Nietzsche's Metaphilosophy: The Nature, Method, and Aims of Philosophy 110842225X, 9781108422253

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NIETZSCHE’S METAPHILOSOPHY

Recent Anglophone scholarship has successfully shown that Nietzsche’s thought makes important contributions to a wide range of contemporary philosophical debates. In so doing, however, this work has lost sight of another important feature of Nietzsche’s project, namely his desire to challenge the very conception of philosophy that has been used to assess his merits as a philosopher. In other words, contemporary scholarship has overlooked Nietzsche’s contributions to metaphilosophy – that is, debates around the nature, methods, and aims of philosophy. This important new collection of essays brings together an international group of distinguished scholars to explore and discuss these contributions and debates. It will appeal to anyone interested in metaphilosophy, Nietzsche studies, German studies, or intellectual history.  .  is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Puget Sound. He is the author of The Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (Cambridge University Press, ) and the co-translator, with David F. Tinsley, of Unpublished Fragments from the Period of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Summer –Winter /): The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, eds. A. D. Schrift and D. Large, vol.  ().   is Associate Professor of Philosophy at The University of Scranton. He is the author of Reading Nietzsche through the Ancients: An Analysis of Becoming, Perspectivism, and the Principle of Non-Contradiction () and Nietzsche’s Free Spirit Works: A Dialectical Reading (Cambridge University Press, ).

NIETZSCHE’S METAPHILOSOPHY The Nature, Method, and Aims of Philosophy

      PAUL S. LOEB University of Puget Sound

MATTHEW MEYER The University of Scranton

University Printing House, Cambridge  , United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, th Floor, New York,  , USA  Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne,  , Australia –, rd Floor, Plot , Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – , India  Anson Road, #–/, Singapore  Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/ : ./ © Cambridge University Press  This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published  Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd. Padstow Cornwall A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data : Loeb, Paul S., editor. : Nietzsche’s metaphilosophy : the nature, method, and aims of philosophy / edited by Paul S. Loeb, University of Puget Sound, Washington, Matthew Meyer, University of Scranton. : New York : Cambridge University Press, . | Includes bibliographical references and index. :   (print) |   (ebook) |   (hardback) |   (paperback) |   (epub) : : Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, –. | Philosophy. :   .  (print) |   (ebook) |  –dc LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/ LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/  ---- Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

List of Contributors Acknowledgments Note on Texts, Translations, and References List of Abbreviations Introduction

page vii x xi xii 

Paul S. Loeb and Matthew Meyer

    

Metaphilosophy and “Natural History”: Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil on the Free Spirit

 

Marco Brusotti



The Dialectics of Nietzsche’s Metaphilosophies



Matthew Meyer



Nietzsche as Metaphilosopher



Antoine Panaïoti

      

The Relationship between Science and Philosophy as a Key Feature of Nietzsche’s Metaphilosophy

 

Rebecca Bamford



Genuine Philosophers, Value-Creation, and Will to Power: An Exegesis of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil §



Paul S. Loeb



Nietzsche’s Masks: Philosophy and Religion in Beyond Good and Evil Robert B. Pippin v



vi

Contents

      

Nietzsche’s Affective Perspectivism as a Philosophical Methodology

 

Mark Alfano



Nietzsche’s Philosophical Naturalism



Tsarina Doyle



Nietzsche’s Moral Methodology



Paul Katsafanas

     



 Nietzsche’s Aesthetic Conception of Philosophy: A (Post-Kantian) Interpretation of The Gay Science §



João Constâncio

 Metaphilosophy and Metapolitics in Nietzsche and Heidegger  Beatrix Himmelmann

 Nietzsche’s Psychology of Metaphysics (or Metaphysics as Revenge)



Scott Jenkins

 “The Great Seriousness Begins”: Nietzsche’s Tragic Philosophy and Philosophy’s Role in Creating Healthier Racialized Identities



Jacqueline Scott

Bibliography Index

 

Contributors

Mark Alfano is Associate Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Technology at Delft University of Technology and Professor of Philosophy at Australian Catholic University. He is the author of Character as Moral Fiction (Cambridge University Press, ), Moral Psychology: An Introduction (), and Nietzsche’s Moral Psychology (Cambridge University Press, ). Rebecca Bamford is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Quinnipiac University and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the University of Fort Hare, East London. She is the editor of Nietzsche’s Free Spirit Philosophy (), and has also published numerous articles on Nietzsche’s philosophy, and on contemporary bioethics. Marco Brusotti is Professor of Contemporary Philosophy at the University of Salento and Lecturer in Philosophy (Privatdozent) at the Technische Universität Berlin. He is the author of Die Leidenschaft der Erkenntnis. Philosophie und ästhetische Lebensgestaltung bei Nietzsche von Morgenröthe bis Also sprach Zarathustra () and the editor, with Herman Siemens, João Constancio, and Tom Bailey, of the three-volume set Nietzsche’s Engagements with Kant and the Kantian Legacy (). João Constâncio is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Universidade Nova de Lisboa He is coeditor of five books on Nietzsche, including Nietzsche and Kantian Ethics () and Nietzsche and the Problem of Subjectivity (), as well as the author of Arte e niilismo: Nietzsche e o enigma do mundo (). Tsarina Doyle lectures in philosophy at the National University of Ireland Galway. She is the author of Nietzsche on Epistemology and Metaphysics: The World in View () and Nietzsche’s Metaphysics: The Possibility of Value (Cambridge University Press, ). vii

viii

Contributors

Beatrix Himmelmann is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tromsø – The Arctic University of Norway. She is the author of Kants Begriff des Glu¨cks () and Nietzsche (), and the editor of Kant und Nietzsche im Widerstreit (), On Meaning in Life (), and Why Be Moral? (). Scott Jenkins is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kansas. He has published articles on a number of topics in post-Kantian European philosophy. Paul Katsafanas is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Boston University. He is the author of two books: Agency and the Foundations of Ethics: Nietzschean Constitutivism () and The Nietzschean Self: Moral Psychology, Agency, and the Unconscious (). He edited The Nietzschean Mind (). Paul S. Loeb is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Puget Sound. He is the author of The Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (Cambridge University Press, ) and the co-translator, with David F. Tinsley, of Unpublished Fragments from the Period of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Summer  -Winter /): The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, eds. A. D. Schrift and D. Large, vol.  (). Matthew Meyer is Associate Professor of Philosophy at The University of Scranton. He is the author of Reading Nietzsche through the Ancients: An Analysis of Becoming, Perspectivism, and the Principle of Non-Contradiction () and Nietzsche’s Free Spirit Works: A Dialectical Reading (Cambridge University Press, ). Antoine Panaïoti is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Ryerson University. He is the author of Nietzsche and Buddhist Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, ) and of a number of essays on classical Indian Buddhist philosophy and its reception in Western philosophy and mind science. Robert B. Pippin is the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought, the Department of Philosophy, and the College at the University of Chicago. He is the author of several books on modern German philosophy, including Hegel’s Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness (), Modernism as a Philosophical Problem (), Hegel’s Practical Philosophy (), and After the Beautiful: Hegel and the Philosophy of Pictorial Modernism (). His most recent books are The Philosophical

Contributors

ix

Hitchcock: Vertigo and the Anxieties of Unknowingness () and Hegel’s Realm of Shadows: Logic as Metaphysics in The Science of Logic (). Jacqueline Scott is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. She is the coeditor (with Todd Franklin) of Critical Affinities: Nietzsche and African American Thought (State University of New York Press, ) as well as numerous articles on Nietzsche and contemporary race theory.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the editorial staff at Cambridge University Press, most notably Hilary Gaskin, Sophie Taylor, Hal Churchman, and Abigail Neale for guiding this project from an idea to publication. We would also like to thank the University of Scranton for providing financial support to complete this work.

