Luce Irigaray makes Nietzsche one of the privileged interlocutors of her philosophy, the milestone that, as should happen for every excellent master, must be overcome – or, at least, acknowledged as different. This is confirmed, both transparently and explicitly, in her writings, above all in Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche, and in a much-subdued way, through a network of conceptual references, in her other works. 

Spurred on by Irigaray’s interpretation, we can state that Nietzsche’s passionate and tenacious clash with Christianity led him to slip into the web from which he tried to extricate himself, assimilating some of the elements that he instead tried to eliminate. To accomplish what Nietzsche started, it was necessary to place oneself outside the paradigm of Western philosophy. Nietzsche’s struggle against language led us to the necessity to rethink language, within which many of the pitfalls of human psychology lay. It is always human, all too human, far from a pretended security in the truth. Irigaray underlines the extraneousness of the logos to breath, to vitality, which results in an immobilization of life and an atrophy of the senses. To know the world and learn to love it again, a cultivation of energy and perception seems to be essential. It is as if Nietzsche had undermined the polar cap of tradition with his philosophy of dynamite, while Irigaray had melted the blocks of ice, clearing the space of thought and introducing the concept of fluidity.

In the Irigarayan interpretation, Nietzsche’s “project” of transvaluating all values remains incomplete: he fails to take the decisive step, the openness to the other as woman. In the construction of the self, according to Irigaray, Nietzsche (and perhaps, in general, the man of the Western tradition) tried to cut himself off from the mother, responsible for her imperfection and earthly finiteness, to replace her contribution to his own genesis with a self-gestation, in order not to be ‘contaminated’ by those who are not considered up to the superman. The transformation due to a contact with the other would be irreversible: “For, in the other, you are changed. Become other, and without recurrence. It is up to her to perpetuate your becoming, to give it back to you or not, variously deformed” (Marine lover, p. 72).

One of the key points of Irigaray’s philosophy emphasizes becoming aware of the fact that we are not the whole – we may be complete, but we are not the holders of the whole humanity, of the whole truth. We represent only a part of it, of them, and we can preserve it by remaining true to ourselves, by maintaining our virginity – Nietzsche probably would say ‘a being of the dawn’. This is not interpreted by Irigaray in reference to the presence of a hymen, but to the ability not to let oneself be plagiarized by the other, to maintain one’s original natural belonging, notably as respects one’s gender. The Irigarayan ontology is based on as a sensitive transcendence, articulated with the concept of sexuate morphology. Humanity is divided in two genders and each one has its own specific way of becoming. While remaining true to ourselves, we must respect the mystery of the other, by understanding that he exists beyond being perceived by us as a “factuality”. Only by accepting the possibility of never being able to understand the other fully, of not being able to appropriate his mystery, can a fruitful coexistence and a progressive understanding of reality be possible.

Putting the discourse in Irigarayan terms, it would not be entirely right to speak of overcoming, as that of the author is interpreted as an attempt to go beyond the idea of hierarchy and verticality. Offering us a genuine point of view, it substitutes solidity for fluidity, in which there is no low and high. It is precisely this change of perspective that develops Nietzschean philosophy, as if it were a natural branching of it, a necessary consequence:

• The etymology of the Übermensch reveals a still too close link to a masculine man (Mensch), to the logos through which he was cut off from his context and fixed as unity. 

• Marine is, instead, the mother who becomes one with the sea, with nature. She does not try to overcome, go beyond, move away, but wants to enter deeper, blend better with what made her existence possible. 

Nietzsche wants to fish in the sea of humanity to find the most colorful fish (see Thus Spoke Zarathustra), but Irigaray insists that, by perpetuating the game of mirrors, he will only find dead scales. Depriving the other as woman of one’s roots, erasing the figure of the mother (by ascribing the birth of the human being to the father alone – traditionally Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), he will inevitably find himself in front of appearances, veils, lies, or rather, in front of nothingness. In realizing himself, the superman ends up in cancelling the other, while the marine lover proposes a joint development. According to Irigaray, the marriage of the superman with the feminine other could only give rise to an ice wedding, because it would consist substantially in the marriage with his own image, as he perceives nothing but himself in the other. 

In I love to you Irigaray writes that our interpretation of human identity is theoretically and practically incorrect and that only the analysis of the relationships between men and women can help us to change this fact. The development of such relationships could take place under the banner of the values hidden behind the expression “I love to you,” a first step to reform language. The word “to” is added by Irigaray in order to safeguard the distance of otherness and a possible reciprocity, to prevent a preliminary immediacy and a relationship of transitivity (where one is the subject and the other is the object); it ensures the place of non-reduction of the person to an object. To love to also means preserving the other’s fidelity to himself/herself. When our intentionality agrees with that, love can result in a common building. 

If Nietzsche would like to exploit passion by affirming life but continues to isolate himself more and more, Irigaray treasures all the masks he erected and builds a new space from that fruitful land.