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Notes
He says: “Mit diesem Buche kommt eine Reihe von Schriften Friedrich Nietzsche’s zum Abschluss, deren gemeinsames Ziel ist, ein neues Bild und Ideal des Freigeistes aufzustellen. In diese Reihe gehören: Menschliches, Allzumenschliches mit Anhang: Vermischte Meinungen und Sprüche; Der Wanderer und sein Schatten; Morgenröthe. Gedanken über die moralischen Vorurtheile; Die fröhliche Wissenschaft.” Nietzsche attests to the same idea about this body of work in a letter to Lou Salomé: “das Werk von 6 Jahren (1876-1882), meine ganze ‘Freigeisterei’!” (BVN–1882, 256 – Brief an Lou von Salomé: 03/07/1882) It should be noted that this means that only the first four books of The Gay Science are to be taken into account with regards to the philosophy of the free spirit. Book V is a later addition, one that follows the writing of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil. Thus Spoke Zarathustra constitutes the elaboration of a new ethical ideal for Nietzsche: the Overhuman.
Nietzsche says that “Die Moral ist durch die Freigeisterei auf ihre Spitze getrieben und überwunden.”(NF-1882, 4[16] – Nachgelassene Fragmente November 1882-Februar 1883) But despite this important role, the free spirit is itself moral: “Aber jetzt erkennen wir die Freigeisterei selber als Moral.”(NF-1882, 6[4] – Nachgelassene Fragmente Winter 1882-83) In a letter to Lou Salomé from that period, he says: “Lassen Sie sich nicht über mich täuschen – Sie glauben doch nicht, daβ, der Freigeist‘ mein Ideal ist?” (BVN-1882, 335 – Brief an Lou van Salomé: verm. 24. November 1882) and again in a letter to Köselitz, he says: “Gewiβ ist, daβ ich damit in eine andere Welt hinübergetreten bin – der ‚Freigeist‘ ist erfüllt.”(BVN-1883, 397 – Brief an Heinrich Köselitz: 02/04/1883) This is the period of writing Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
I cite Nietzsche’s texts in parenthetical citations, using the following abbreviations and translations:
- AOM :
-
“Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” in HH II, op. cit.
- BGE :
-
Beyond Good and Evil, trans. W. Kauffman (New York: Vintage Books, 1989).
- GS :
-
The Gay Science, trans. W. Kauffman (New York: Vintage Books, 1974).
- SE :
-
Schopenhauer as Educator, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
- HH :
-
Human, All too Human, vols. 1 and II, ed. R. Schacht, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
- EH :
-
Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is, trans R.J. Hollingdale and W. Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1989).
- WS :
-
“The Wanderer and His Shadow,” in HH II, op. cit.
Nietzsche alludes to this process of becoming sick and recovering from sickness with regards to his own personal history. See for example: “My humanity is a constant self-overcoming. But I need solitude – which is to say, recovery, return to myself, the breath of a free, light, playful air.” (EH “Why I am so Wise” 8).
I have explained the various types of nihilism that Nietzsche discusses as well as the reasons why he embraces a constructive type. See Christine Daigle, Le nihilisme est-il un humanisme? Ėtude sur Nietzsche et Sartre (Sainte-Foy: PUL 2005).
This is the phrase Nietzsche uses to refer to Voltaire in his epigraph which reads: “This monological book, which came into being during a winter residence in Sorrento (1876 to 1877), would not have been given to the public at this time if the proximity of the 30th of May 1878 had not aroused all too intensely the wish to offer a timely personal tribute to the greatest liberator of the human spirit.” With regards to the theme of my essay, it is interesting to note that Nietzsche thought “The name of ‘Voltaire’ on one of my writings – that was true progress – towards myself” (EH “Human, All Too Human” 1). I take this to mean that Nietzsche considered his embrace of an Enlightenment type of criticism as a means to discover his own self, that is, as a means to free his spirit and achieve authenticity. Interestingly, the dedication to Voltaire is left out of the second edition as is the quotation from Descartes' Discourse on Method. Perhaps this is indicative of the progress Nietzsche thought he had made toward himself. However, Voltaire is again present at the very end of Ecce Homo. The very last word of the book is: “Have I been understood? Dionysus versus the Crucified–” (EH “Why I am a Destiny” 9). But the preceding section, which opens with the same question, proceeds to explain that the overcoming of Christian morality is essential. It ends by quoting Voltaire’s call against the Church: “Écrasez l’infâme!” For a discussion of the importance of the dedication and the quotation from Descartes in Human, All Too Human, see my "The Intentional Encounter with ‘the World'" in Nietzsche and Phenomenology: Power, Life, Subjectivity, especially notes 1, 2 and 3.
