Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle

Author(s): Pierre Klossowski (trans. Daniel W. Smith) · Year: 1969 (Fr.) / 1997 (Eng.) · Type: book

Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche et le Cercle Vicieux (1969) ranks with Heidegger's Nietzsche and Deleuze's Nietzsche and Philosophy as one of the most influential and idiosyncratic readings of Nietzsche to appear in twentieth-century Europe — Foucault called it "the greatest book of philosophy I have read, with Nietzsche himself," and it shaped Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus and Lyotard's Libidinal Economy. Klossowski reads Nietzsche not as an ideologist but through his physiognomy: the impulses that exercised their constraint on him (above all the valetudinary states), the phantasms they produced (above all the Eternal Return experienced at Sils-Maria in August 1881), and the simulacra he created to express them. The book's organizing thesis is that Nietzsche's thought is a semiotic of impulses in which consciousness is a falsifying "code of everyday signs," the self is a fortuitous "agent" (suppôt), and the Eternal Return — read as lived experience rather than cosmology — is the Vicious Circle: the suppression of the principle of identity through forgetting, the dissolution of the self into the series of all its possible identities ("at bottom every name in history is I"). Dedicated to Gilles Deleuze; its last chapter reads Nietzsche's Turin breakdown not as failure but as the lucid enactment of the doctrine.

Core Arguments

Claim: Nietzsche's thought is lucid to the extreme, and for that reason takes on "the appearance of a delirious interpretation"; lucid thought, delirium, and conspiracy form an indissoluble whole. Because: the "accent of delirium" can be detected only by consulting the very authorities (psychiatrists, historians of philosophy, science) his thought called into question; his thought "revolved around delirium as its axis" not because it was pathological but because of its extremity. Against: the Marxist class-conspiracy reading, and the worse "extenuating circumstances" reading that grants Nietzsche a diminished "responsibility of the thinker."
Claim: Consciousness is a code of everyday signs that inverts, falsifies, and abbreviates the impulses; the body is a language of signs "fallaciously deciphered" by consciousness. Because: the brain, the most fragile organ, dominates the body because of its very fragility; meaning is formed in the "upright position." Error is "not between the 'true' and the 'false' but between the 'abbreviations of signs' and the 'signs' themselves." Against: the Freudian conscious/unconscious "iceberg" — for Klossowski's Nietzsche neither consciousness nor unconsciousness "has ever existed"; there is only "discontinuity between silence and declarations in the agent."
Claim: The self/identity is fortuitous and illusory — the body is "the fortuitous encounter of contradictory impulses, temporarily reconciled," whose sole ambition is to de-individuate themselves; the "I" is the agent (suppôt), a grammatical fiction. Because: the body dies and is reborn numerous times; "the cohesion of the body is that of the self; the body produces this self." The self is the one sign in the code corresponding to highest/lowest intensity. Against: the substantialist self of the "irreversible once and for all" — the eternity of meaning.
Claim: The Eternal Return is not a cosmology but a lived experience whose content is the suppression of the principle of identity — and it requires forgetting to be true. Because: "It was therefore necessary for me to forget this revelation in order for it to be true"; anamnesis coincides with the Return. The "death of God" is the death of the guarantor of the responsible self's identity, opening the soul to "all its possible identities." Against: the cosmological/scientific reading (Löwith) and the metaphysical Being-of-beings reading (Heidegger) — both mistake the communicable residue for the lived fact; traditional fatalism; metempsychosis (no expiation or immutable purity — the Return suppresses enduring identities).
Claim: Simulation is "the attribute of being itself." The phantasm is an involuntary obsessional image born of the impulses; the simulacrum is its willed reproduction; existence is fabulation. Because: "Nothing exists apart from impulses that are essentially generative of phantasms"; even science "invents simulacra"; "the only being guaranteed to us is being that represents itself." The function of the simulacrum is "to lead human intention back to the intensity of forces." Against: the Platonic copy/original hierarchy implied in "simulacrum"; the realist claim that science apprehends a reality-in-itself.
Claim: The Vicious Circle is a selective doctrine: the Eternal Return functions as "a means of training and selection," and Nietzsche's conspiracy of the Vicious Circle is a counter-selection against the gregarious conspiracy of Darwinism and institutional science/morality. Because: either the Return selects through itself, or it was revealed so a conscious selection might intervene (proceeding in secret, by the "Masters of the Earth"). Master and slave are states resulting from a test — adherence to or rejection of the sign of the vicious circle. Against: the fascist/eugenic misreading — "this already renders impossible any confusion with the regimes that some have tried to attribute to these projects."