x

Note on Texts, Translations, and References

The following abbreviations of Nietzsche’s works are used in this volume. The specific English translations used by each author are marked in a footnote after the first reference to a translated passage. The bibliography provides complete information for all translations used as well as for all cited secondary literature and the primary sources for Nietzsche’s texts. In the references to Nietzsche’s works, Roman numerals generally denote the volume number of a set of collected works or the standard subdivision within a single work, and Arabic numerals denote the relevant section number. “P” is the abbreviation for the preface to a given work (except for the preface to the  edition of BT). Page numbers are added when sections are long, providing more precise information about the relevant text. In citing Nietzsche’s notes in KGW and KSA, references provide the volume number (and part for KGW) followed by the relevant fragment number. In cases where Nietzsche’s works are cited from KSA, a page number is typically provided. In citing KGB, the division (in Roman numerals) and volume numbers (in Arabic numerals) are given and the relevant letter number. In citing KSB, the volume number is followed by the letter number.

xi

Abbreviations

Abbreviations for Nietzsche’s Collected Works in the Original German KGB KGW KSA KSB

Friedrich Friedrich Friedrich Friedrich

Nietzsche: Nietzsche: Nietzsche: Nietzsche:

Briefwechsel. Kritische Gesamtausgabe Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Studienausgabe Sämtliche Briefe. Kritische Studienausgabe

Abbreviations for Titles of Published Works AOM BGE BT

CW D DS GM GS HH HL

Vermischte Meinungen und Spru¨che (republished in  in Menschliches, Allzumenschliches II); translated as Assorted Opinions and Maxims Jenseits von Gut und Böse; translated as Beyond Good and Evil Die Geburt der Tragödie; translated as The Birth of Tragedy (the “Attempt at a Self-Criticism” added to the  edition is cited as “Attempt” followed by the relevant section number) Der Fall Wagner; translated as The Case of Wagner Morgenröthe; translated as Daybreak or Dawn David Strauss (Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen I); translated as David Strauss (Untimely Meditation I) Zur Genealogie der Moral; translated as On the Genealogy of Morals or On the Genealogy of Morality Die fröhliche Wissenschaft; translated as The Gay Science Menschliches, Allzumenschliches; translated as Human, All Too Human (references to the two-volume  edition are indicated by Roman numerals [HH I and HH II]) Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie fu¨r das Leben (Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen II); translated as On the xii

Abbreviations

RWB SE TI UM WS Z

xiii

Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life (Untimely Meditation II) Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen IV); translated as Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (Untimely Meditation IV) Schopenhauer als Erzieher (Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen III); translated as Schopenhauer as Educator (Untimely Meditation IV) Götzen-Dämmerung; translated as Twilight of the Idols (references include an abbreviated chapter title and section number) Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen; translated as Untimely Meditations Der Wanderer und sein Schatten (republished in  in Menschliches, Allzumenschliches II); translated as The Wanderer and His Shadow Also sprach Zarathustra (part IV originally published privately); translated as Thus Spoke Zarathustra (references include part number (I–IV), abbreviated section name, and section number if relevant)

Abbreviations for Private Publications, Authorized Manuscripts, and Unpublished Works A EH

HC PPP PT PTAG TL

Der Antichrist; translated as The Antichrist and The Anti-Christ Ecce homo; translated as Ecce Homo (references include abbreviated chapter title and section number; in the chapter “Books,” the section number is preceded by the abbreviation of the relevant book title) “Homer’s Wettkampf”; translated as “Homer’s Contest” (references are to page numbers) “Die vorplatonischen Philosophen”; translated as The Pre-Platonic Philosophers (references are to page numbers) “Über das Pathos der Wahrheit”; translated as “On the Pathos of Truth” “Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen”; translated as Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks “Über Wahrheit und Lu¨ge im aussermoralischen Sinne”; translated as “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense,” “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense,” or “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense.”

xiv

Abbreviations

Abbreviations for Nietzsche’s Notebooks and Translations of Notebook Material CWFN

WLN WP

The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (for volumes that include Nietzsche’s unpublished writings, these are cited by volume number and fragment number; for volumes that are translations of Nietzsche’s published works, they are referenced by the abbreviation of the translated work and corresponding year of publication) Friedrich Nietzsche: Writings from Late Notebooks (cited with page number) Der Wille zur Macht; translated as The Will to Power (always cited with corresponding entry from KSA or KGW)

Introduction Paul S. Loeb and Matthew Meyer

“What is philosophy?” is a question first raised by Plato when he invented the term and drew a sharp distinction between philosophical inquiry, on the one hand, and Homeric poetry, pre-Socratic natural science, and Sophistic argumentation, on the other. Plato’s definitional answer was that philosophy is the love of wisdom, which meant a search for truth, conducted primarily in the foundational areas of ontology, epistemology, and philosophy of mind, and having important consequences for the axiological fields of ethics, politics, and aesthetics. This answer remained constant throughout the subsequent history of philosophy, despite the important glosses added by Aristotle’s teleology, Descartes’ dualism, Hume’s skepticism, Kant’s idealism, Hegel’s historicism, and Schopenhauer’s voluntarism. Nietzsche was one of the first Western thinkers to take issue with Plato’s influential metaphilosophical definition and distinctions. He attacked Platonic rationalism in all his works and criticized the Platonic will to truth in his later writings. He challenged Plato’s Socratic equation of knowledge, virtue, and happiness and he argued that it was actually Plato’s understanding of knowledge as power that impelled him to legislate new anti-Homeric values. He weaved together poetry and philosophy in his magnum opus, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and he called for a new species of philosophers in Beyond Good and Evil. In short, Nietzsche initiated a series of anti-Platonic philosophical reflections about the nature of philosophy. Nietzsche’s vigorous challenge to the philosophers’ traditional conception of their practice has been the starting point for some of the most influential studies of his thought. Philosophers, historians of philosophy, and scholars specializing in Nietzsche have aimed to show that his writings should nevertheless be counted as philosophical – either because they are not as different from traditional philosophy as he claims or because they are innovating the field with a new and important vision of what 

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 .    

philosophy should be. Those taking the former approach include Martin Heidegger, Walter Kaufmann, Arthur Danto, Richard Schacht, Maudemarie Clark, John Richardson, and Brian Leiter. Those taking the latter approach include Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Alexander Nehamas, Bernard Williams, Richard Rorty, and Robert Pippin. Some of the central questions in this ongoing conversation have been: What is Nietzsche’s own philosophical method (if any)? Is it permissible for him to avoid logical argumentation in favor of experimental and affective rhetorical strategies? Does Nietzsche think that philosophy is continuous with the natural sciences or is it supposed to be an autonomous value-legislating activity that guides them? Nietzsche offers a radical critique of all theological thinking but does this mean there is no room left for any religiosity in his philosophy? Given Nietzsche’s critique of the unconstrained will to truth, does he think that philosophy should aim at some kind of truth, objectivity, or systematic knowledge, and, if so, what kind? What should we make of Nietzsche’s emphasis on the literary, poetic, and artistic aspects of philosophical thought and how should we interpret his own poetic philosophizing in works like The Gay Science and Zarathustra? Why does Nietzsche spend so much time looking at the origins of philosophical theories and what is his conception of philosophical progress? How does Nietzsche understand the relationship between philosophy and metaphysics and does he himself propose any metaphysical ideas or theories? What are we to make of Nietzsche’s emphasis on seeing philosophy through the perspectival optics of life and on evaluating philosophers according to their strength or health? To what extent does Nietzsche reduce the activity of philosophy to psychology or even autobiography? In what ways does Nietzsche aim to restore the ancient conception of philosophy as a therapeutic way of life and how should we interpret his association of philosophy with the tragic? The purpose of this new collection of essays on Nietzsche’s metaphilosophy is to continue this ongoing conversation in a more explicit, concentrated, and self-conscious manner. By Nietzsche’s metaphilosophy, we mean his first-order and prescriptive philosophical investigation into the nature, method, and aim of philosophy. Thus, by inquiring into Nietzsche’s metaphilosophy, we are seeking his answers to three questions: What should philosophy be? How should philosophy be done? Why, or to 

