"necessary to make" or "to make necessary" in this sentence from Nietzsche?

Question

A sentence from the second aphorism of the second essay of Nietzsche's "Zur Genealogie der Moral":

Jene Aufgabe, ein Thier heranzuzüchten, das versprechen darf, schliesst, wie wir bereits begriffen haben, als Bedingung und Vorbereitung die nähere Aufgabe in sich, den Menschen zuerst bis zu einem gewissen Grade nothwendig, einförmig, gleich unter Gleichen, regelmässig und folglich berechenbar zu machen.

Walter Kaufmann's translation is:

The task of breeding an animal with the right to make promises evidently embraces and presupposes as a preparatory task that one first makes men to a certain degree necessary, uniform, like among like, regular, and consequently calculable.

From context, it makes perfect sense to describe the task as "making men uniform, like among like, regular, and consequently calculable". Notice that all these attributes are closely related, even synonymous. It does not make much sense, from context, to say the task is to "make men necessary". "Necessary" is very different from "uniform", "calculable".

Is there an alternative way to understand this sentence, so that "nothwendig" is not parallel with "einförmig", "gleich unter Gleichen", etc.? Perhaps it is "...necessary to make man...", not "...to make man necessary..."? Or perhaps there is a subtle meaning of "nothwendig", rendering it roughly synonymous to "predictable"?

Thanks, all!

Answer 1

To the best of my understanding, Kaufmann is absolutely right. Nietzsche postulates "the preparatory task of making men to a certain degree necessary [...] calculable."

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1. No reasonable interpretation of the syntax will afford you the translation "it is necessary to make men uniform etc."

Jene Aufgabe, ein Thier heranzuzüchten [...] schliesst [...] die nähere Aufgabe in sich, den Menschen [...] zu machen.

What we have here is the logical, presuppositional pairing of two instances of "Aufgabe", a noun that typically takes (requires) an infinitive clause. The symmetry extends to the dependent clauses themselves and their semantics: "ein Thier heranzuzüchten" and "den Menschen [...] zu machen".

Note that "die Aufgabe" requires a dependent clause, just as the infinitive clause "zu machen" requires a governing (verb, adjective or) noun such as "Aufgabe".

(1) Ich befehle, den Menschen... zu machen.

(2) Es ist notwendig, den Menschen... zu machen.

(3) Wir haben die Aufgabe, den Menschen... zu machen.

(N) die Aufgabe, den Menschen zuerst bis zu einem gewissen Grade nothwendig, einförmig, [...] berechenbar zu machen.

Syntactically speaking, the natural reading of (N) is to connect "die Aufgabe" with "einförmig, [...] berechenbar zu machen" directly, as in (3). If you let "notwendig" step in to govern the "zu machen" clause, as in (2), you would take away the dependent clause that "the Aufgabe" requires and leave it dangling. This makes it a very unlikely reading of (N).

Instead, the noun Aufgabe governs the infinitive clause zu machen + an array of attributes that are all on a par: "making men necessary, ... predictable".

Syntactically speaking, Kaufmann is right.

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2. Semantically (and philosophically) speaking, Nietzsche's connecting "nothwendig" with "regelmässig" and "berechenbar" makes good sense and has a long tradition behind it. All these attributes are closely related and somewhat synonymous, even "necessary".

First, while you seem to read "nothwendig" as implying an inflexible, exceptionless, absolutely deterministic necessity, note that in Nietzsche's passage, "nothwendig" is qualified: "bis zu einem gewissen Grade". The individual is to some, even to a large extent, determined; that is, not absolutely free, but rather (somewhat) controlled by its habits, influenced by its education, conforming to certain rules. All this makes it likely to behave a certain way, hence predictable ("berechenbar").

And this is Nietzsche's philosophical point here: raising men who conform to the expectations of morality is akin to creating trained animals that are influenced, somewhat controlled, by behavioural laws (in fact, he calls it "ein Thier, das versprechen darf").

This view of animals is in line with a broadly Cartesian, or Kantian, tradition that views the "brutes" as determined and bound by the laws of nature (and nurture); to some extent necessitated ("nothwendig") to act by those laws, or rules ("regelmässig"), therefore uniform in their behavior ("einförmig").

(The more extreme view would be Descartes' assumption that animals are just machines and their behavior is strictly necessary and deterministic; Nietzsche's contemporaries in philosophy and the life sciences would soften this assumption but still go with a view of behavior as somewhat deterministic: "bis zu einem gewissen Grade nothwendig".)

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There is no need to doubt Kaufmann's translation, which (at least in this passage) is spot on.

