On Hearing Nietzsche and Nietzsche on Being Heard

Abstract

“Did anyone have ears,” Nietzsche asked in Ecce Homo, “for my definition of love?” The Challenge of Nietzsche is carefully attuned not only to the Nietzschean experience of love, but also to Nietzsche’s emphasis on the importance of experience more generally. Growth and development are to be found, for Fortier’s Nietzsche, not in “‘great books’” but in “‘great experiences,’” specifically, in the experiences of love, independence, and health (1). Behind each of these experiences, though, lies an evenmore foundational one: the experience of hearing. Building on Fortier’s insightful analysis, I suggest that having the “ears” to listen out for them is what makes love, independence, and health possible. And because the ability to listen is a skill that can be actively cultivated, love, independence, and health are not merely experiences that happen to us, but also ones we help to create ones we can participate in creating. It is helpful to understand what each of these experiences entails for Nietzsche. Love and independence, as Fortier explains, are antipodes. Associated with the archetypal figure of the free spirit or philosopher, independence takes the form of solitary, ascetic withdrawal. Rejecting the world as it is and searching for freedom from it, the free spirit avoids being reliant on anyone else. This philosophical outlook is also identified, in Fortier’s reading, with a physiological condition: that of illness. It is when we find ourselves in the grips of illness that we are liable to reject the