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Notes
I have used the standard abbreviations to refer to Nietzsche’s works:
A = The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1968)
BGE = Beyond Good and Evil, trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1966)
GS = The Gay Science, trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1974)
GM = On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1967)
WP = The Will to Power, trans. W. Kaufmann & R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Random House, 1969)
Z = Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. W. Kaufmann (Penguin Books, 1978)
Reference edition of Nietzsche’s works: Friedrich Nietzsche: Sämtliche Werke, Kritische Studienausgabe. Herausgegeben von Giorgio Colli und Mazzino Montinari (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967–1977).
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), Chapter XI.
I. Hendrick, “The Discussion of the ‘Instinct to Master’” in Psychoanalytic Quarterly 12 (1943): 561–565.
Robert White, “Motivation Reconsidered: The Concept of Competence” in Psychological Review 66 (1959): 297–333. See also R.S. Woodworth, The Dynamics of Behavior (New York: Holt, 1958). It is worth noting how striking a similarity there is between the findings of studies of human and animal behavior from that period and the psychological reflections we find in Nietzsche’s notebooks on the significance of difficulty and frustration in human activity. See, for instance, D.O. Hebb and W.R. Thompson, “The Social Significance of Animal Studies,” in G. Lindzey (ed.), Handbook of Social Psychology (Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1954), 532–561, p. 551: “Such phenomena are, of course, well known in man: in the liking for dangerous sports or roller coasters, where fear is deliberately courted, and in the addiction to bridge or golf or solitaire, vices whose very existence depends upon the level of difficulty of the problems presented and an optimal level of frustration. Once more, when we find such attitudes toward fear and frustration in animals, we have a better basis for supposing that we are dealing with something fundamental if a man prefers skis to the less dangerous snowshoes, or when we observe an unashamed love of work (problem solving and frustration included) in the scientist, or in the business man who cannot retire. Such behavior in man is usually accounted for as a search for prestige, but the animal data make this untenable. It seems much more likely that solving problems and running mild risks are inherently rewarding.” Similar ideas, strikingly echoing Nietzsche without acknowledging him, can also be found at the turn of the 20th century, for instance in the famous Propos of the French philosopher Alain: “Difficulty is what we enjoy. Thus every time there is an obstacle in our path, the blood tingles and the fires blaze. Who would want an Olympic wreath if it could be won without effort? Nobody would. Who would want to play cards without ever running the risk of losing?” Alain, Alain on Happiness, trans. R.D. & J. E. Cottrell (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co, 1973), p. 128.
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol. II. Trans. E.F.J. Payne (New York: Dover Publications, 1958), xlvi: 575. Schopenhauer evidently describes here the phenomenon known in contemporary psychology as hedonic adaptation.
Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga et Paralipomena, Vol. II. Trans. E.F.J. Payne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), §153.
Alain, p. xlvii. For more on Nietzsche’s new conception of happiness, see Bernard Reginster, The Affirmation of Life. Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006) and Reginster, “Nietzsche’s ‘New Happiness.’ On Longing, Boredom, and the Elusiveness of Fulfillment” in Philosophic Exchange 37 (2007): 17–40.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow. The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: Harper & Row, 1990), p. 3.
I should note that the distinction between ‘pleasure’ and ‘joy’ in evidence in the translations of Nietzsche’s work, particularly Kaufmann’s, the German word is the same—‘Lust’. Since Nietzsche carefully distinguishes between kinds of pleasure, I will follow the practice of the translators. For more on Nietzsche’s conception of pleasure, see Reginster, “Nietzsche on Pleasure and Power” in Philosophical Topics 33:2 (2005): 161–191.
Csikszentmihalyi, op. cit., p. 46.
Ibid., p. 4.
Ibid., p. 67 (my emphases).
Ibid., p. 75.
Ibid., p. 59.
In his recent book, Civilization. The West and the Rest, historian Niall Ferguson makes the same point. He argues that the West owes its dominance to the establishment of a set of distinctive institutions, with their associated ideas and patterns of behavior. These include competition, science, property rights, medicine, the consumer society, and work ethic. Of these, he notes, the last one is in some respect the most critical, for a certain distinctive work ethic plays a particularly important role in holding together the other institutions: it forms “a moral framework and mode of activity derivable from (among other sources) Protestant Christianity, which provides the glue for dynamic and potentially unstable society created” by the other five institutions. Niall Ferguson, Civilization. The West and the Rest (New York: Penguin Press, 2011), p. 13.