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what end, should philosophy be practiced? Any learned student of Nietzsche will agree that there is a wealth of such reflections in his texts and that this is one of his most interesting and valuable contributions to philosophy. To think deeply about Nietzsche is to be forced to confront and evaluate his very original and distinctive metaphilosophical philosophizing. This is because, like Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel before him, Nietzsche believed that his philosophizing about philosophy determined the course of his philosophizing about everything else. At the same time, this means that Nietzsche’s metaphilosophical positions, like those of his predecessors, are often bound up with answers to more standard philosophical questions, and so the essays in this volume will also engage with these answers and the current debates about them. As the editors of this volume, we are especially interested in these questions, and we have invited leading scholars in the international field of Nietzsche studies to contribute their responses. By facilitating this thematic conversation, we hope to advance the topic of metaphilosophy to the forefront of Nietzsche studies and to help make it possible for scholars to address this topic as an independent area of investigation. In so doing, we also hope to bring Nietzsche’s metaphilosophical reflections to the attention of those working in the burgeoning field of metaphilosophy. This is because contemporary metaphilosophical investigations often have an historical component, and we hope that this anthology will help to place Nietzsche within the canon of innovative and influential metaphilosophical philosophers. We begin our volume in Part I by considering the evolution of Nietzsche’s metaphilosophical views throughout the course of his career. The first two contributors, Marco Brusotti and Matthew Meyer, are interested in tracking this development with special attention to Nietzsche’s pivotal concept of the free spirit, while the third, Antoine Panaïoti, dwells on Nietzsche’s poetic images and metaphors. For Brusotti, the key moments are Nietzsche’s naturalistic emphasis in Human, All Too Human on philosophy as an historical form of inquiry, his resulting prescriptive decision in Beyond Good and Evil that the philosopher of the future is supposed to create values, and his final shift in Ecce Homo to thinking of himself as performing just this task. Meyer, by contrast, claims that even in his earliest writings, starting with his discussion of the pre-Platonic philosophers in Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, Nietzsche is already committed to thinking of the philosopher as an artistic value-creator. However, he argues, Nietzsche constructs his “free spirit” works (from Human through The Gay Science)

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 .    

as a dialectical Bildungsroman in which the traditional conception of philosophy, as the search for truth at all costs, undergoes a selfovercoming and thereby makes possible, in Beyond Good and Evil, the aesthetic conception of philosophy sketched in his earliest works. Panaïoti supplements both these accounts with his discussion of Nietzsche’s early unpublished and unfinished essay on truth, “On the Pathos of Truth,” his essay on Schopenhauer, Schopenhauer as Educator, and his poetic magnum opus, Zarathustra. In his view, Nietzsche’s early writings are especially concerned with the question of how the philosopher’s inspired personal truth, unlike that of the scientist or scholar, can involve myth and illusion; and his mature writings answer this question by emphasizing the world-historical context of the philosopher’s futuristic and transgressive legislative task. In Part II, our contributors discuss Nietzsche’s conception of the nature of philosophy compared to religion and the natural sciences. Like Meyer, Rebecca Bamford is especially interested in Nietzsche’s “free spirit” writings, especially Human, Daybreak, and The Gay Science. She argues that his project in these unified texts conceives philosophy as a kind of experimental form of inquiry that is best suited for a dynamic and co-constitutive partnership with the natural and physical sciences. Like Brusotti, Robert B. Pippin and Paul S. Loeb concentrate instead on Nietzsche’s later text, Beyond Good and Evil. According to Pippin, Nietzsche’s esoteric writing practice in this book helps him to convey his own philosophical religiosity (including especially his reverential gratitude for existence) and also his philosophical admiration for the pedagogical and ennobling benefits of the religious way of life. By contrast with Bamford and Pippin, Loeb argues that Nietzsche hopes to emancipate genuine philosophers (as exemplified by his idealized Zarathustra) from the long-standing ascetic influence of science and religion in order that they may finally embrace their proper role as the autonomous value-creating rulers in both these spheres. In Part III, our contributors turn to discuss the question of Nietzsche’s philosophical methodology. According to Mark Alfano, the central epistemic component is affective perspectivism, that is, Nietzsche’s use of rhetorical tropes (such as apostrophic address) to orient and reorient the knowledge-gathering perspectives of his readers by engaging, modulating, and inducing their affects, emotions, drives, values, and virtues. Tsarina Doyle explores this theme further by proposing that, according to Nietzsche, value-legislating philosophers employ a distinctive methodology that involves adopting a broad and elevated perspective that considers the

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Introduction



evaluative human being’s immersion in the natural world but avoids the reductionist practices of the natural sciences. Nietzsche’s will-to-power thesis, she argues, provides him with a new and nondualist account of how our values fit into nature by identifying values themselves as causes or degrees of power of psychic drives. Paul Katsafanas also focuses on Nietzsche’s account of values, but he is more interested in outlining the methodology whereby Nietzsche rationally compares and assesses competing sets of normative claims – namely, by articulating various rationally defensible constraints, such as not presupposing false claims about human agency and not issuing prescriptions that ultimately undermine human flourishing. Finally, in Part IV, our contributors discuss Nietzsche’s view of the aims of philosophy. Beatrix Himmelmann and Scott Jenkins are both interested in his account of the role of traditional metaphysics. Dwelling especially on Nietzsche’s critique of Schopenhauer and on his remarks in the “Reason” section of Twilight of the Idols, Jenkins argues that, according to Nietzsche, metaphysical value judgments about a supersensible realm have the same psychological function as moral judgments about human actions. They satisfy the philosophers’ feelings of ressentiment and they serve as a vehicle for their vengeful fantasies of punishing and destroying those aspects of reality (such as becoming) that they perceive to be the cause of their suffering. For Himmelmann, by contrast, there is an instructive comparison to be drawn between the critiques of traditional metaphysics posed by Nietzsche and by his most famous interpreter, Martin Heidegger. According to her analysis, both of them claim to have developed a nonmetaphysical philosophy of finitude that will do justice to the reality of human life and human endowments. But she thinks that Nietzsche’s genealogical investigation of dynamic and agonistic will to power is far more successful in this respect than Heidegger’s nonempirical inquiry into transcendent Being. Like Jenkins and Himmelmann, João Constâncio and Jacqueline Scott agree that according to Nietzsche one of the most important goals of philosophy is to show human beings how to affirm life and avoid nihilism. Constâncio and Scott argue in addition that Nietzsche’s concern with aesthetic taste and the sense for the tragic are essential to this goal. As support, each of them offers an analysis of a central passage in Book V of The Gay Science. According to Constâncio, GS  presents Nietzsche’s view that philosophy should involve the exercising of one’s aesthetic good taste by engaging in a quasi-Kantian reflective activity – that is, in an imaginative, experimental multiplication of affective perspectives – that allows one to acknowledge, question, and revere the tragic mystery,

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uncertainty, and ambiguity of existence (as admitting infinite interpretations). By contrast, Scott argues that GS  presents Nietzsche’s view that philosophy should incorporate a pessimism of strength, that is, one’s courageous and cheerful acceptance of the tragic, problematic, and nihilistic nature of human existence (as characterized by meaningless suffering) and one’s use of the pain involved in this acceptance as a stimulus to the artistic creation of meanings and values that allow one to affirm one’s present-day life.

