow this interpretation can be difficult to identify yet are more easily apparent in Nietzsche’s unpublished works. Thus, for example, the following example from Nietzsche’s notebooks relates more directly to Hatab’s three typical interpretations:
My teaching says: Live in such a way that you must desire to live again; this is the task – you will live again in any case! He for whom striving gives the highest feeling, let him strive; he for whom rest gives the highest feeling, let him rest; he for whom ordering, following, and obeying gives the highest feeling, let him obey. Only provided that he becomes aware of what gives him the highest feeling and that no means toward it are avoided or feared. Eternity is at stake!49
The first exhortation to “live in such a way that you must desire to live again” suggests a symbolic interpretation; the subsequent declaration of “you will live again in any case” suggests a literal interpretation; while the remaining text suggests the interpretation of developing personal imperatives.
Ultimately, it is arguable that the difficulties inherent in reconciling the literal and symbolic interpretations of the eternal recurrence persisted throughout Jung’s career, as even in 1937 during his seminars on Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Jung declares that he “cannot quite
understand [the eternal recurrence]”, thus betraying a degree of continuing uncertainty.50
However, despite Jung’s apparent uncertainty, this dissertation will contend that, much as the Middle Ages presented Jung with an unanswered question, Nietzsche presented an
47
Hatab, Nietzsche’s Life Sentence, 121.
48
Hatab, Nietzsche’s Life Sentence, 65.
49 Friedrich Nietzsche eds. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Sämtlicher Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe
vol. 9 – Nachgelassene Fragmente 1880-1882 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1967), 505 in Hatab, Nietzsche’s Life Sentence, 122.
50 Carl Jung, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939 (Princeton: Princeton University
unanswered question to Jung in The Red Book. Furthermore, although Jung makes use of differing terminology, this dissertation will contend that his and Hatab’s solutions are, nevertheless, quite similar.
2.2 Jung’s Knowledge of Kant and Early Understanding of Nietzsche
However, before examining the similar manner in which Hatab and Jung attempt to reconcile the literal and symbolic, it is worth exploring Hatab’s influences regarding his third typical mode of interpreting the eternal recurrence. This is particularly so as, although Hatab does not make it explicitly clear, it is nevertheless obvious that the neo-Kantian philosopher Georg Simmel (1858-1918) is amongst his primary sources in this regard. And, as this third typical mode of interpretation concerns a rather unorthodox mixture of Kant and Nietzsche, it is also directly relevant to Jung’s student lectures which, as this section will contend, present the theoretical foundations of Jung’s psychology.
The establishment of this theoretical foundation begins on the 18th of May 1895, when Jung
became a member of the Zofingiaverein, the Swiss student union, to whom he subsequently delivered five lectures between November 1896 and January 1899. The first two of these Zofingia lectures predominantly concern Jung’s rather unorthodox interpretation of Kant. As might be expected, Jung predicated his lectures on the debate between mechanistic and vitalistic philosophies, with Jung decisively supporting the latter. Despite this support, it would appear that Jung suggests the metaphysical can, in fact, be investigated in a scientific manner. To demonstrate this, Jung completely misinterprets the sarcastic tone of Kant’s
1766 book Dreams of a Spirit Seer to be a positive description of Emanuel Swedenborg
(1688-1772) and his spiritualism.51 For example, Jung predicates his first lecture on two
quotes selected from Dreams of a Spirit Seer:
“For every substance, even a simply material element, must possess an internal activity as the cause of its external operation.”
And: “Whatever in the world contains a principle of life appears to be
immaterial in nature.”52
Jung utilises these quotes to suggest that the mechanistic sciences have, in fact, already subsumed a number of metaphysical principles into the natural sciences – for example, Jung contends that the transcendental properties of ether were physically revealed by the
then-recent invention of the X-Ray in 1895.53 However, as a budding Kantian, Jung concludes his
first lecture by asking the question:
But can we conceive of an immaterial body without immaterial properties? Yes, indeed, for nowadays virtually the entire scientific world is doing just that. But we do not want to go along with the crowd. What we want is to allow the immaterial to
retain its immaterial properties.54
51
Bishop, The Dionysian Self, 31.