Mullin, Amy, “Nietzsche’s Free Spirit,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 38.3 (2000): 383–405, p. 398.
Nietzsche views progress as a circular movement forward that entails a stepping back. However, progress is not strictly circular, rather it takes the form of a series of loops. The backward movement of the circle (when drawn from right to left) propels us forward to a point that is beyond the starting point. Further, higher culture does not reject older forms but rather seeks to accommodate them. This is a dialectical movement à la Hegel.
Nietzsche says that two things must come together: “firstly the augmentation of the stabilizing force through the union of minds in belief and communal feeling; then the possibility of the attainment of higher goals through the occurrence of degenerate natures and, as a consequence of them, partial weakenings and injuring of the stabilizing force; it is precisely the weaker nature, as the tenderer and more refined, that makes any progress possible at all” (HH 224). The degenerate natures in this quote refer to the free spirits as those who think differently. This description follows in the next aphorism. Referring to this aphorism of HH, Gemes points out, “Nietzsche is near unique in claiming that degeneration is in fact a precondition of progress.” Ken Gemes, “Postmodernism’s Use and Abuse of Nietzsche,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62.2 (2001): 337–360, p. 355.
See HH 241.
See WS 221.
See HH 240.
For art and religion see ibid., 292 and for instrument of knowledge see ibid., 288.
See AOM 4.
It ought to be noted, however, that while one frees oneself from the conceptions of morality, religion, and metaphysics, one must not disregard these past experiences, as indicated in HH 292, as noted above.
Gemes, op. cit., p. 346. In an essay on individuality in Nietzsche, Nuno Nabais has rightly suggested that “… since individuality is not a primary datum to be found by each individual within himself, it has to be reconceived as a task to be accomplished.” Nuno Nabais, “The Individual and Individuality in Nietzsche,” in Keith Ansell-Pearson (ed.), A Companion to Nietzsche (Oxford: Blackwell, 2009), 76–94, p. 82. As Keith Ansell-Pearson puts it, “there is a kind of 'core' for Nietzsche, but this is simply the potential for a self. Nietzsche's self is the product of both nature (physis) and culture.” Keith Ansell-Pearson, “In Search of Authenticity and Personality: Nietzsche on the Purification of Philosophy,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 84.2 (2010): 283–312, p. 285. More on this below.
Jacob Golomb notes that while Nietzsche does not make use of the term “authenticity” it is what he has in mind when he discusses “Wahrhaftigkeit.” See Jacob Golomb, “Nietzsche on Authenticity,” Philosophy Today 34.3 (1990): 243–258, p. 243.
Golomb, op. cit., p. 246.
As Daniel Breazeale points out, Nietzsche does not hold an essentialist (naturalist) or an anti-essentialist view of the self. He says that Nietzsche “refuses to accept either as wholly adequate for understanding what it means to ‘be a self.’ On the one hand, he recognizes that in order to ‘become who one is,’ one always requires a sufficient amount of self-knowledge to insure that what one is striving to become is really consistent with what one is (though, to be sure, the ‘knowledge’ in question does not have to be propositional in character or fully explicit). […] Mere ‘knowledge’ – no matter how indirect or tacit – is not enough; in order to ‘be yourself’ you have to act. This is the kernel of truth in all anti-essentialist theories: the self is something constructed, indeed, it is always ‘under construction’.” Daniel Breazeale, “Becoming Who One Is: Notes on Schopenhauer as Educator,” New Nietzsche Studies 2.3–4 (1998): 1–25, pp. 14–15. As he further points out, there are times in his writings where Nietzsche will affirm both positions within the same work without adjudicating between them. Breazeale’s discussion of this pertains to his analysis of the theory of selfhood introduced in “Schopenhauer as Educator” to which I turn further below as it pertains to the virtue of authenticity.