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. S. Kalberg (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), p. 17.
Ibid., p. 18.
Ibid., pp. 123–124. It is worth noting that Weber also already anticipates, if only in passing, the view of happiness associated with the virtue of proficiency: “The thought of pious boredom in paradise has little appeal for their activity-oriented natures, and religion appears to this group as a mechanism that pulls people away from the very foundation of existence—their work. If one were to question these people regarding the meaning of their restless hunt, which never yields happiness with possessions already owned… their would more frequently offer the simple and more correct answer: with its stable work, the business is ‘indispensable to life.’ This answer is indeed the single, actual motivation, and it immediately renders obvious the irrationality, from the point of view of one’s personal happiness, of this way of organizing life: people live for their business rather than the reverse.” Ibid., p. 31.
Joseph Schumpeter, Socialism, Capitalism, and Democracy (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1942), p. 82.
Ibid., p. 83.
Ibid., pp. 73–74.
“The capitalist process rationalizes behavior and ideas and by so doing chases from our minds, along with metaphysical belief, mystic and romantic ideas of all sorts. Thus it reshapes not only our methods of attaining our ends but also these ultimate ends themselves. ‘Free thinking’ in the sense of materialistic monism, laicism and pragmatic acceptance of the world this side of the grave follow from this not indeed by logical necessity but nevertheless very naturally.” Ibid., p. 125.
“[B]y creating the social space for a new class that stood upon individual achievement in the economic field, it in turn attracted to that field the strong wills and the strong intellects.” Ibid., p. 124.
Ibid., p. 132.
Ibid., pp. 132–133.
Ibid., p. 131.
David McClelland, The Achieving Society (Princeton, NY: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1961), p. 205.
Ibid., p. 234.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Wealth” in The Conduct of Life (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1860), pp. 83–124.
Alain, op. cit., p. xlviii.
Michael Novack, Business as Calling. Work and the Examined Life (New York: The Free Press, 1996), p. 84. Novack is a Catholic theologian who has written extensively on American business culture.
Alain, op. cit., p. xlvi.
McClelland, op. cit., pp. 214–215.
Ibid., pp. 225–226.
Ibid., p. 228.
Weber, op. cit., p. 17.
McClelland, op. cit., p. 219.
Ibid., p. 210. In fact, he defines the relevant notion of “difficulty” as “decreasing probability of success.” Ibid., p. 215.
Schumpeter, op. cit., p. 73.
McClelland, op. cit., pp. 210–211.
Ibid., p. 214.
Frank Knight, Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit (New York: Kelley & McMillan, 1957), chapter VII.
Alain, op. cit., p. 1.
Aaron Ridley, “Nietzsche’s Intentions: What the Sovereign Individual Promises,” in K. Gemes & S. May (eds.), Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 181–196, p. 189. Ridley is here developing the notion first introduced by Robert Pippin that Nietzsche advocates an “expressive” conception of agency, according to which the “doer” (and his intentions) cannot neatly be separated from the “deed.” On the contrary, the deed expresses, and therefore may even reveal, his intentions to the doer. Robert Pippin, “Lightning and Flash, Agent and Deed (GM, I 6–17),” in O. Höffe (ed.), Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogie der Moral (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2004), 47–63.
He invokes research done by Marian Winterbottom, who argues that the religious ethics of the Reformation was in fact not at least directly causally responsible for the emergence of a capitalist culture. The values that fuel this culture are the secular values of competence, or proficiency, or mastery, which the religious ethics of the Protestant Reformation happened to promote. Winterbottom’s research revealed that Protestant mothers were more likely than their Catholic counterparts to instill these values in in their children (especially their sons) at a very early age (for example, expecting mastery and independence from them at an earlier age than Catholic mothers). See Marian Winterbottom, “The relation of need for achievement to learning experiences in independence and mastery,” in J. W. Atkinson (ed.), Motives in Fantasy, Action, and Society (Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand, 1958), 453–478, pp. 468–472.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (Cambridge, UK: Blackfriars, 1964).
I discuss this idea in detail in Reginster, “Ressentiment, Power, and Value,” in D. Came (ed.), Nietzsche on Morality and Affirmation (Oxford University Press, 2015).
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Reginster, B. Nietzsche, Proficiency, and the (New) Spirit of Capitalism. J Value Inquiry 49, 453–477 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-015-9500-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-015-9500-2