EUrope, Where “Hell is Other People”: A Toast to Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre

“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players…” – Shakespeare

Welcome! A Toast to Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre is my 2011 Magnum Opus. I presented the script as a monologue for my class in Existentialism.

Inspired by the great actors Laurence K. Olivier, Baron Olivier and Leonidas Frank “Lon” Chaney, “The Man of a Thousand Faces,” I played the roles of all three philosophers’ thanks in part to props: mustache for Nietzsche, mustache and hat for Heidegger, and pipe & eye glasses for Sartre.  

For those in my audience whose interest lies in Existentialism, Ukraine and Russia, you’ll find

Existential Threats & Russian Sea Treasures: Absurdities and Truth quite entertaining.

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A Toast to Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre

Act Three

~Heidegger and Sartre are having a drink, awaiting Nietzsche’s arrival

~Nietzsche enters

Heidegger- Now commenth Zarathustra!

Nietzsche– Do I amuse you comrade?

Heidegger- Comrade, oh I see, “man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.” Das nichts nichtet.

Would you care for some Steinhäger Sartre?

Nietzsche- Maybe he prefers some cognac?

Sartre-Nietzsche, we were getting along quite well without you or your sarcasm.

Nietzsche- Why my dear fellow, without me there is no you or to put it in modern terms, it takes one to know one. Ha! Ha! Ha!

Sartre- Touché!

Heidegger- Now my friends, let’s get to the subject at hand, the Da-sein. Tell me Nietzsche, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Why are we here? I have said that the Da-sein, this “being in the world” rarely stops to ask, why? Who, then, are those who partake in these questions?

Sartre- Why, mon ami, cest nous n’est–ce pas ?

Nietzsche- Yes, Sartre, it is we the new philosophers, those with spirit!

Heidegger- Sehr gut. But are we asking too much of philosophy and distorting its function? Is there a choice between being authentic-grasping our possibilities or inauthenticity-the being as the they, Das-Man. Is this really a choice or is it simply the path to the truth of man’s evolution as some philosophers would argue?

Nietzsche– Nicht! It is these past philosophers, they have it all wrong. Thy have sickness- this need for truth! Kant says the answers are inside us but Hegel, Hegel says the answers are not inside us but out there, in the history of our actions through this dialectic movement of his. Tell me what did they accomplish? Die Kann nicht wahrheit finden. They’ve made a mess of things. This desperate attempt to find the truth and be done with it!

Sartre- Mais oui, getting back to Heidegger, the “being in itself”, is like this chair I’m sitting on- it differs from the “being for itself” which entails consciousness. It is, and Kant may agree, the synthesis of both, the being-in-and-for itself where Hegel’s phenomena end. But this is not to be for Da-sein. It is for God. Mon ami, the great scholar Mason, has said it best, “we can’t coincide with ourselves because we want to have the kind of assurance we don’t have.”

Nietzsche- Sartre, it is good the chair you sit on is a “being in itself” and isn’t conscious, for it was given to me by the widow of my good friend, the Austrian General Mack.

Sartre– Pardon moi, mais pourquoi? What is so special about this piece of wood Nietzsche?

Nietzsche- Well, General Mack led the army that was destroyed by Napoleon. If the chair was conscious, I don’t think “it” would like a pompous French man sitting on it (with an air of sarcasm).

Sartre- Mais non! I did not agree with the actions of the Second Empire, concerning itself more in how France looked than in its politics. The bourgeois, where is their social conscience- these conservatives have no sense of freedom and responsibility. This chair reeks with their avant-garde sneer (Sartre stands motioning with one arm in disgust and with the other drops tobacco from his pipe on the chair).

Heidegger- Comrade, where’s your spirit? It’s a good thing we’re not in the Château de Versailles or you would be arrested.

Nietzsche– No need to concern yourself with Sartre, Heidegger. Was it not de Gaulle that said, “Sartre is France, and one cannot arrest France”? Sartre, can you not go anywhere without that filthy pipe? Did you not see the sign on the door, “Rauchen Verboten” Oh, let me translate that for you mon ami, “Smoking is Forbidden.”

Heidegger– We are veering off the topic. Nietzsche, turning back to your distaste for the past philosophers, was it not you who said, “A philosopher is a man who never ceases to experience, see,

hear, suspect, hope, and dream extraordinary things. . .”. Well, then, could the answer not be found in the possibilities that Philosophy can bring, “a thinking that breaks the paths and opens the perspectives of knowledge…” We keep asking what can philosophy do “for us?” My dear friends, maybe we should be asking what philosophy can do “with us.”

