Mar 5, 2024 07:02 PM
(This post was last modified: Mar 5, 2024 07:14 PM by C C.)
https://psyche.co/ideas/how-the-feminist...-nietzsche
EXCERPT: Nietzsche’s misogynistic reputation is nothing new: it was well established and debated in his lifetime. This did not stop one very intelligent woman from taking up the Nietzschean cause and doing so, ironically, in the name of women’s empowerment.
Her embrace of Nietzsche made her one of the most powerful German feminists of her generation. It also allowed her to enable Nietzsche and this deplorable vision of the triumph of the strong.
Helene Stöcker was born in 1869 into the suffocating strictures of German bourgeois respectability. After chafing against religious and cultural limitations as a teenager, she discovered Nietzsche at the age of 21. ‘From this moment forward … my interest, my joy, my enrichment through Nietzsche … has never ceased,’ she wrote decades later (all translations of Stöcker are by Lydia Moland). ‘To no other mortal spirit do I feel myself so deeply bound.’
In Nietzsche she found caustic contempt for outdated norms, a vision for a humanity emancipated from tradition, and an exhortation to be oneself, whatever the cost. ‘I owe him my particular gratitude that he has freed us from dogmatism and legalism, that he has allowed those who live from his great wealth the inner freedom of the development of their being,’ she wrote.
In 1901, Stöcker defended her dissertation on philosophical aesthetics, making her one of the first German women to receive a doctorate. In lectures and essays, she began promoting Nietzsche’s thought, helping catapult him from the disgraced margins of academia to the central place in the philosophical canon he now enjoys.
Nietzsche’s misogyny presented a problem. In On the Genealogy of Morals (1887) and other works, he envisioned a society of elites uninhibited by sympathy for the weak, unfettered by conventional ties. And what were women, in the society Nietzsche and Stöcker inhabited, but the weak? Wasn’t their demand for men’s devotion and decorum a stifling impediment to men’s natural strength? Didn’t their need for protection hamper the ‘will to power’ that was the only thing, according to Nietzsche, that could rescue humans from their own decay?
Stöcker seems never to have doubted that she could claim Nietzsche’s vision of freedom for herself and for all women. As early as 1892, she began using Nietzsche to argue that tearing down society’s restrictions would allow women to become free and powerful.
She credited him with destroying the ascetic morals that claimed to find ‘something debased and impure’ in women. She praised his hatred of meekness and complacency, exhorting her readers that ‘the time is ripe for a fresh, joyful struggle.’
In place of conventional restrictions, Stöcker envisioned a ‘New Ethic’ of strength and joy. This New Ethic promised nothing less than a ‘new humanity – men and women – Nietzsche’s higher humans, who are permitted to say yes to life and to themselves,’ she wrote. ‘That the time has come also for women to become more conscious of this highest happiness which humans alone are worthy of, is my unshakeable belief.’
She knew this was audacious. ‘You say we demand too much?’ she challenged her readers. ‘Oh, we’re not demanding it,’ she assured them. ‘We are taking it for ourselves – the only sensible method of legitimation in the world.’
Still, Nietzsche’s contempt for women was an embarrassment. Stöcker addressed the problem head on... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPT: Nietzsche’s misogynistic reputation is nothing new: it was well established and debated in his lifetime. This did not stop one very intelligent woman from taking up the Nietzschean cause and doing so, ironically, in the name of women’s empowerment.
Her embrace of Nietzsche made her one of the most powerful German feminists of her generation. It also allowed her to enable Nietzsche and this deplorable vision of the triumph of the strong.
Helene Stöcker was born in 1869 into the suffocating strictures of German bourgeois respectability. After chafing against religious and cultural limitations as a teenager, she discovered Nietzsche at the age of 21. ‘From this moment forward … my interest, my joy, my enrichment through Nietzsche … has never ceased,’ she wrote decades later (all translations of Stöcker are by Lydia Moland). ‘To no other mortal spirit do I feel myself so deeply bound.’
In Nietzsche she found caustic contempt for outdated norms, a vision for a humanity emancipated from tradition, and an exhortation to be oneself, whatever the cost. ‘I owe him my particular gratitude that he has freed us from dogmatism and legalism, that he has allowed those who live from his great wealth the inner freedom of the development of their being,’ she wrote.
In 1901, Stöcker defended her dissertation on philosophical aesthetics, making her one of the first German women to receive a doctorate. In lectures and essays, she began promoting Nietzsche’s thought, helping catapult him from the disgraced margins of academia to the central place in the philosophical canon he now enjoys.
Nietzsche’s misogyny presented a problem. In On the Genealogy of Morals (1887) and other works, he envisioned a society of elites uninhibited by sympathy for the weak, unfettered by conventional ties. And what were women, in the society Nietzsche and Stöcker inhabited, but the weak? Wasn’t their demand for men’s devotion and decorum a stifling impediment to men’s natural strength? Didn’t their need for protection hamper the ‘will to power’ that was the only thing, according to Nietzsche, that could rescue humans from their own decay?
Stöcker seems never to have doubted that she could claim Nietzsche’s vision of freedom for herself and for all women. As early as 1892, she began using Nietzsche to argue that tearing down society’s restrictions would allow women to become free and powerful.
She credited him with destroying the ascetic morals that claimed to find ‘something debased and impure’ in women. She praised his hatred of meekness and complacency, exhorting her readers that ‘the time is ripe for a fresh, joyful struggle.’
In place of conventional restrictions, Stöcker envisioned a ‘New Ethic’ of strength and joy. This New Ethic promised nothing less than a ‘new humanity – men and women – Nietzsche’s higher humans, who are permitted to say yes to life and to themselves,’ she wrote. ‘That the time has come also for women to become more conscious of this highest happiness which humans alone are worthy of, is my unshakeable belief.’
She knew this was audacious. ‘You say we demand too much?’ she challenged her readers. ‘Oh, we’re not demanding it,’ she assured them. ‘We are taking it for ourselves – the only sensible method of legitimation in the world.’
Still, Nietzsche’s contempt for women was an embarrassment. Stöcker addressed the problem head on... (MORE - missing details)
