In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Nietzsche and the Necessity of Freedom by John Mandalios
  • Allison Merrick
Nietzsche and the Necessity of Freedom, by John Mandalios. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008. 239 pp. ISBN: HB: 978-0-7391-1004-01. Hardcover, $80.00.

It is widely assumed that there may be a tension in Nietzsche’s views concerning freedom. In particular, Nietzsche seems to deny certain views of free will (GM I:13) and warns against “the hundred-times-refuted theory of ‘free will’” (BGE 18). Nevertheless, he also appears to admire the sovereign individual––“the man who has his own independent, protracted will,” “this master of a free will” (GM II:2)––as well as those who have forged a “free spirit” (GS 347). John Mandalios’s Nietzsche and the Necessity of Freedom is a contribution to a growing secondary literature that seeks to render these ostensibly contradictory claims coherent. Mandalios seeks to establish two claims. First, he argues that the problem of freedom should be seen as one of Nietzsche’s foremost philosophical concerns. And second he claims that Nietzsche’s critique of certain conceptions of free will does not preclude him from positing a positive view of freedom. Accordingly, this work may serve as a touchstone for scholars interested in these growing debates.

Chapter 1 is principally a “hermeneutic interpretation” of Nietzsche’s views of freedom (2). That is, Mandalios attempts to render intelligible Nietzsche’s positive formulation of freedom and argues that such a view comes bundled with a particular notion of the will. He puts the point this way: “Nietzsche linked his concept of freedom both to will and resistance, arguing that it always comes at a cost: freedom has a cost because it is part of a more general economy of forces and expenditures. Its purchase only comes with forms of resistance and the defeat of an other’s resistance itself embodies a form of expenditure. To give over some thing necessitates power but it also requires a particular kind of expenditure” (2). In an attempt to further explain the relation between a positive conception of freedom and the will, Mandalios draws on Nietzsche’s own query and subsequent response in TI “Expeditions” 38: “How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? According to the resistance which has to be overcome, by the effort it costs to stay aloft.” Mandalios’s central claim is that Nietzsche’s positive formulation of freedom involves the following three constraints: “the will to self-responsibility, the willingness to sacrifice one’s own life for power, and, third, gaining mastery of the instincts” (10).

In considering the first of these restrictions, Mandalios argues that “the noble or free being is one who can bear the greatest responsibility and so not collapse under its onerous weight, as exemplified by a Caesar, Napoleon or Venetian aristocrat” (9). So understood, the first component of freedom involves assuming the “‘greatest responsibility’ endurable” (9).

The second facet concerns the role of the will to power. Mandalios seems to move between suggesting that the will to power is the will to “domination over ourselves and others” and arguing that the will to power is the will to overcome resistance (12). Consider the following passage:

Therefore, you could say that that the will to power is a way to affliction that remains inescapable for us. According to Nietzsche, this process involves our striving for distinction or put differently, a striving for domination. We value this domination over ourselves and others so much that even when it hurts us we can still sense happiness, because happiness is the feeling that power increases, that a resistance is overcome. This is where we find the martyr who feels the highest enjoyment by enduring himself. However, the martyr is a tragedy of a drive for distinction in which there is only one character which burns and consumes oneself. So in both cases where one inflicts one’s will upon oneself and upon others there is an implicit happiness at the site of torment.

(12)

Mandalios suggests that the will to power may be expressed in “our striving for distinction” or “a striving for domination” as well as in the overcoming of resistance (12...

pdf