I am indebted to Simon Robertson’s comprehensive list which also lists occurrences of such ends and excellences in mature works. See Simon Robertson, “Normativity for Nietzschean Free Spirits,” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 54.6 (2011): 591–613, p. 594.
See WS 266.
Robertson, op. cit., p. 601.
While I have chosen to focus on the notion of the free spirit as it occurs in the middle period works, there is good reason to incorporate a discussion of this “early” work here. I find Breazeale’s arguments on the status of this work convincing. Breazeale’s essay provides a very useful and comprehensive analysis of the history of the work which demonstrates its importance in the Nietzschean corpus. As part of that analysis, Breazeale gathers evidence from Nietzsche’s letters and notes and he considers Schopenhauer as Educator as a source of information on the program set out for his mature philosophy to come. Specifically, Nietzsche thought that it laid out promises fulfilled in his later works. Breazeale quotes a letter from April 21, 1883, to Peter Gast where Nietzsche says, “It is curious: I wrote the commentary prior to the text! Everything was already promised in Schopenhauer as Educator. But there was still a long way to go from Human All-Too-Human to the Übermensch” (quoted in Breazeale, op. cit., p. 7). Breazeale argues the following on the philosophical import of the work: “From a strictly philosophical point of view, the most interesting feature of Schopenhauer as Educator is perhaps the complex theory of the self that is sketched – or rather, presupposed – in the first few sections of that work. [this essay contains in a compressed form] one of the earliest expositions of a distinctively Nietzschean theory of selfhood, one that directly anticipates many of the features found in his later remarks on the subject, while possessing a clarity that the latter sometimes lack.” (Breazeale, op. cit. p. 13) I agree with Breazeale that this is the most interesting aspect of the work but would insist on the fact that this theory is presupposed rather than elaborated at great length.
It is worth noting that the German has “Dasein” instead of “existence.” This is particularly interesting to me given the interpretation I wish to offer of Nietzsche as phenomenologist. The connection with Heidegger comes to mind. If Nietzsche is using Dasein in a way similar to Heidegger, it means that he conceives of the human being as a being-in-the-world and as a being-with-others. For an exploration of this interpretation, see my “The Intentional Encounter With the ‘World’” in Ėlodie Boublil and Christine Daigle (eds.), Nietzsche and Phenomenology: Power, Life, Subjectivity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 28–43. Also see my “The Subject as Ambiguous Multiplicity: Embodying the Dividuum,” in Christian Benne and Enrico Mueller (eds.), Ohnmacht des Subjekts – Macht der Persönlichkeit (Schwabe Verlag, 2014), 153–166.
Indeed, as Robertson remarks, “there may be people who, having relinquished morality’s grip, either do not pursue the highest excellences [as the free spirits will do] or else do but fail to realize them” (Robertson, op. cit., 611n33). These have an important presence in Thus Spoke Zarathustra under the guise of the last men.
Note that this image is close to that offered by Descartes with regards to the connection between mind and body in the 6th meditation wherein he explores the possibility that the mind is like a captain in the ship that is the body. There, he offers that the mind is intermingled with the body (see Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy). In Nietzsche’s case, it is interesting to note that this view allows for the tension between essentialism and anti-essentialism, that is, between a self that is already what it is and a self that is self-created.
Which is why, in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche seems to refute the importance of self-knowledge by saying: “To become what one is, one must not have the faintest notion what one is. From this point of view even the blunders of life have their own meaning and value – the occasional side roads and wrong roads, the delays, ‘modesties,’ seriousness wasted on tasks that are remote from the task. All this can express a great prudence, even the supreme prudence: where nosce te ipsum would be the recipe for ruin, forgetting oneself, misunderstanding oneself, making oneself smaller, narrower, mediocre, become reason itself” (EH “Why I am so Clever” 9). However, I would argue that what Nietzsche is emphasizing here is the experimental aspect of self-discovery as well as the notion that we make ourselves through our deeds. We must do so while being free from pre-conceived notions of who or what we are.
Jacob Golomb explains this well emphasizing that it is not the content of the norms adopted by the free spirit that matters but the manner in which they are adopted. See Golomb, op. cit., p. 247.
