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.I think that this monistic reading,however appealing (and occasionally backed by text), is in fact rather trivi-alizing, as it erases many of the more interesting distinctions that Nietzscheso often makes concerning emotions and motives.Furthermore, these proto-Freudian subterranean images constitute astrategy of self-deception, as Sartre so vigorously prosecuted fifty years later (in terms of what he called “bad faith”).We attribute to psychic “repression” our refusal to accept uncomfortable facts about ourselves and act onthem.Nietzsche is a keen observer of self-deception and its practices, andone of his great virtues is his willingness to suspect in himself (and get usto suspect in ourselves) the easy tendency to allow pride to eclipse memory,or vanity to eclipse proper humility.(Humility, for Nietzsche, is not a“monkish virtue,” à la Hume.It is rather an essential virtue for the self-critical personality.) But even where there does not seem to be a strategy ofself-deception, “deep” may mean “unconscious” in the sense that we do notacknowledge or understand our own motives and emotions.This does notmake those motives and emotions more profound or praiseworthy, nor doesit make them more interesting (which is not to deny that ignorance, self-deception, and denial are fascinating topics on their own).Sometimes, “deep” may refer not to the motive or emotion but to theinterpretation (by the analyst), and thus it may serve as a kind of self-congratulation (“how wise one is to recognize this”) rather than a commenton the quality of the passion.(The continuing debate over “the deep struc-ture of language” from Noam Chomsky to Steven Pinker says a lot moreabout the ingenuity of psycholinguists than it does about the origins oflanguage.) But it may be quite wrongheaded to separate an emotion fromits interpretation.Indeed, I suspect that Nietzsche would say that an emo-tion is an interpretation.Thus a deep emotion is an insightful emotion, a serious emotion, one that touches on or perhaps even grasps one of thefundamental truths about life.It is, in Nietzsche’s words, “life-enhancing.”In Heidegger’s (early) philosophy, angst seems to play this role.It is notjust an emotion (as, say, fear is an emotion) but a profound insight into thenature of one’s existence.But it is important to note that, at least some- LIVING WITH NIETZSCHEtimes, a passion can be both life-enhancing and self-deceptive.Indeed, it is the latter that serves the former (especially in Nietzsche’s peculiar philosophy of art as deception and artists as “liars,” and in his insistence on theneed for myths in culture).Nietzsche wrote of the romantics, “they muddy the waters to make themlook deep.” I take this as a serious warning.What seems deep may notbe, and what is superficial—in the literal sense of being entirely on thesurface—may in fact be quite profound.(For instance, it may involve seeinglarge but previously unnoticed patterns.) Freud’s architectural imagery ofthe mind as having a mysterious basement may be misleading.I think thatNietzsche rightly avoids such topographical metaphors as rigorously as heavoids Cartesianism, but that leaves the matter of “depth” itself mysterious.To what extent does the structure of the mind (or of its various manifesta-tions in emotions and the like) allow for “depth”? To what extent is suchtalk our muddying our own waters? I take the notion of deep emotions asa problem, not that I doubt that there is a point to such talk but because itseems to me that the spatial topographical models are very misleading. In brief, I think that Nietzsche’s precocious reply to Freud is that what makesan emotion deep is its insight, its “truth,” not its presence in the uncon-scious.The Truth of an Emotionas Its MeaningAnger, then, is not merely a feeling or a bodily response, it is an orientation to the world.—Jonathan Lear, Love and Its Place in the WorldIt is a fairly recent “hermeneutical” insight that an emotion is not merelya feeling or a physiological response reaction but a meaning, a significance,an orientation toward the world.I think that Nietzsche (at least sometimes)saw this quite clearly, despite his frequent insistence on “physiological” ac-counts of psychology.(It has been suggested that Freud, too, might be sointerpreted.) But many if not most of Nietzsche’s psychological insights cannot be intelligibly read except through such an interpretation, with theadditional proviso that not all meanings are therefore either transparent orlife-enhancing.(As I expressed this idea many years ago, many emotionalmeanings are demeaning.)To say that the truth of an emotion is its meaning is to give some realsubstance to the “depth” metaphor and the idea of “deep” emotions.Anemotion is meaningful insofar as it engages with the world in a more orless meaningful way.Infantile rage is not only demeaning, it is virtuallymeaningless (which is not to say that there are not interesting causal, de-velopmental, evolutionary, neurological, social, and possibly even strategicaccounts of such rage).Resentment, by contrast, is deeply meaningful.ItN I E T Z S C H E ’ S P A S S I O N Sembraces a history, a keen sense of injustice, and an imaginary future.It reaches out to other people as allies (the co-oppressed), it schemes andplans.It not only engages but also creates a world rich in details and values.Love, too, may be deep, when it embraces a history (and not only one’spersonal history), when it becomes creative, when it involves true intimacyand friendship and glorious ambitions for the future.But “love” that is onlylust and infatuation, a desire of the moment, or an empty bourgeois cere-mony has no such depth at all.Suffering, for example, is sometimes said to be deep when in fact it isonly suffering
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