52 Jung, The Zofingia Lectures, 7. 53 Jung, The Zofingia Lectures, 18. 54
Although the meaning of this last passage is far from clear, Bishop interprets it as Jung suggesting that an artificial barrier between the physical and metaphysical should be strictly enforced, despite the apparent possibility of it being overcome mechanistically. Bishop’s interpretation continues by suggesting that the final sentence alludes to Jung positing psychology as the correct arena for the metaphysical to be investigated in a scientific
manner.55 This contention would appear to be supported by the following statement made
during Jung’s second lecture: “The laws governing our mental universe… [emanate] from
the metaphysical order”.56 Such a statement is quite significant, as there are many occasions
in Jung’s subsequent academic work where he borders on a psychologised interpretation of
metaphysics, only to profess his ignorance of metaphysics and defer to others.57
Nevertheless, the fact that Jung repeatedly approaches the boundary between the psychological and metaphysical with little resolution in an academic capacity seems to be indicative of his personal beliefs as demonstrated by his early student lectures. Indeed, the vitalistic principle of the soul that Jung describes during his second lecture corresponds quite well with the basic outline of his later academic definition of the self – it is described as being necessarily phylogenic and contributes the unconscious aspect towards an individual’s self, one that is comprised of both conscious and unconscious aspects in roughly
equal measurements.58 However, Jung subsequently exceeds his later boundaries by making
the metaphysical claim that this vitalistic soul is “independent of space and time” and
directly identifies it with the Kantian thing-in-itself.59 Naturally, such an identification of the
soul with the thing-in-itself also exceeds Kant, something reflected by Jung’s subsequent re-orientation of the categorical imperative as primarily for the happiness or psychological
health of the individual, rather than for the greater universal good.60
Proceeding from this first major disagreement with Kant, in his fourth lecture61 Jung
suggests that the Kantian categories be reduced from twelve to the aforementioned space and time – despite neither being among Kant’s original twelve categories – along with
causality.62 How Jung interprets causality is not easy to ascertain, yet Bishop describes it as
referring to an instinctual and developmental mediation between the conscious and
unconscious aspects of the self that were posited earlier.63 However, to ensure that neither
the conscious nor unconscious aspects of the self attain a position of dominance, Jung eventually begins to draw upon Nietzsche. Jung states that philosophy should not be based on recourses to various types of reason, but from immediate experience – one must directly
interact with the unconscious, not draw inferences from consciousness.64 In doing so, Jung
55
Bishop, The Dionysian Self, 30.
56 Jung, The Zofingia Lectures, 47. 57
An early and relevant example being: Jung, The Psychology of the Unconscious, 146-147.
58
The term “self” is an anachronism borrowed from Jung’s later work. However, for the sake of clarity and conciseness, it has been utilised here and elsewhere in this section.
59
Jung, The Zofingia Lectures, 31-32.
60
Jung, The Zofingia Lectures, 65-66.
61
Jung’s third lecture was his inaugural address upon assuming the chairmanship of the Zofingiaverein. It is significantly shorter than his other lectures and predominantly concerns the union itself and the geopolitics of the day.
62 Jung, The Zofingia Lectures, 66. 63 Bishop, The Dionysian Self, 35-36. 64
essentially describes his interpretations of the Kantian causation and thing-in-itself/soul
along Fichtean lines – as a temporary limit with the possibility of being overcome.65
Ultimately, at the end of this fourth lecture, Jung denies – with a particularly Nietzschean turn of phrase – the applicability of opposites struggling for supremacy, as “no diversity can
develop without the existence of its opposite”.66
The fifth and final Zofingia lecture that Jung presented confirmed his turning away from professing a purely Kantian perspective. Here, Kant is directly criticised for negatively
limiting the concept of the thing-in-itself/soul;67 and indirectly, via Albrecht Ritschl
(1822-1889), for denying the possibility of direct revelation from god, mysticism, and ultimately an
unio mystica.68 Indeed, one of Jung’s primary concerns during this last Zofingia lecture was
explicitly Nietzschean – namely, the erosion of values by Christianity. However, this is presented as a Christianity predicated on Kantian reason eroding a Christianity derived from mysticism. Accordingly, during the conclusion, Jung quotes the following from Eduard von Hartmann’s (1842-1906) 1874 book The Religion of the Future:
“The world of metaphysical ideas must always remain the living fountain of feeling in religious worship, which rouses the will to ethical action. Whenever this fountain dries up, worship becomes petrified and turns into a dead, meaningless ceremony, while religious ethics wither into a dry and abstract moralizing or a sentimental
phrase-mongering which holds no attraction for anyone!”69
A few paragraphs later, Jung concludes his final lecture by urging Christians to contemplate the possibility of a metaphysical unio mystica with the following statement:
Anyone who wishes to hold fast to the metaphysical reality of the elements of Christian faith… must never lose sight of the fact that Christianity represents nothing less than the break with an entire world, a dehumanization of man, a “revaluation of
all values” (Nietzsche).70
Bishop suggests that Jung’s interpretation of Nietzsche in a Christian manner indicates that
Jung was, at this stage, still relatively unfamiliar with Nietzsche’s work.71 However, while this
is likely to be the case, Jung nevertheless closely linked Nietzsche with Christianity during his
later academic career.72 Indeed, while Jung’s interpretation of Kant and Nietzsche is
certainly unconventional and occasionally confusing, it should not be dismissed out of hand as a misplaced youthful enthusiasm. In an admittedly inexperienced manner, they exhibit what I consider to be the theoretical foundations of Jung’s psychology – foundations that persisted throughout his entire career, yet are most apparent in his more personal works, eventually epitomised by The Red Book.
65 Bishop, The Dionysian Self, 37. 66
Jung, The Zofingia Lectures, 86.
67
Jung, The Zofingia Lectures, 95.
68
Jung, The Zofingia Lectures, 99.
69 Jung, The Zofingia Lectures, 109. 70
Jung, The Zofingia Lectures, 110.
