S. Afr. J. Philos. 2007, 26(1)
81
in comparison to those around them (who may seem not to be wearing such masks.
This ‘singular place’ - which cannot be occupied by anyone else, and therefore stands
out as something that resists the flow of time, making these individuals ‘irreplaceable’,
or ‘immortal’ - is only discernible in relation to the encompassing fabric of a commu-
nity or society. Moreover, as Copjec (2002: 23-24) emphasises, such ‘immortal’, irre-
placeable ‘places’ are indispensable for the social bond to be constituted in the face of
the flux of time.
It seems to me that these insights from Beyond Good and Evil reinforce my conten-
tion, that one encounters in Nietzsche a distinctive version of what Copjec, in her ex-
amination of Lefort, Blumenberg and other thinkers, terms a ‘modern’ notion of ‘im-
mortality’. Much more could be added, of course, to all that has been said, though, to
render this notion more cogent in the thought of Nietzsche. For present purposes, one
could summarize by saying that, for Nietzsche, ‘immortality’ requires not merely that
one is capable of transcending custom and convention innovatively in the process of
‘creating oneself’ or ‘becoming who you are’. One should also be able to affirm the
contingent actions and ‘chance’ experiences and events accompanying such an axio-
logically creative mode of living, as if these experiences would recur infinitely, that is,
eternally (that is, willing them to recur in this fashion; see Nehamas, 1985: 232), in
this way imparting ‘necessity’ to them and to one's life. The ‘singularity’ of an individ-
ual, inaugurated in this way, opens up a space of inimitable proportions, a place not
occupiable by anyone else, and therefore immortalizes the person in question.
I am well aware that not everyone would agree with this assessment of Nietzsche's
thought. Agreement or disagreement hinges, it appears,17 on whether readers find the
evidence that I have adduced in support of the claim that there is, for Nietzsche, a
hermeneutically reciprocal relation between the ‘free spirit’ (the exceptional individ-
ual) and the rest of society, convincing. This means that, unless the exceptional, cre-
ative individual's ‘works’ are ‘received’ by his or her public in an interpretive-herme-
neutic manner that testifies to their confirmation of its cultural significance - regard-
less of interpretive differences among members of such an audience or public - the
singularity of the individual in question, and hence his or her ‘immortality’, would be
unthinkable. In other words, not merely inventiveness or originality (‘breaking the
rules’) is required in relation to existing convention; the stamp of society on innova-
tion or inventiveness as such - something that presupposes the interpretability of the
inventive work in question - is also necessary for it to constitute a claim to
irreplaceability, immortality, on the part of the exceptional individual (see Hurst,
2005: 163-170 in this regard).
Apart from what I said earlier to substantiate the claim that Nietzsche's thinking on
the topic satisfies these requirements, I shall point to only one more passage, which I
believe provides important further textual evidence to this effect. The passage in ques-
tion comes from Thus spoke Zarathustra (III, ‘The convalescent’; 2), where a conver-
sation between Zarathustra and his animals takes place. In the course of this conversa-
tion his animals (the eagle and the serpent) say to him (1984: 332): “For your animals
less popular, and to varying degrees more esoteric, ‘frameworks’ for understanding the world), could be
said to judge the ‘profound spirit’, ineluctably, by something that ‘masks’ what they ‘truly’ are. The
more radical upshot of Nietzsche's remark is, of course, that it is questionable whether the ‘true’ nature
or character of the free spirit - or, for that matter, of the ‘masses’ - is, in his terms, ever accessible, in-
stead of which one always only encounters masks upon masks.
17 This was pointed out to me by my philosophical colleague and best, if severest, critic, namely Andrea
Hurst.