Nietzsche– Bravo! Heidegger. Permit me to play devil’s advocate and say that what we really should be asking is what we can do with it. What you’re suggesting allows philosophy to define and mold us. Help me out here Sartre. Where is our freedom and responsibility?

Sartre- Nietzsche has a point Heidegger. Sounds like you’re ready to quickly move the Da-sein to Das Man, into a faceless crowd. By your own words, my good man, you said the “Dasein in its everydayness is disburdened by the They.” But in this public arena, he lets go of his being; resulting in …  

Nietzsche– Resulting in “averageness: mediocrity, leveling down of the possibilities of being.” “O humanity!” Heidegger, you have joined those who wish to put a lasso on us and make us part of their herd mentality.

Heidegger– Genug! Nietzsche, enough already, you best measure your words.

Nietzsche– Ja, but if this sickness prevails it will be the destruction of man.

Heidegger- Yes, but the Da-sein’s essence lies in its existence whose project is to be an authentic being toward death.

Nietzsche- Do not quickly send us to our death Heidegger, as our only hope is that someone takes up the banner of truth.

Sartre- Tell me, Nietzsche, Heidegger, who can lead us out of this current state of affair?

Nietzsche- You ask who, Sartre? The Ubermensche! A man who is not stagnant but wants a will to truth, not acting with his eyes wide shut. A man who embarks on ridding himself of the inauthentic Das Man. Nitimur in vetitum (Latin: We strive after the forbidden).

Heidegger- Nietzsche, I’m a bit out of practice with my Latin.

Nietzsche- I said, we strive after the forbidden. “My philosophy will one day conquer, for what has hitherto been forbidden on principle has never been anything but the truth.”

Sartre– Yes, but what of the political battles man has fought for truth?

Nietzsche– There is no real truth for the men who follow the herd. They make up these truths to survive. You may agree with me Sartre when I say that “il ne cherche le vrai que pour faire le bien.”

Sartre- D’accord Nietzsche, mais tout le monde desire devourer qu’il sont.

Nietzsche– Quite so, Sartre. There is no need to try and discover who you are, when you should become the person you are.

Sartre- Do you both not see that it is the being-for-others that determines us for the self is born of reflection.

Nietzsche- O Hogwash! Better explain yourself, Sartre.

Sartre- First, the Other looks at me, he holds the secret of my being and knows what I am. Second, the Other has the advantage over me. By the same token, being in the presence of this other, “I am – at the very root of my being . . . the proof of the Other.”

Heidegger- Yes, the other, but what does that mean for the Da-sein, the human being when it encounters itself with relation to the world as the Das Man? What are we Sartre?

Sartre- We are what we do.

Heidegger – That may be so Sartre but there is a connection between who we are and how we describe ourselves. There is the ontic (the being at hand), like this chair that is only apparent when it breaks and the ontological (being ready to hand) as in ….

Nietzsche– Again, Heidegger, you’re thinking too much-be done with this notion of cause and effect! (Nietzsche obviously inpatient)

Heidegger– What is wrong, Nietzsche? Are you afraid that what you’ll find is your doppelgänger?

Sartre– Mon Dieu! Nietzsche, Heidegger, est-ce que vouz ne pouvez pas arreter disputer!

Heidegger- Sartre, Only God can save us!

Nietzsche- Heidegger, there cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.

~Seeing that both Nietzsche and Heidegger would not cease arguing, Sartre gets up and begins to make an exit.

Sartre – Merci beaucoup for the drink, Nietzsche et Heidegger, mais, l’enfer, c’est les autres

or as my English friends say, HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE!

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Europe and US deservedly reap and bear the wrath of their diseased seeds of past invasions and corporate hegemony. Raid and pillage of others and their land transforms humans into toxic forms that function as asbestos, dangerous when disturbed.

Globalization reigns triumphant in the West masking modern forced slavery of Natives, Immigrants and Refugees living with disease and dying of famine. Slowly intermingling with the poor bastards of the New World, “the other” seeks refuge as diseases seek new hosts, and in time naturally breed plagues.

As the sun rises, Western men of Politics, Military, Enterprise and Education stand by flags of “diversity” and “multi-cultures” like rulers of little kingdoms of subjects. But when the sun sets hide in homes designed to segregate “the other.” Around the world, men and women who stand in judgement are many more than the sitting 12 Angry White Men.

Germans’ “final solution” came in the course of little more than a decade. For the West, it comes as a Democratic and Enterprising strategy of centuries in the making. German’s form followed its function of swift brute force.

West sees its function of “killing them softly” as a self-righteous form of dealing with brutes, classified as non-white men and women. For the Europeans, Hell is other people! And so, the powers that be made hell for “the other.”

What the Hell! In the natural order of things, it stands to reason“the other” bring a living hell to you.