Waging War Against War: Nietzsche vs. Kant on Conflict!

Who ever has the capacity for deep feelings must also suffer from the vehement struggle between them and their opposites. In order to become perfectly calm and free from inner suffering, one could simply wean oneself from deep feelings, so that in their weakness they would arouse only feeble opposing forces: they could then, in their sublimated tenuousness, pass unnoticed and give human beings the impression that they are in harmony with themselves. – [...] (6[58] 9.207f.)

By reducing to a minimum the vehement discord between our feelings and their opposites, we can overlook their inner antagonism and mistake it for a personal state of peace, harmony or agreement (the Socratic ideal). Nietzsche even goes so far as to explain in detail the political correlate of this individual moral strategy:

So too in social life: if everything is to function altruistically, the oppositions between individuals must be reduced to a sublime minimum: so that all tensions and hostile tendencies, through which the individual maintains himself as an individual [durch welche das Individuum sich als Individuum erhält], can barely be perceived; in other words: individuals must be reduced to the palest shade of individuality! Thus equality [or uniformity: Gleichheit] by far prevails. This is euthanasia, entirely unproductive! [...] (6[58] 9.208)

This strategy may even save the individual, or rather the dividuum, from suffering,40 but it carries a high cost. The reduction of tension is followed first by a reduction of diversity, so that 'equality and uniformity by far prevail'; and, second, a reduction of creative or productive power—a kind of 'euthanasia, entirely unproductive'. As the reference to 'euthanasia' makes clear, it is life itself, as an incessant and multiple instauration (i.e., production, creation) of Being, that is negated and impoverished by the living death of unproductive individuality; just as it is life which, in its pluralism, is negated and impoverished under the yoke of uniformity that follows the reduction of tension and antagonism.

What then would it take to enhance and affirm life or reality at the level of individual lives and their interactions? What affirmative alternative is there to reduce tension, which would promote and enhance life in its productive and plural character, as an incessant and multiple Fest-Setzen? What, in other words, would it take to maximize rather than minimize tension?

Nietzsche's answer excludes relations of domination, subjugation, incorporation or destruction: it presupposes a kind of equilibrium between a multiplicity of more or less equitable forces, impulses or power complexes, all bent on expanding their power. Only if these impulses or 'feelings' are of 'similar power' can they avoid succumbing to subjugation, assimilation or domination by their antagonists, and maintain a certain balance so that tension is maximized. The affirmative and life-enhancing alternative that Nietzsche opposes to the Socratic ideal of peace or self-accord achieved through the reduction of tension thus consists in an ideal of equilibrium between more or less equitable antagonistic forces that allows the maximization of internal tension, the vehement antagonism between our feelings and their opposites. But now the problem arises: How can this productive and dynamic equilibrium between individuals or dividuals be maintained without a complete loss of unity, a complete disintegration under the pressure of an immeasurable conflict between more or less equitable impulses? What degree or measure of the conflict between dividuals makes them capable of persisting as living units? In the text we are considering, Nietzsche offers us a social, or rather political, answer when he writes about the 'hostile tensions and tendencies by means of which the individual maintains himself as an individual [durch welche das Individuum sich als Individuum erhält]'. Here, strong internal tension is related to external, interpersonal tension, as its condition: it is through relations of tension and antagonism with others that the antagonism of internal drives is best contained, so that the dividuum can achieve unity, or maintain itself as an individual with maximum internal tension. The degree or measure of the maximum internal antagonism concerning an individual existence is determined by relations of tension between individuals. Equality in the sense of a balance between more or less equitable antagonistic forces is the sine qua non for the persistence of tension or antagonism, whether within or between individuals. In this regard, we can say that Nietzsche's project of affirming or enhancing life implies a politics of equality, not in the sense of universal equal rights that protect us from conflict and interference, but a politics of enmity between more or less equitable powers, which allows individuals to become productive dividuals while maintaining their unity as individuals.

Waging War Against War: Nietzsche vs. Kant on Conflict
Herman Siemens