71 Bishop, The Dionysian Self, 41.
72 For example, the following and relevant statement from his seminars on Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “Nietzsche
Firstly, in Jung’s first two lectures, he presents his interpretation of Kant which resulted in: 1) Jung considering it possible for metaphysics to be interpreted through psychology. 2) Consequently, Jung identified the Kantian thing-in-itself with the unconscious aspect
of an individual’s self – the soul – ultimately re-orienting the universal absolute categorical imperative into something primarily concerned with an individual’s relative psychological health.
Secondly, in Jung’s last two lectures, he introduces some nascent Nietzschean aspects which resulted in:
3) The relatively equivalent importance of the conscious and unconscious, established in terms of neither being understandable without the other. Furthermore, direct interaction with the unconscious is advocated, in contrast to drawing on inferences from consciousness and reason.
4) Consequently, the metaphysical or unconscious part of an individual must be utilised as the foundation of ethics – one that will encourage a “revaluation of all values”. Jung’s interpretation of Kant and Nietzsche – particularly regarding the metaphysical – is, however, not as unique or outlandish as might be supposed. This is particularly so when one considers the similarities between what Jung proposes in his Zofingia lectures and the contents of Simmel’s 1907 book Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Of course, Simmel’s book was published some eight years after the last of Jung’s Zofingia lectures, yet Simmel concisely presents something consistent with what Jung eventually began to describe, albeit with a greater philosophical rigour. And, while I have been unable to find any indication that Jung was familiar with any of Simmel’s works, it is nevertheless possible that Simmel’s book provided Jung with a more comprehensive summary of ideas similar to his own.
Without entering into overly-specific details, in the space of a handful of pages Simmel presents the following:
1) Metaphysics and psychology are directly equated as arenas that allow logical impossibilities to co-exist – for example, the finite and infinite, being and becoming etc. – and therefore “cannot reasonably be expected to meet the demands of other scientific approaches”. In other words: metaphysics and psychology are the only
manners by which the Kantian boundary of reason can be surpassed.73
2) Consequently, Simmel advocates reinterpreting the categorical imperative individualistically by attempting to formulate personal imperatives by concentrating
on the ethical validity of one’s individual actions. This is presented in a Fichtean
manner, by imagining one’s actions as contributing towards the development of a
methodically developing personal eternal law.74
In addition to potentially presenting Jung with a more philosophically rigorous summary of ideas similar to his own, it is also possible that Simmel contributed to Jung’s understanding of Nietzsche. Such a possibility particularly concerns the eternal recurrence which, perhaps due to the lack of familiarity Bishop suggests, is completely absent from Jung’s Zofingia
73 Georg Simmel trans. Helmut Loiskandl, Deena Weinstein and Michael Weinstein, Schopenhauer and
Nietzsche (Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 175.
74
lectures. However, the eternal recurrence is the lynchpin of Simmel’s mixture of Kant and Nietzsche, and accordingly informs Simmel’s initial proposition of personal imperatives, which continues with a complementary second interpretation:
3) Namely, the eternal recurrence is interpreted as the repetition of circumstances that an individual experiences, rather than a repetition of the individual itself. Ultimately, Simmel considered it futile for an individual and the circumstances they experience to repeat alongside one another for the sole reason that, if one is unaware of past repetitions, one cannot learn from their consequences. Simmel therefore considers a more insightful interpretation of the eternal recurrence to involve a developing ego positing increasingly more refined responses by experiencing the recurrence of
identical situations.75
4) Ultimately, Simmel’s ethical and metaphysical interpretations interact reciprocally in
the arena of psychology to facilitate the continuing development of the Overman.76
Particularly relevant regarding any possible influence on Jung is that Simmel argued that the psychological power of the eternal recurrence existed in it being considered
an abstract symbol.77
Particularly regarding these last two points, Simmel’s interpretation of the eternal recurrence would seem to require the acknowledgement of at least two internal egos, albeit on a temporary basis – the current state of the ego re-experiencing the situation, and another that effectively provides a snapshot of the ego’s original state during the initial encounter with the situation. While there are obvious differences, the practice of a dynamic ego internalising the static conclusion of a previous ego does bare some similarity to Jung’s psychological recapitulation. In other words: by becoming conscious of experiencing a Nietzschean psychological state – an ancestral component of the collective unconscious contained within his body and soul – Jung is capable of utilising Nietzsche’s prior example to derive a more refined solution. And, while Simmel strongly criticises what he describes as recapitulation, he is referring to an automatic biological recapitulation similar to that of Haeckel, rather than the interactive psychological recapitulation that Freud and Jung would
later propose.78
Regardless of any potential influence Simmel may have had on Jung, it is apparent that Jung began to study Nietzsche in more detail soon after the completion of his student lectures, yet this was preceded by a considerable degree of trepidation. The coincidence that Jung was studying at Basel – where Nietzsche had taught philology before his fragile heath necessitated him to retire – was significant for him, as was the generally dismissive attitude of the academics at the university, which motivated Jung in a contrarian manner. However, as Jung states:
I was held back by a secret fear that I might perhaps be like him, at least in regard to the "secret" which had isolated him from his environment. Perhaps – who knows? –
75
Simmel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, 173-174.
76 Simmel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, 175-179. 77 Simmel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, 172 78