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Evolving Metaphilosophies

 

Metaphilosophy and “Natural History” Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil on the Free Spirit Marco Brusotti

One way of dealing with the question “what is philosophy?” is asking what a philosopher is – or should be. For Nietzsche, this is a fundamental issue. He often frames the question in genetic terms: how does one become a philosopher? Giving an answer to this question is the task of the “natural history [Naturgeschichte]” of the free spirit. It is not an impersonal question: Nietzsche himself functions as the model for the free spirit (or superior man) whose “natural history” he intends to write. Focusing on the writing process that led to Beyond Good and Evil, the present chapter reconstructs this project and its metaphilosophical implications (see Section .), asking whether this “natural history” can be qualified as naturalistic (see Section .). In the writings of , questions about Nietzsche himself and his personal role in history come to take the place of general issues concerning the philosopher and his task. The conclusion of the chapter will briefly address this shift.

. The Natural History of the Free Spirit In , Heinrich Köselitz writes to Nietzsche that “even the most honest philosopher . . . depicts himself without any embarrassment whatsoever, for instance when he writes a natural history of the genius.” Although Köselitz does not refer explicitly to Nietzsche, his remark could be read as an implicit reference to his correspondent: the author of Human, All Too Human would be this “most honest philosopher” who, in writing a “natural history of the genius,” ends up delivering a self-portrait. In any case, Köselitz says of this peculiar “natural history” what an aphorism from Human claims of knowledge in general: “Life as the yield of life. – No matter how far a man may extend himself with his knowledge, no matter 

“selbst der redlichste Philosoph . . . z.B., wenn er eine Naturgeschichte des Genie’s schreibt, ganz ungeniert sich hinmalt” (KGB II/.: ).

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how objectively he may come to view himself, in the end it can yield to him nothing but his own biography” (HH ). Some years later, in Beyond Good and Evil, writing their own autobiography seems to be the general destiny of the “great philosophers” – rather than of would-be “natural historians”: “every great philosophy so far” has been such a naive self-portraiture, “namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.” In particular, it is the morals a philosopher advocates that show “who he is – that is, in what order of rank the innermost drives of his nature stand in relation to each other” (BGE ). To this extent, the task now is to bring to light the drives that turn philosophies into unconfessed autobiographies. A corresponding way of doing philosophy would be to engage in painting a sort of conscious self-portrait. Would this be possible? In the mid-s, Nietzsche intended to write a “natural history [Naturgeschichte],” if not of the genius (as in Köselitz’s letter), then of the superior man and/or of the free spirit. This project involves writing a natural history of Nietzsche himself, even if not merely of “Mister Nietzsche” (GS P:). At least for a while, Nietzsche conceived the whole book he was working on – Beyond Good and Evil – as such a natural history of the free spirit (or superior man). In this book, however, the term “natural history” surfaces only once, in the title of part five: “On the Natural History of Morals [zur Naturgeschichte der Moral ].” Thus, Beyond Good and Evil does not define the concept of “natural history”; even in part five, the term does not occur in any of its aphorisms, but only in the title. During the complex genesis of the book, Nietzsche had tried to use the term in different contexts. The different working titles, schemes, and tables of contents drafted during the writing process show a certain indecision: in each of them, the term “natural history” occurs in a different position and/or with a different role. Only after taking different alternatives into consideration did Nietzsche select the term for the title of a chapter whose earlier working titles had instead laid the focus on psychology. Finally, however, in a late table of contents, the title “Fingerzeige eines Moral-Psychologen [Hints by a Psychologist of Morality]” was deleted and substituted with “On the Natural History of Morality [Zur Naturgeschichte der Moral ]” (KGW IX/: W I , p. ). 

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“Moral-Psychologie” (KGW IX/: W I , p. ), “Zur Moral-Psychologie” or “Fingerzeige eines Moral-Psychologen,” as well as “Selbstgespräch eines Psychologen” (KGW IX/: W I , p. ). These titles for the Hauptstu¨ck on moral psychology occur in drafts of “Zur Naturgeschichte des höheren Menschen” (KGW IX/: W I , p.  f ).

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Given this late decision, one might wonder how far the new title really corresponds to the content. Indeed, most of the aphorisms that comprise this fifth part are no more closely connected with natural history than the content of other sections of the work. Moreover, a few of the aphorisms of part five deal with something more specific than a natural history of morality in general. During the complex genesis of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche had focused on the natural history of the superior man, of the free spirit, or even of the scholar. In these earlier stages, as the term “natural history” occurred mainly with a narrower scope, Nietzsche considered “On the Natural History of the Free Spirit” or “On the Natural History of the Superior Man” not only as working titles for a Hauptstu¨ck, but occasionally also for the entire book – and thus as possible alternatives to “Beyond Good and Evil.” In these schemes, natural history even seems to be the encompassing theme of the book. What should such a natural history accomplish? According to an aphorism of part seven (“Our Virtues”), man in general must be conceived as homo natura. This general task of “translat[ing] man back into nature” (BGE ) involves the more particular one of providing a natural history of the free spirit. Thus, the free spirit must translate even himself back into nature. The task of recognizing “the basic text of homo natura” requires one to become master over the many vain and overly enthusiastic interpretations and connotations that have so far been scrawled and painted over that eternal basic text of homo natura; to see to it that man henceforth stands before man as even today, hardened in the discipline of science, he stands before the rest of nature, with intrepid Oedipus eyes and sealed Odysseus ears, deaf to the siren songs of old metaphysical bird catchers who have been piping at him all too long, “you are more, you are higher, you are of a different origin!” (BGE ) 



 

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“Zur Naturgeschichte des freien Geistes” (KGW IX/: W I , p. ; KSA :[]; KGW IX/: W I , p. ; KSA :[]) was a working title for the Hauptstu¨ck whose final version is called simply “der freie Geist.” For the working title “Zur Naturgeschichte des höheren Menschen,” cf. KGW IX/: W I , p. ; KSA :[]. “Zur Naturgeschichte des freien Geistes. Gedanken und Gedankenstriche” (KGW IX/: W I , p. ; KSA :[]; cf. KGW IX/: W I , p. ; KSA :[]). “Zur Naturgeschichte des höheren Menschen. Gedanken eines Mu¨ssiggängers” (KGW IX/: W I , p. ; KSA :[]). “Zur Naturgeschichte des höheren Menschen. Gedanken eines Erziehers” (KGW IX/: W I , p. ; KSA :[]). “Zur Naturgeschichte des höheren Menschen. Gedanken eines Erziehers. Psychologen” (KGW IX/: W I , p. ; KSA :[]). At one point, for instance, “what is noble?” (“was ist vornehm?”) was conceived as a section of this “natural history of the Superior Man” (KGW IX/: W I , p. ; KSA :[]). This aphorism employs a whole array of intersecting metaphors and similes to describe the multifarious errors of metaphysical anthropology as well as the different ways of eliminating them.