Argumentative Movement

The book is not a premise–conclusion argument but a physiognomic reading that moves by montage: long Nietzsche fragments (all from the posthumous notebooks, 1880–1888) interleaved with Klossowski's commentary, biographical correspondence, and a psychoanalytic-genealogical interpretation. Its arc is roughly chronological-conceptual: illness → semiotic of impulses (Ch. 2) → the Sils-Maria revelation (Ch. 3) → the evaluative criteria (Ch. 4) → the failed scientific grounding (Ch. 5) → the political/selective doctrine (Ch. 6) → the paternal-shadow genealogy (Ch. 7) → the "invention of the sick" (Ch. 8) → the Turin breakdown as the doctrine's lived enactment (Ch. 9) → a semiotic recapitulation (Ch. 10). The method enacts its own thesis: Klossowski's "conventionally classical syntax" deployed to "trace the outline" of phantasms is itself an instance of the "science of stereotypes" the Translator's Preface describes — a simulacrum.

Key Findings

The Eternal Return read through forgetting and anamnesis: the revelation is true only on condition of being forgotten, because remembering a prior identical revelation "would serve to keep me within myself."
Circulus vitiosus deus is, for Klossowski, "a name for [the] sign" of the Vicious Circle "under the aspect of Dionysus" — the same Nietzschean phrase (BGE 56) the wiki's circulus-vitiosus-deus page reads via Merleau-Ponty's indirect ontology, but doing different philosophical work.
Will to power is "only a humanized term for the soul of the Vicious Circle, whereas the latter is a pure intensity without intention" — a third Position alongside the wiki's Chouraqui and Heidegger readings.
The selective doctrine's "Master/slave" are test-states, not breeding-categories — the explicit guard against the fascist reading.
The Turin breakdown is the lucid enactment of the doctrine: "What he was conscious of was the fact that he had ceased to be Nietzsche"; "the madness consisted in [the] delight" of simulating Dionysus and the Crucified.

Concepts Developed

simulacrum — the willed reproduction of a phantasm; "simulation is the attribute of being itself" (the original contribution that seeds Deleuze's overturning of Platonism)
phantasm — the involuntary obsessional image produced by the impulses
semiotic-of-impulses — the body as a language of signs; consciousness as the falsifying "code of everyday signs"
the-agent-suppot — the suppôt: the self/"I" as a grammatical fiction bestowing fragile unity on the chaos of impulses
tonality-of-the-soul — tonalité / hohe Stimmung: the fluctuating impulsive intensity in which the Return is revealed; "intensity is the soul of the Eternal Return"
valetudinary-states — Nietzsche's illness as the origin of his semiotic
vicious-circle-selective-doctrine — the Eternal Return as "training and selection"; the conspiracy; the Masters of the Earth; the test
gregarious-vs-singular — the two evaluative schemata (decadence/vigour; singular/gregarious) and the theory of the fortuitous case

Concepts Referenced

eternal-recurrence — the central object, radically re-read (lived experience, not cosmology) — primary site of a new Positions entry
will-to-power — read as primordial impulse = intensity; "humanized term for the soul of the Vicious Circle"
circulus-vitiosus-deus — the same BGE 56 phrase, read as the sign of the Vicious Circle under the aspect of Dionysus
friedrich-nietzsche — the subject; read physiognomically
death-of-god — not abolition of the divine (inseparable from Chaos) but of "an identical and once-and-for-all individuality"

Key Passages

"beginning with the experience of the Eternal Return, which announced a break with this irreversible once and for all, Nietzsche also developed a new version of fatality – that of the Vicious Circle, which suppresses every goal and meaning, since the beginning and the end always merge with each other." (Ch. 2)

"It was therefore necessary for me to forget this revelation in order for it to be true!" (Ch. 3)

"The 'death of God' (the God who guarantees the identity of the responsible self) opens up the soul to all its possible identities... 'at bottom every name of history is I' – in the end, 'Dionysus and the Crucified'." (Ch. 3)

"The high tonality of the soul in which Nietzsche experienced the vertigo of Eternal Return created the sign of the Vicious Circle... The Circulus vitiosus deus is merely a name for this sign, which here takes on a divine physiognomy under the aspect of Dionysus." (Ch. 3)