The following is an extensive – but not exhaustive – list of studies that investigate, one way or another, the connection between Nietzsche’s philosophy and ancient virtue ethics in its Aristotelian, Stoic, or Epicurean form: Keith Ansell-Pearson, “Care of Self in Dawn: On Nietzsche’s Resistance to Bio-political Modernity,” in M. Knoll and B. Stocker (eds.), Nietzsche as Political Philosopher (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014), 269–286; Keith Ansell-Pearson, “True to the Earth: Nietzsche’s Epicurean Care of Self and World,” in Horst Hutter and Eli Friedland (eds.), Nietzsche’s Therapeutic Teaching (Bloomsbury, 2013), 97–116; Jessica Berry, “The Pyrrhonian Revival in Montaigne and Nietzsche,” Journal of the History of Ideas 65.3 (Jul., 2004): 497–514; Thomas H. Brobjer, “Nietzsche’s Affirmative Morality: An Ethics of Virtue,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 26 (2003): 64–78; Christine Daigle, “Nietzsche: Virtue Ethics… Virtue Politics?,” The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 32 (Autumn 2006): 1–21; Lester H. Hunt, Nietzsche and the Origin of Virtue, Routledge Nietzsche Studies (London: Routledge, 1991); Horst Hutter and Eli Friedland (eds.), Nietzsche’s Therapeutic Teaching (Bloomsbury, 2013); Bernd Magnus, “Aristotle and Nietzsche: ‘Megalopsychia’ and ‘Uebermensch,’” in David J. Depew (ed.), The Greeks and the Good Life (Fullerton: California State University, 1980), 260–295.; Michael Slote, “Nietzsche and Virtue Ethics,” International Studies in Philosophy 30:3 (1998): 23–27; Christine Swanton, “Outline of a Nietzschean Virtue Ethics,” International Studies in Philosophy 30:3 (1998): 29–38; Michael Ure, “Nietzsche’s Free Spirit Trilogy and Stoic Therapy,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 38 (2009): 60–84.
Ure, op. cit., p. 62.
See Christine Daigle, “Nietzsche: Virtue Ethics… Virtue Politics?,” The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 32 (Autumn 2006): 1–21 for my discussion. Kaufmann makes this argument in his influential work Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (New York: Vintage Books, 1968). In his book, he suggests that we should understand Nietzsche’s opposition to Christianity and Christian religion in view of the influence Aristotle exerted on him. His claims rest on the connection he makes between Aristotle’s concept of pride, or “greatness of soul” (megalopsychia), and Nietzsche’s notion of the Übermensch.
See Magnus, op. cit., pp. 260–295.
While Ure thinks that it was Stoicism that was a major source of influence on Nietzsche, he also thinks that Nietzsche parted ways with Stoicism to a degree: “by the early 1880s he began to express strong misgivings about Stoic therapy, in particular about its conception of the foundations of human flourishing and eudaimonia.” (Ure, op. cit., 72) He explains that the view according to which eudaimonia would amount to a “complete freedom from emotional disturbance” is one Nietzsche rejects (see p. 73). However, Ure argues that in order for Nietzsche to be in a position to put forward the notion of amor fati and the correlate eternal recurrence he must embrace a cosmic Stoicism which entails an affirmation of natural necessity and fate (see pp. 74–80).
Ansell-Pearson points out that Epicurus becomes a prominent influence in 1879. Keith Ansell-Pearson, “True to the Earth: Nietzsche’s Epicurean Care of Self and World,” in Horst Hutter and Eli Friedland (eds.), Nietzsche’s Therapeutic Teaching (Bloomsbury, 2013), p. 102. According to him, Nietzsche appreciates the “refined asceticism” of Epicureanism (p. 103; this is a phrase that Ansell-Pearson takes from Richard Roos, “Nietzsche et Ėpicure: l’idylle héroique,” in Jean-François Balaudé and Patrick Wotling (eds.), Lectures de Nietzsche (Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 2000), 283–350, p. 298).
Keith Ansell-Pearson, “True to the Earth: Nietzsche’s Epicurean Care of Self and World,” in Horst Hutter and Eli Friedland (eds.), Nietzsche’s Therapeutic Teaching (Bloomsbury, 2013), 97–116, p. 104.
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Daigle, C. The Nietzschean Virtue of Authenticity: “Wie man wird, was man ist.”. J Value Inquiry 49, 405–416 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-015-9497-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-015-9497-6