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How should we explain why someone – and not least Nietzsche himself – would take up this “strange and insane task” of translating man back into nature? This question leads us from the more general issue – a natural history of man – to the more particular one of a natural history of the free spirit himself. The free spirit himself may not understand why he endeavors to conceive of man as homo natura. One possible answer is anticipated at the beginning of the aphorism: his “extravagant honesty” compels him to do so. But, the aphorism argues such attributes are born out of vanity, and the free spirit must refrain from cultivating them. Thus, even “honesty,” the pet word of Daybreak and The Gay Science, belongs to the “overly enthusiastic interpretations” over which Nietzsche wants to become master. But why should one give up such self-designations? This central problem of the natural history of the free spirit belongs closely together with the first of the two questions posed in the first aphorism of Beyond Good and Evil. The preface had playfully blamed “all philosophers, insofar as they were dogmatists,” of using “awkward and very improper methods” (BGE P) to find the truth. This clumsiness contrasts with the fact that “all philosophers so far have spoken with respect” of “truthfulness” (BGE ). Nietzsche intends to be the first to take a less reverential attitude toward the “will to truth” (BGE ). First he asks a “question about the causes of this will”: “What in us does really want ‘truth’?” (BGE ). He then addresses the “still more basic” question “about the value of this will. Suppose we want truth: why not rather untruth? and uncertainty? even ignorance?” (BGE ). This “problem of the value of truth” is the fundamental question that “had been never put so far”; nobody had “dared” (BGE ) to ask it yet. BGE  then rejects the fundamental metaphysical thesis that opposite values cannot be derived from each other and puts forward the hypothesis that “the will to truth” originated “out of the will to deception” (BGE ). This genetic hypothesis – as well as the natural history of the free spirit – answers the “question about the causes” of the will to truth as a preliminary for facing the more fundamental problem of its “value” (BGE ). However, aphorisms BGE  and BGE  describe a more complicated and conflictual relation between the “will to truth” and the “will to deception” (BGE ) than aphorism BGE . In someone like Nietzsche, The Nietzschean philosopher is compared with a philologist who has to restore the original text from a corrupted translation and to recover a meaning concealed by its many commentaries. Here, the metaphoric opposition between the one “eternal basic text” and its “many . . . interpretations and connotations” should not be overinterpreted. Nietzsche does not mean that the philosopher can gain direct access to the “eternal basic text” without interpretation.

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“the basic will of the spirit which unceasingly strives for the apparent and superficial” (BGE ) is opposed by “a kind of cruelty of the intellectual conscience and taste” (BGE ). Finally, he acknowledges that “there is something cruel in the inclination of my spirit” (BGE ). He offers this as an interpretation of his own main virtue. Is cruelty the reason why the free spirit understands man in general and himself in particular as homo natura? The aphorism suggests this, even if the conclusion of the text is intentionally ambiguous.

. Philosophy and Science Human had already aimed to gain insights into the history of man as a natural being. The book insists that Nietzsche’s “historical philosophizing” is continuous with the historical and the natural sciences (first and foremost with Darwinian biology). Human pleads for a “historical philosophy . . . which can no longer be separated from natural science.” “Only now [that] the individual sciences have attained their present level” is this “youngest of all philosophical methods” possible, which is at its core a “chemistry of the moral, religious and aesthetic conceptions and sensations, likewise of all the agitations we experience within ourselves in cultural and social intercourse, and indeed even when we are alone” (HH ). Philosophy must cooperate with the historical and natural sciences because what needs elucidating are processes of genesis and development that are at the same time both natural and cultural/ historical; “there are no eternal facts,” and – since not only “man,” but “everything has become” – “what is needed from now on is historical philosophizing” (HH ). In Beyond Good and Evil, science and philosophy are less straightforwardly continuous than in Human. Part six of Beyond Good an Evil, “We Scholars [Wir Gelehrten],” introduces the specificity of philosophy in an anti-positivistic mood. Nietzsche detects “an unseemly and harmful shift in the respective ranks of science and philosophy” and insists that philosophy cannot be reduced and should not be subordinated to science (cf. BGE ). A working title for “We Scholars” was “For the Natural History of the Scholar.” The aphorisms of this Hauptstu¨ck provide something like a natural history not only of the scholar, but also of the philosopher.  

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For a much more detailed genetic reading of this aphorism, see Brusotti (). “Zur Naturgeschichte des Gelehrten” (KGW IX/: N VII , p. ; KSA :[]).

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Adopting a genetic approach, Nietzsche reconstructs, even if only summarily, the “genesis” (BGE ) or the “development” (BGE ) of the philosopher. Given the sharp distinction between scholars and genuine philosophers, the title “We Scholars” may sound strange. Why does Nietzsche count himself as belonging to the scholars? Like Nietzsche himself, genuine philosophers may have been scholars at an earlier stage of their life; they must then have gone through a series of preliminary stages if they are to fulfill their main task. Thus, the title “We Scholars” does not necessarily exclude genuine philosophers – and it does include Nietzsche. That he counts himself as belonging to different groups is shown by the fact that he does not use the first-person plural only for the scholars: “our” virtues are not necessarily the virtues of “us” scholars; not all of “us” scholars belong to “us” good Europeans; and, still more importantly, very few of “us” scholars, perhaps only Nietzsche himself, belong to “us” heralds and precursors of the philosophers of the future. Thus, the reader should not assume that the selected group is the same in all cases. Sometimes the first-person plural comes close to a pluralis majestatis standing simply for Nietzsche himself; sometimes the group consists of Nietzsche plus other, mostly imaginary or as-yet unborn, people (we “good Europeans” for instance) and/or is an invitation to a few of his potential readers to join the group. A group of which Nietzsche does not count himself a member is that of the “philosophers of the future.” Yet, how clear-cut really is the distinction between the philosophers of the future and their present heralds and precursors, among which the author of the “prelude” counts himself? The distinction between the “forerunners” and the “new philosophers” (BGE ) is blurred on at least one occasion. In general, however, Nietzsche sets himself – “us” – apart from the “new philosophers” or “philosophers of the future,” for which he mostly uses the third person, singular or plural. 

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The ambiguity is, I think, intentional: at first, the aphorism seems to suggest, even if only paratactically, that the “new philosophers” are “forerunners,” “men of the future . . . in the present” (BGE ); in the following, however, Nietzsche himself and the present “free spirits” are clearly distinguished from the “new type of philosophers and commanders” who will necessarily appear “at some time [irgendwann einmal]” in the future. Besides, in Beyond Good and Evil and in On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche sometimes describes something at one point as a task for the future and at another as something he himself has already achieved. Thus, aphorism BGE  outlines “two basic types” and the well-known “basic difference” between “master morality and slave morality,” whereas BGE  explains that the moment for “a typology of morals” has not yet come. For an analysis of this example see Brusotti (). On the note at the end of the first essay of the Genealogy, see Brusotti ().

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Beyond Good and Evil presents itself as a Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future and announces a new kind of philosopher, the “philosophers of the future.” Here, Nietzsche assigns a temporal, historical index to both questions: “what is philosophy?” and “what is a philosopher?” In a postmetaphysical horizon, the open metaphilosophical issues concern the future: the philosophy and the philosophers of tomorrow. The “prelude” to a philosophy of the future leaves it unclear how this philosophy – introduced as a, not as the, philosophy of the future – is related to Nietzsche’s own. How much of this philosophy of the future does the “prelude” already deliver? Is this philosophy perhaps simply Nietzsche’s own philosophy in disguise? Is it the philosophy of the philosophers of the future? These seem to belong more univocally to the future than the “philosophy of the future.” However, Beyond Good and Evil deals not only with the philosophers of the future, but speaks also of the genuine philosopher without an explicit temporal index, even if, besides Nietzsche himself, such “genuine philosophers” do not really seem to have existed yet. Philosophy is meant to be the main task of these philosophers rather than their whole activity. As we have already seen, they must have been something other than philosophers earlier in their life. Even if the “scientific workers of philosophy” (BGE ) should not be mistaken for philosophers in the proper sense of the term, the latter may even have been “philosophical workers” themselves in the past; for only such progress through a series of stages allows “genuine philosophers” to fulfill their main task, a task that “itself demands something different – it demands that the genuine philosopher create values” (BGE ). Genuine philosophers, however, are commanders and legislators: they say, “thus it shall be!” They first determine the Whither and For What of man, and in so doing have at their disposal the preliminary labour of all philosophical labourers, all who have overcome the past. With a creative hand they reach for the future, and all that is and has been becomes a means for them, an instrument, a hammer. Their “knowing” is creating, their creating is a legislation, their will to truth is – will to power. Are there such philosophers today? Have there been such philosophers yet? Must there not be such philosophers? (BGE )

