Gregarious vs. Singular

The opposition between the gregarious (grégaire — that which conserves the species: exchangeable, communicable, intelligible) and the singular (the cas singulier / fortuitous case — unexchangeable, mute, unintelligible) is the second of the two evaluative schemata Pierre Klossowski reconstructs in *Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle* (Ch. 4, "The Valetudinary States at the Origin of Four Criteria"). It is interchangeable with the first schema — decadence/vigour, morbid/healthy, weak/powerful — and the two together replace the moral question (true/false, just/unjust) with the physiological-semiotic one: what is sick or healthy? gregarious or singular? The gregarious is the domain of the code of everyday signs and language; the singular is the domain of the fond inéchangeable — the "unexchangeable depth" that "does not signify anything." The whole apparatus of Klossowski's Nietzsche — the simulacrum, the selective doctrine, the Eternal Return as the singular case's revolt — turns on this opposition.

Key Points

  • The two tables (Ch. 4): Klossowski sets out the schema explicitly. Singular: degenerate type, unexchangeable, unintelligible, muteness, non-language. Gregarious: successful type, exchangeable, comprehensible, communication, language.
  • Gregarious = servile: "for Nietzsche, gregarious means servile" (Ch. 1). Gregariousness "presupposes exchange, the communicable, language: being equivalent to something else" — to whatever conserves the species.
  • The singular case is a forgetting: "the singular case represents a forgetting of previous experiences" — it "rediscovers, in an 'anachronistic' manner, an ancient way of existing" and can "bring about a de-actualization of [the] institution itself" (Ch. 4).
  • The singular is defined negatively against the gregarious but positively against power: "if the singular case can be defined only negatively in relation to gregariousness, it is defined positively with regard to power. The singular case is not hereditary, and its originality cannot be transmitted" (Ch. 6).
  • The fortuitous case: the singular case is fortuitous — "the soul, a being that selects and nourishes itself... I recognized active force, created out of the fortuitous!" (Ch. 9). "The fortuitous case itself is only the mutual collision of creative impulses." Nietzsche "would incarnate the fortuitous case."
  • Surplus, not fraction: the singular "aristocratism" is "not a fraction of humanity but its surplus" — and for the totality "an exterminable, shootable, odious leech" (Ch. 6).

Details

Why the schemata are interchangeable

The decadence/vigour schema and the gregarious/singular schema "were interchangeable and convertible" (Ch. 4) because both are functions of intensity and exchange. The gregarious is what can be exchanged (communicated, made intelligible, conserved); the singular is what resists exchange (the fond inéchangeable). Health/sickness map onto this because, for Nietzsche, the symptoms of singular strength can only be named negatively — "as illness, insanity, unintelligibility" — since "language, communication and exchange have attributed what is healthy, powerful and sovereign to gregarious conformity" (Ch. 4). This is why Nietzsche is perpetually "thrown back into the opposing camp": his own criteria of value are stated in a language that belongs to the gregarious.

The instability Klossowski refuses to resolve

The schema is not stable. Nietzsche "feared that his depressive states revealed... gregarious propensities in himself," and the same symptoms (ecstasy, intensity) can signal either "the over-great fullness of life" or "pathological nourishment of the brain" — the "most dangerous misunderstanding" (Ch. 4). Klossowski does not repair this; he treats it as the constitutive fault line of Nietzsche's evaluative effort, which the Eternal Return exploits rather than settles.

The fortuitous case and the Eternal Return

The singular/fortuitous case is the bridge between the evaluative criteria and the Return. Because the singular case is "fortuitous" — a chance collision of impulses, not a hereditary type — it can only secure its necessity by passing through the Return: "it is only in admitting his own fortuitousness that an individual will be open to the totality of fortuitous cases" (Ch. 5). To re-will oneself as a fortuitous moment (the Return) is the singular case's way of making its chance necessary. The selective doctrine is the political extension: the singular case's revolt against the gregarious "sole agent of existence."

Connections

  • is interchangeable with the decadence/vigour and morbid/healthy schemata (valetudinary-states)
  • is articulated in the code of everyday signs — the gregarious is the domain of exchange and language; the singular is the fond inéchangeable
  • the singular case secures its necessity through eternal-recurrence — re-willing oneself as a fortuitous moment
  • grounds the selective doctrine — the singular case's revolt against gregariousness; the test
  • the gregarious is borne by the-agent-suppot — the agent interprets the impulses "in terms of a hierarchy of gregarious needs"
  • contrasts with the Hegelian master/slave dialectic — Nietzsche has "no need for reciprocity"; sovereignty is "the sovereignty of an incommunicable emotion," not recognition

Open Questions

  • Is the fond inéchangeable (the unexchangeable depth that "does not signify anything") a defensible premise or an apophatic posit borrowed from the mystics? The whole schema rests on it; Klossowski adopts it without argument (Translator's Preface §1, §3).
  • Can the singular be valorized at all without translating it into gregarious terms? Klossowski concedes that to "valorize the declaration of the singular, language will have to circumscribe the singular muteness" — so every valorization is already a betrayal.

Sources

  • klossowski-1969-nietzsche-vicious-circle — Ch. 1 (gregarious = servile; levelling vs. erectile power); Ch. 4 (the two tables; the singular case as forgetting; the interchangeability of the schemata; the most dangerous misunderstanding); Ch. 5 (the fortuitous case and the Return); Ch. 6 (the singular defined positively against power; surplus not fraction); Ch. 9 (the theory of the fortuitous case)