Gary Scott Groce, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
Abstract of a Paper to Be Presented at the 1999 Triennial Conference of the Kenneth Burke Society
According to Timothy Crusius in his "The Question of Kenneth Burke's Identity-and Permanence and Change," a paper delivered at the CCCC in Phoenix, Arizona, on March 13, 1997, it is probable that the "most powerful single influence on the young Kenneth Burke was Nietzsche and certain Nietzscheans." Burke indicates in Permanence and Change that his work on Perspective by Incongruity was inspired by his attempt to understand not only Nietzsche's work on perspective, but his use of perspective; he meant to understand what accounted for Nietzsche's dartlike style. Burke discusses Nietzsche extensively in Part II of Permanence and Change. This paper is an attempt to read Burke reading Nietzsche in order to provide some greater insight into the concept of perspectives.
Perspective seemed significant enough (regarding Plato's philosophy) for Nietzsche to refer to it as "the basic condition of all life" in his 1885 Preface to Beyond Good and Evil. Burke attributes his own conception of "Perspective by Incongruity" to his reading of Nietzsche: "in trying to analyze just what he meant by [perspectives], I came upon reasons for relating his cult of perspectives to his dartlike style. It was in the explanation of this that I came upon the term, 'Perspective by Incongruity."' [Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose (Berkeley: U of CP, 1984) 88.] Indeed, Burke's reading of Nietzsche must have been extensive and thorough.
According to Timothy Crusius, Burke's involvement with the "critic-philosophers" was "intense--I have seen, for example, his personal copies of the works of Marx, Coleridge, Freud, and Nietzsche, and they are so marked up, so full of marginalia, that the text itself almost disappears." Crusius goes on to state "that one can make a plausible case for linking [Burke] to many criticphilosophers, many critical and philosophical schools." Burke's familiarity with these writers may have been necessary to multiply his available perspectives.
Understanding Kenneth Burke's reading and use of Nietzsche, in particular, Burke's use of Nietzsche in Part IIof Permanence and Change, will provide some insight into both writers. The reading is meant to be a historically and culturally sensitive consideration of Perspective, as a key term in this second section of Burke's work; but simultaneously, Burke's discussion of "Piety and Impiety" provides a valuable reading of several of Nietzsche's fundamental concepts. Chief among these Nietzschean concepts or ideas are the transvaluation of values and ressentiment. This particular paper is intended to be intersubjective in that it takes into account Nietzsche's text(s) working through Burke simultaneously with Burke's texts as they reflect on readings of Nietzsche. Examining these two authors together in this method should allow us to explore the ideas of Nietzsche and Burke as embodied in text without privileging one or the other. In the process, we can multiply perspectives while examining any "new" meaning which may arise as a result of juxtaposing the ideas of two great "critic -philosophers. "
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