In Ecce Homo, the straightforward reply to these questions would be: there is such a philosopher, namely Nietzsche himself, and nobody before him. (Heraclitus may be an exception; cf. EH “Books” BT:; TI “Reason” ). The aphorism from “We Scholars,” however, refrains from giving the answer “yes, Nietzsche himself” and leaves the three final questions unanswered. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche already had very definite

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opinions about the philosophy of the past (the metaphysical tradition) and the philosophy of the present. Only a few “preplatonic philosophers” come into question as “legislators,” if any do at all. Kant and Hegel are explicitly denied this privileged status; Nietzsche counts them only as belonging to the “philosophical workers.” Thus, the third and final question of BGE  is principally devoted to the issue of whether there will be such genuine philosophers in the future. Given the crucial difference between the old and the “new species of philosophers” (BGE ), Beyond Good and Evil comes quite close to the idea that only the “philosophers of the future” could be philosophers in the proper sense of the term. Does the reader deem them to be necessary, even if they have not yet existed? The question is a provocation and an invitation, a temptation and perhaps a promise. In this sense, the whole of part six is itself a “legislation” proposal. Rather than claiming to know what the philosophers of the future will be, Nietzsche says what they could and should be – and this is rather a prescription than a forecast. In creating the philosophical ideal of the “legislator” and “creator of values,” Nietzsche himself fulfills just the creative task he attributes to the genuine philosopher – and to the philosophers of the future. BGE  comes very close to a definition of the philosopher’s task as demanding “that he create values” (BGE ). Just this – including the subversion of received values – is the task of the “new philosophers,” “spirits strong and original enough to provide the stimuli for opposite valuations and to revalue and invert ‘eternal values’” (BGE ). Since the new valuations are the “opposite” of the received, allegedly eternal values, creating the former involves revaluing and inverting the latter. Thus, philosophy has a peculiar task, which is very different from the goals of science. The sciences deal with causal questions, philosophers with value issues. These are genuine philosophical questions. Solving causal problems may somehow be a preliminary - neither decisive nor irrelevant - contribution to fulfilling the philosopher’s central task of “creating” new values. Even if this seems an artistic rather than a scientific task, the sciences may help to accomplish it. The note at the end of the first treatise of On the Genealogy of Morals outlines a large-scale research program, in which “all sciences” should – and thus seem to be able to – carry out preparatory studies on behalf of 

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Philosophy does indeed begin with such a legislator, Thales, and with the “Legislation of greatness [Gesetzgebung der Größe]” (PTAG ; my translation), and its productive period ends before Plato.

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the philosopher. Rarely does Nietzsche elaborate his ideas about cooperation between the sciences, and between the sciences and philosophy, in such a systematic way. In Nietzsche’s Streitschrift, the sciences are the object of genealogical treatment and a target of criticism, but, at the same time, they are the indispensable tool of both genetic inquiry and critical evaluation. Here, I will be dealing exclusively with this instrumental role. The second of the two research projects outlined in the note begins with a critical attempt to determine “the value of all previous valuations.” “[T]he professional philosophers [Fach-Philosophen]” should be no less involved in this inter- and trans-disciplinary research program than humanities scholars and natural scientists; in particular, the “academic philosophers [Universitätsphilosophen]” – rather than Nietzsche’s legislators – should cooperate with historians and ethnologists, but first and foremost with “physiologists and doctors.” “Indeed, every table of values, every ‘thou shalt’ known to history or the study of ethnology, needs first and foremost a physiological elucidation and interpretation, rather than a psychological one; and all of them await critical study from medical science” (GM I:Note). These three main (preliminary) subtasks – collecting the historical-ethnological material, giving it a physiological interpretation and formulating a medical criticism – are preconditions of a fourth, decisive task: the philosopher must solve “the problem of value” (GM I:Note). The assessment of “the value of all previous valuations” is only preparatory. Only after those causal investigations have been completed does the philosopher, here Nietzsche’s legislator (not “the professional philosophers”), take up the reins. All sciences must, from now on, prepare the way for the future task of the philosopher: this task being understood to mean that the philosopher has to solve [lösen] the problem of value and that he has to determine [bestimmen] the rank order of values. (GM I:Note)

In what exactly does this future task of solving “the problem of value” and determining “the rank order of values” consist? The verbs used here – to “solve [lösen]” and to “determine [bestimmen]” – may seem to suggest that a solution has to be “found” and that something has to be “determined” in the sense of “discovered.” However, the only way to solve the problem of value is to take a decision and to set new values. This decision is rather a fiat – or a “thus it shall be!” (BGE ). The values whose “rank order” (GM I:Note) has to be decided on include the allegedly “eternal values” as well as the “opposite valuations” (BGE ) created by the new philosophers.

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Nietzsche draws a clear distinction between a preliminary interdisciplinary inquiry into the causes of the historically given values and the still nobler, purely philosophical task of deciding the rank order of values – the task of creating new ones that genuine philosophers claim exclusively for themselves. Should this distinction be conceived as discontinuity between a naturalistic and a non-naturalistic part of Nietzsche’s philosophy? Is he a naturalist when he tries to explain historically given values but not when he intends to create new ones? This distinction is artificial, however, because it is born out of a too narrow conception of naturalism. Brian Leiter () distinguishes between “the Humean Nietzsche” and “the Therapeutic Nietzsche.” The Humean Nietzsche that interests Leiter intends to explain morality in naturalistically respectable terms. In Nietzsche’s therapeutic project, however, naturalism is enlisted on behalf of therapeutic aims that are independent of it. Skeptical about the efficacy of reasons and arguments, this Therapeutic Nietzsche, rather than employ rational persuasion, avails himself of a variety of rhetorical devices. Thus, Leiter suggests, the therapeutic aims are not naturalistic and their respective methods not rationally sound. With this distinction, Leiter intends to make a concession to the critics of his minimalistic naturalistic reading: in Nietzsche’s writings, the reader finds not only “naturalism,” but also a “therapeutic project.” Yet Leiter’s distinction stems from a too narrow conception of naturalism. Nietzsche really intends to use the sciences for independent purposes that deviate from the old ideal that still dominates them; for – he thinks – they lack intrinsic goals and an ideal of their own. The note at the end of the first essay of the Genealogy deals with the “preliminary work [Vorarbeiten]” all sciences must perform on behalf of the philosopher. While this preliminary interdisciplinary work is purely instrumental, the philosopher’s main task of setting values is the final justification of the whole enterprise. Hence, applying Leiter’s distinction to this paratext would lead to an implausible consequence: only the first purely instrumental phases of the research program would be naturalistic, not the main philosophical task itself. For Nietzsche, however, this allegedly non-naturalistic part is the final goal of the whole. The note does not describe two parallel projects, but two consecutive phases of the same project. A possible coexistence of naturalism and therapeutic project is not at issue. And even the claim that naturalism is here followed by a non-naturalistic therapeutic project would be misleading; for, if this part is non-naturalistic, then the whole program does not deserve to be called naturalistic. Creating new values is so central for

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Nietzsche that it makes little sense to call his philosophy naturalistic and leave out the creation of values. If creating new values does not belong to his naturalism, his philosophy as a whole is non-naturalistic. This option does not seem attractive to naturalists. To the extent that the issue is a question of definition, Nietzsche scholars are free to make their own decisions about linguistic usage. But these decisions are not without consequences. Should we conclude that creating new values belongs to Nietzsche’s naturalism? In any case, it belongs to his philosophy – and to research programs like the one outlined in the note to the Genealogy.