"The will to power is only a humanized term for the soul of the Vicious Circle, whereas the latter is a pure intensity without intention." (Ch. 3)

"The beautiful simulacra are ours! Let us be the deceivers and the embellishers of humanity! — In fact, this is precisely what a philosopher is." (Ch. 6, quoting Nietzsche)

"Since simulation is the attribute of being itself, it also becomes the very principle of knowledge." (Ch. 6)

"The Master and the slave are states which, respectively, are the result of a test. And this test always remains the adherence to the sign of the vicious circle, or its rejection." (Ch. 6)

"he simulated Dionysus or the Crucified and took a certain delight in the enormity of his simulation. The madness consisted in this delight." (Ch. 9)

"in the kingdom of God all identities are exchangeable, and that none of them is stable once and for all. This is why informal dress is the rule of propriety." (Ch. 9)

What's Not Obvious

The Eternal Return is read against its own cosmological grain — and Klossowski makes this Nietzsche's own ambivalence. Nietzsche's decade-long pursuit of a "scientific demonstration" of the Return is read not as supporting evidence but as a symptom of fear: he "wanted to appeal to science... a proof that he was not the victim of a pure phantasm" (Ch. 5). The lived fact and its communicable residue diverge — and the whole wiki's existing eternal-recurrence treatment (Chouraqui's WP 708 "fact," Heidegger's Sein als Zeit) sits on the side Klossowski reads as the residue. This is the page's deepest challenge to the wiki's prior Nietzsche.
The breakdown is the argument's proof, not its collapse. Klossowski refuses both the "the abyss was always coming" and the "sudden 1889 collapse" readings: the Turin euphoria is the lucid practice of the fortuitous case, in which the "director of the play remained the Nietzschean consciousness" though "no longer the Nietzschean ego." Reading the mad letters (signed "Dionysus," "the Crucified," "Nietzsche Caesar") as the enactment of "none of [the identities] is stable once and for all" is the boldest interpretive bet in the book — and it is required by the theory of the agent (suppôt) developed in Ch. 2 (cross-page: the-agent-suppot).
The selective-doctrine chapter is built to disarm the eugenic notebook material it must report. Klossowski quotes Nietzsche's most discomfiting fragments (the "Masters of the Earth," prenuptial examinations, "training and selection") and re-routes them through the silent key of the test (épreuve): Master and slave become "states resulting from a test," not breeding-categories. The reading lives or dies on whether the épreuve (adherence to the sign of the vicious circle) can carry that weight — Klossowski asserts it more than he argues it (see vicious-circle-selective-doctrine).

Critique / Limitations

The privileging of the "meaningless intensity" pole of will to power over the "goal-seeking organic" pole (Ch. 5) is an interpretive commitment, not a demonstrable one; Klossowski himself names the slide between cosmic energy (no goal/meaning) and organic will-to-power (goal/meaning) as an equivocation in Nietzsche, then resolves it by fiat in favour of the Circle.
The anti-fascist guard (the test) is asserted rather than argued; the chapter sails very close to the material it disavows.
The apophatic premise of an "unexchangeable depth" (le fond inéchangeable) of the soul, borrowed from the mystics, is adopted without defense and underwrites the entire gregarious/singular schema.
No source citations for the Nietzsche fragments (Smith's translation supplies KSA/WP locations retroactively); the montage method makes the boundary between Nietzsche and Klossowski deliberately permeable.

Connections

radically re-reads eternal-recurrence — as lived experience structured by forgetting/anamnesis, against the wiki's prior cosmological (Chouraqui) and metaphysical (Heidegger) framings
develops a third reading of will-to-power — "a humanized term for the soul of the Vicious Circle"
reads circulus-vitiosus-deus as the sign of the Vicious Circle under the aspect of Dionysus — same BGE 56 phrase as chouraqui-2016-circulus-vitiosus-deus, different operation (cross-tradition cousin, not identity)
contrasts with heidegger-1961-nietzsche-i / heidegger-1961-nietzsche-ii — where the Return is the Vollendung der Metaphysik; for Klossowski it is the suppression of the metaphysics of identity
is dedicated to and influenced gilles-deleuze — and seeds the Deleuzian simulacrum
was praised by michel-foucault — "the greatest book of philosophy I have read, with Nietzsche himself"