Answer 2

The word "notwendig" occurs quite often in Nietzsche's text. In practically all instances it is used in the modern sense of "necessary", but the quotation given in the question exhibits an exceptional (not to say strange) use.

The comma is definitely intended. Let me give some quotations proving this.

Zweite Abhandlung: »Schuld«, »schlechtes Gewissen« und Verwandtes.

Ein Thier heranzüchten, das versprechen darf – ist das nicht gerade jene paradoxe Aufgabe selbst, welche sich die Natur in Hinsicht auf den Menschen gestellt hat? ist es nicht das eigentliche Problem vom Menschen? [...] wie muss dazu der Mensch selbst vorerst berechenbar, regelmässig, nothwendig geworden sein, auch sich selbst für seine eigne Vorstellung, um endlich dergestalt, wie es ein Versprechender thut, für sich als Zukunft gut sagen zu können!

Jene Aufgabe, ein Thier heranzuzüchten, das versprechen darf, schliesst, wie wir bereits begriffen haben, als Bedingung und Vorbereitung die nähere Aufgabe in sich, den Menschen zuerst bis zu einem gewissen Grade nothwendig, einförmig, gleich unter Gleichen, regelmässig und folglich berechenbar zu machen.

The sentence "wie muss dazu der Mensch selbst vorerst berechenbar, regelmässig, nothwendig geworden sein" shows that Nietzsche uses "notwendig" as an attribute of man. Therefore we can agree that Nietzsche says (in condensed form)

Jene Aufgabe, ein Thier heranzuzüchten, schliesst die Aufgabe in sich, den Menschen nothwendig zu machen.

As a digression let me mention that the relation between "Mensch" and "Thier" is intensively discussed in Erste Abhandlung: »Gut und Böse«, »Gut und Schlecht« culminating in

Gesetzt, dass es wahr wäre, was jetzt jedenfalls als »Wahrheit« geglaubt wird, dass es eben der Sinn aller Cultur sei, aus dem Raubthiere »Mensch« ein zahmes und civilisirtes Thier, ein Hausthier herauszuzüchten, ...

To be honest, I am not sure what Nietzsche means by den Menschen nothwendig machen. Certainly he had his own world of ideas which may be strange to modern readers, but we should not brush it away as a Nietzschean oddity.

Here are two quotations form DWDS proving that Nietzsche is in a certain tradition.

Q1
es ist doch gewisz, dasz in der welt den menschen nichts nothwendig macht, als die liebe. Göthe 16, 72.

Q2
die nothwendigkeit, deren strengem gesetze kein naturwesen sich entziehen kann. 10, 142; nach dem gesetz der nothwendigkeit. 10, 167; ein werk der nothwendigkeit. 10, 71; der mensch allein hat .. das vorrecht in den ring der nothwendigkeit .. durch seinen willen zu greifen. 10, 88; der mensch, der eigentlich auf seiner höchsten stelle da ist um der natur zu gebieten, um sich und die seinigen von der gewaltthätigen nothwendigkeit zu befreien. Göthe 22, 215; ob sie (thiere) uns gleich so nahe stehen, so scheinen sie doch durch eine unendliche kluft von uns getrennt und in das reich der nothwendigkeit verwiesen. 48, 13.

It seems to me that the second quotation points to the dichotomy Freiheit / Notwendigkeit (freedom / obligation) which is a classic philosophical concept. Understanding Notwendigkeit as the negation of Freiheit, the adjective notwendig would be the negation of frei. In other words, in Nietzsches's text "nothwendig" should be understood as "unfrei", "durch Pflichten gebunden" ("bound by human obligations").

Answer 3

No, I don't see another possibility of translating the word 'nothwendig' (modern spelling 'notwendig') here. It can't mean "it's necessary to make man uniform,...", because the first part of the sentence allready states that it's about a prerequisite.

Clearly, I wouldn't use the word in this context nowadays. There could also have been a shift in meaning, but probably not for "predictable", but for "necessary" in the sense of "indispensable".

[This answer assumes the comma is intended]

Answer 4

It could just be a spurious comma. If the phrase were

den Menschen zuerst bis zu einem gewissen Grade nothwendig einförmig, gleich unter Gleichen, etc. zu machen.

nothwendig would be an adverb modifying the predications (either just einförmig, or the whole list -- this is ambiguous).

to make man necessarily uniform, equal amongst equals, etc.

which would indeed sound more likely (at least to me), and fits the tone of Nietzsche's writing.

I suggest you compare your text with some other editions of the same work, ideally a critical edition. (It might even be that the comma occurs in all editions, but is considered an original error.)