. Conclusion Beyond Good and Evil would still do justice to the rejected title “For a Natural History of the Free Spirit.” Even Nietzsche’s next publication, the prefaces for a new edition of his pre-Zarathustrian writings (–), could bear this title. Many scholars do not consider it appropriate to call these prefaces and/ or especially Ecce Homo “autobiographies.” Thus, the most multifarious denominations have been proposed: from the malicious “auto-hagiography” through “auto-bibliography” up to “auto-genealogy.” Nietzsche, however, never uses the term “genealogy” in this context. Instead, the “natural history of the free spirit” is a designation that he almost authorized – almost, since he used it only for the book that would become Beyond Good and Evil. Both the first and the last aphorism of “We Scholars” focus on personal experience, setting the frame for the whole discussion. The first aphorism (BGE ) claims that personal experience is an indispensable precondition for dealing adequately with as central a metaphilosophical issue as the relative value of science and philosophy. By the end of the chapter, the reader may have become uneasy about the personal way in which the issue has been dealt with; and the last aphorism warns that just this personal approach is in fact the only legitimate one: one cannot learn what a philosopher is, unless one already “knows” it from one’s own experience. “What a philosopher is, that is hard to learn because it cannot be taught: one must ‘know’ it from experience – or one should have the pride not to  

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know it” (BGE ). Even if aphorism  may come very close to a definition of the philosopher’s task as the demand “that he create values” (BGE ), only those who share a certain experience with the author will be able to understand such apparently plain “definitions.” Beyond Good and Evil does not simply identify the genesis of the philosopher with Nietzsche’s own development, and still less does the book claim that he already fulfills the task of the philosophers of the future. Nevertheless, Nietzsche himself functions more or less implicitly as the model for the description of the philosopher’s progress. The prefaces of – go further: here, Nietzsche explicitly describes his own personal experience – although with a more general aim and upshot. The “free spirits” of Human he now admits were products of his phantasy, imaginary “companions” taking the place of actual friends (cf. HH P I:). Nevertheless, his own philosophical progress anticipates the emergence of the free spirits; the future belongs to them. In the writings of , however, the philosophers of the future have disappeared. Nietzsche himself takes their place. In Ecce Homo, as in the prefaces, the former narrative of the genuine philosopher’s progress is explicitly recounted as Nietzsche’s own story: “It is my wisdom to have been many things and in many places in order to be able to be one thing – in order to be able to come to one thing. For a time I also had to be a scholar” (EH “Books”; UM:). Rather than “how does one become a philosopher?,” the leading question is “how does one become what he is?” and Nietzsche answers it by showing how he himself achieved this latter goal. Already in Beyond Good and Evil, what may resemble a general definition of philosophy can actually be understood only by those who share Nietzsche’s philosophical experience. In the last year of his philosophical production, this experiential aspect prevails: anything resembling a general definition of the philosopher’s task seldom occurs and, when it does, it describes Nietzsche’s experience rather than advancing a general metaphilosophical claim. Arguably, Ecce Homo adopts a more personal tone because it is conceived as a sort of autobiographical preface to the “transvaluation of all values”; as a preface, it is only natural that it should describe Nietzsche himself and his own “task,” rather than deal with philosophy in general or with the philosophers of the future. Besides, one could object that Nietzsche’s last texts are not necessarily his most cogent ones, and the teleology that leads up to what happens to be Nietzsche’s last book should not be overstated.

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However, the shift is remarkable and not limited to Ecce Homo. Nietzsche is far from having changed his mind as to the necessity to revaluate all values, but he no longer presents this revaluation as a task for philosophy in general, but solely as his own task, as an historically decisive feat that “perhaps is . . . possible for me alone” (EH “Wise” ). The new style of argumentation shifts away from the attempt to circumscribe philosophy and its field conceptually, and toward the individual Nietzsche and the momentous historical turn he represents. In this sense, Nietzsche’s last writings present us with a sort of implosion of metaphilosophy.

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The Dialectics of Nietzsche’s Metaphilosophies Matthew Meyer

For a long time, Nietzsche’s reputation as a philosopher was dubious at best, and many academic philosophers ignored and even dismissed his work. Because of recent efforts, this assessment has changed quite dramatically. Not only is Nietzsche now considered a genuine philosopher, there is a wide range of scholarship dedicated to showing how Nietzsche’s thought can contribute to contemporary philosophical debates. Specifically, scholars have turned to Nietzsche’s texts with a series of questions taken from contemporary philosophy – usually in the form of “what is Nietzsche’s theory of X?” – and developed answers by assembling various passages gleaned from across his oeuvre. I tend to think these are positive developments. Significant elements of Nietzsche’s thought do fit within the contemporary understanding of philosophy, and it is important to show that he can contribute to such debates. However, I also think that this progress has come at a price. First, it has led to a relative neglect of interpretive questions that surround the understanding of Nietzsche’s published works on their own terms and in relation to each other. Although there has been extensive discussion of works like Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals, most philosophers working on Nietzsche still follow Arthur Danto in approaching Nietzsche’s texts as a collection of statements that can be reassembled for the purposes of attributing a given theory to Nietzsche. Second, this way of approaching Nietzsche’s texts has tended to downplay or exclude ideas that are central to Nietzsche’s project but do not fit within the framework of contemporary debates. Although Dionysus, for instance, plays a central role in Nietzsche’s first work and is essential for understanding his later reflections on the nature of philosophy, the recent entry on Nietzsche in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says nothing about the Greek god (Anderson ). In this chapter, I want to ask a standard question of Nietzsche’s texts in the form of “what is Nietzsche’s theory of X?” However, both the question I ask and the answer I develop will resist the aforementioned trends. This is 

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because I want to inquire into Nietzsche’s philosophy of philosophy and so his metaphilosophy, and, rather than asking how Nietzsche’s texts might contribute to philosophy as we currently understand it, this question asks what Nietzsche has to say about philosophy itself. Thus, it makes it possible for Nietzsche’s thinking to challenge the very standard by which contemporary philosophers have judged his work. In developing my answer, I also challenge the common practice of gathering together all the views Nietzsche expresses on a topic to formulate a single position. This is because Nietzsche presents a multiplicity of different, even conflicting, conceptions of philosophy in his oeuvre, and thus any straightforward approach to this topic will fail. Although most scholars deal with Nietzsche’s changing views on a given subject by focusing exclusively on what are deemed to be his mature writings (when Nietzsche matures is a matter of dispute, but it is usually around ), Nietzsche’s works exhibit the odd feature that he returns, in his later writings, to a number of the key ideas he expresses in his earliest works. This is especially true of his metaphilosophical positions. In his earliest writings, he develops a conception of philosophy in which the drive for truth is restrained for the sake of life and he presents the philosopher as a legislator of life-promoting values. Although there are differences, these positions clearly foreshadow central elements of the philosophy of the future Nietzsche sketches in Beyond Good and Evil. In contrast, Nietzsche adopts a conception of philosophy in the free spirit works that is completely contrary to this new understanding of philosophy. In Human, All Too Human, he embraces a traditional conception of philosophy as unrestrained truth-seeking that is divorced from any interest in promoting life and legislating value, and his commitment to truth and honesty remains the dominant value throughout much of the free spirit works. The purpose of this chapter is to make sense of the trajectory of Nietzsche’s thinking about the nature of philosophy by applying an interpretive framework to the free spirit works that I have developed and defended elsewhere (Meyer ). Specifically, I hold that Nietzsche’s free spirit works – Human, Assorted Opinions and Maxims, The Wanderer and His Shadow, Daybreak, and The Gay Science – are best understood as a consciously constructed dialectical Bildungsroman, and the purpose of these works is to tell the story of how Nietzsche educates himself as a free spirit in a way that executes a dialectic between truth-seeking and science, on the one hand, and art and the affirmation of life, on the other. At the heart of this 

