5. On the communication of mood in Nietzsche’s Gay Science

As I have shown, psychological observations on religion and mood were already present and quite important in HH and in D, and the available evidence also suggests that Nietzsche did attempt to “use mood”, i.e. he put some effort into showing and leading the reader to a philosophically productive mood: a calm, detached but also joyful mood of doubt in the case of HH and a more expressively joyful mood of doubt and expectation in the case of D. The insights that Nietzsche gained from these experiments arguably developed into something far more radical in GS. This chapter presents a novel reading of Nietzsche’s Gay Science based on the thesis that insofar as one can speak of GS as a unified whole, the work is held together by its playful, joyful mood. In other words, the reading seeks to show that mood is central to the project of GS. Moreover, and this follows from recognizing the centrality of mood to the entire conception of a joyful science, I argue that scholarly interpretations of GS that are concerned with elucidating the text must take account of Nietzsche’s attempt to communicate mood, and that philosophical interpretations that seek to build on the aphorisms of the work ignore this at their own peril. Placing mood at the centre of the investigation opens new and fruitful perspectives on key issues that have troubled interpreters since the first publication of the book in 1882, not least those aphorisms that concern religion (“God is dead”). If paying attention to mood is so crucial to the understanding of GS as I have suggested, one might question how novel this reading can be, as surely scholars and philosophers cannot altogether have overlooked anything so central? Indeed, I am more than willing to concede that I am not the first to point to the importance of mood, but there is a significant difference between pointing towards that importance and actually placing mood at the centre of investigation; not to say rereading the work and its key aphorisms in a light that recognizes mood. In her monographstudy on the aesthetics of mood [Stimmung], Friederike Reents suggests that Nietzsche’s GS should be read as an attempt to reorient affect [Umstimmungsversuch] (Reents 2015, 236–238 and 240; cf. Reents 2014). In a similar vein, Bernard Williams has emphasized that GS is meant to “convey a certain spirit” that could “defy the ’spirit of gravity’” (Williams 2006, 314). Both, to mention but two interesting examples, assert that one misses the point of GS if one looks only for “philosophical content”, for philosophical arguments in the work. However, neither Williams nor Reents do much more than to point at the laughter [Heiterkeit], that they see in the work. Although they certainly point in the right direction, mere suggestions based primarily on subjective experiences of reading (Williams 2006) and/or on simplifying interpretations of Nietzsche’s project of affective reorientation (Reents 2015)1 do not