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dialectical narrative is what Nietzsche later calls a Selbstaufhebung or selfovercoming of the will to truth, and it is a process by which Nietzsche shows how the unrestrained quest for truth results in the liberation of the free spirit from the obligation to pursue the truth at all costs. It is this Selbstaufhebung of the will to truth in the free spirit works that then makes possible a new conception of philosophy in his later works, one that restrains the truth drive for the purposes of life and is closely aligned with Dionysian art. As I argue below, this interpretation explains the apparent break in Nietzsche’s metaphilosophical thinking in a metaphilosophically interesting way. On this reading, Nietzsche never really breaks with his early metaphilosophical reflections because he does not write the free spirit works as a straightforward record of what he thinks at a given time. Instead, he constructs these texts to tell a story of how the traditional conception of philosophy as unrestrained truth-seeking destroys a metaphysical-moral tradition that has traditionally obligated the philosopher to pursue truth at all costs. By eliminating both God and his shadows from our thinking in The Gay Science, Nietzsche is then free to develop a new conception of philosophy in his later works that aims at creating and legislating life-promoting values, and this resembles the conception of philosophy he sketched in his earliest writings. In this way, the primary purpose of the free spirit texts is to provide a ladder that leads both Nietzsche, qua free spirit, and his readers from a traditional conception of philosophy as unrestrained truth-seeking to a new conception of philosophy that has everything to do with art and Dionysus.

. Nietzsche’s Metaphilosophies Any attempt to explore Nietzsche’s conception of philosophy in a straightforward manner will be thwarted by a thoroughgoing analysis of Nietzsche’s texts. By straightforward, I have in mind Danto’s method of collecting all the statements Nietzsche makes on a given topic and combining them in a way that produces a coherent theory (Danto : ). By thwarted, I mean that Nietzsche’s texts contain a multiplicity of answers to the question “what is philosophy?” that contradict each other, and thus it will be impossible to answer the question by proceeding in this manner. The purpose of this section is to detail the different conceptions of philosophy Nietzsche presents in his works and to highlight the difficulties that this topic poses for the standard approach. That Nietzsche is thinking differently about the nature and task of philosophy is intimated in his first work, The Birth of Tragedy. Although

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the title suggests that the work is about tragedy and music, its structure reveals that Nietzsche’s reflections on the nature and purpose of philosophy are central to the overall argument. The work is structured around an initial antithesis between philosophy and art in the first fifteen sections that is only resolved in the final portion of the text. In the first nine sections, Nietzsche gives an account of the birth of tragedy as a lifeaffirming response to the mythical wisdom of Silenus (BT ). In sections ten through fifteen, he details the death of tragedy at the hands of Socratic philosophy. In the remaining sections of the work, Nietzsche explains how philosophers such as Kant and Schopenhauer have rediscovered the mythical wisdom of Silenus now in concepts (BT ) and thereby laid the foundations for a rebirth of tragedy in the operas of Richard Wagner. Here, Nietzsche sketches a union between art and philosophy symbolized by the music-playing Socrates (BT ). To understand the conception of philosophy operative in The Birth of Tragedy, there are two essential features of the Socratic project that need to be distinguished. First, Socrates embodies an unrestrained quest for truth and therefore what Nietzsche later calls the will to truth. Second, embedded within Socratic philosophy is an optimism that links truth-seeking to human flourishing and happiness. The Birth of Tragedy is important because Nietzsche provides a rough sketch of what can be described as a Selbstaufhebung of the Socratic project. According to Nietzsche, the unrelenting quest for truth is incompatible with the optimistic myth that Socrates subconsciously created to justify this quest. This is because Socratic optimism is just a myth: rather than leading to human happiness, Kant and Schopenhauer have shown that the drive for truth actually plunges the thinker into suffering and despair. In this way, it is Oedipus, not Socrates, who most embodies the quest for truth, and Nietzsche thinks that, once this quest reveals the meaningless suffering characteristic of human existence, humanity will naturally turn to art for comfort and redemption (BT ). Following the publication of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche continues to develop and modify his conception of philosophy in his notes and two unpublished works, “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense” and Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. In his notes, Nietzsche refers to notions such as “the philosopher of tragic knowledge” (KSA :[]), “the last philosopher” (KSA :[]), and “an entirely new kind of 

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The following translations are used in this chapter: BT (); D (); EH (); GM (); GS (); HH (); PPP (); PTAG (); SE (); TI (); TL ().

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philosopher-artist” (KSA :[]). In the first of these notes, Nietzsche speaks of a philosopher who experiences the loss of metaphysics as tragic but also executes a Selbstaufhebung of the drive for knowledge. Rather than remaining committed to Wissenschaft and the disappointment it produces, this philosopher pushes the drive for knowledge to its boundaries such that it turns against itself, thereby initiating a critique of this knowledge drive. This leads to a knowledge that stands in “service of the best life” in which illusions are necessary and the knowledge drive is restrained. Herein lies both “the tragic” nature of this philosophy and a corresponding turn to art (KSA :[]). We also find Nietzsche developing these themes in “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense.” There, he explains why our beliefs only have a metaphorical or noncorresponding relationship to an ultimate reality symbolized by the thing in itself. However, epistemology is not Nietzsche’s main concern and so skepticism is not the goal. Instead, the title indicates that Nietzsche’s primary purpose is to reject the idea that there is some noninstrumental value to truth such that we are morally obligated to pursue it at all costs. Once we do this, we can place restraints on the unfettered truth drive and liberate artistic creation from the spider web of concepts that Nietzsche associates with Wissenschaft. As the title indicates, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks is Nietzsche’s reflection on the status and nature of philosophy within a Greek culture fundamentally shaped by tragic poetry. Nietzsche focuses on the personalities of the ancient Greek philosophers – noting that, even if their systems are erroneous, their personalities forever remain of interest (PTAG, p. ) – and develops a conception of philosophy distinct from Wissenschaft. According to Nietzsche, the philosophers of the tragic age knew that “an unrestrained thirst for knowledge” was just as barbaric as a hatred for knowledge, and the Greeks controlled this insatiable thirst for knowledge “by their ideal need for and consideration of all the values of life” (PTAG ). Here, Nietzsche distinguishes philosophy from Wissenschaft by claiming that, whereas the latter pursues any sort of knowledge without selectivity and so “taste,” the former picks out what is worth knowing and so what is “great.” In this way, philosophy begins by legislating greatness and thereby elevates the human “over the blind unrestrained greed of his drive for knowledge” (PTAG ). Philosophy in the Tragic Age is also important because Nietzsche, for the first time, articulates his rejection of metaphysics – and so the metaphysical formulas he employed in The Birth of Tragedy – by way of his account of Heraclitus’ philosophy. On the one hand, Nietzsche replaces

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Schopenhauer’s and even Kant’s metaphysics, both of which he equates with the philosophy of Anaximander (PTAG ), with a nonmetaphysical understanding of reality – one bereft of the “thing in itself” – that he associates with Heraclitus (PTAG –). For Nietzsche, Heraclitus is the philosopher of the tragic age par excellence, and Heraclitus’ philosophy of becoming – or the view that the natural world is one of dynamic relations – is an essential part of the tragic worldview. On the other hand, Nietzsche emphasizes the importance of Heraclitus’ personality. In contrast to Anaximander, who, like Schopenhauer, understood coming-to-be and passing-away in terms of sin and atonement (PTAG ), Nietzsche attributes to Heraclitus the capacity to turn the ever-quarreling world of opposed forces into a child-like game of innocence worthy of affirmation. In short, what makes the person of Heraclitus so admirable was that he both confronted “terrible” and potentially “paralyzing” truths (PTAG ) and then, like an artist, transformed these truths into a game played by a child (PTAG ). Heraclitean themes appear one year later in Nietzsche’s  untimely meditation, On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life. The text makes clear that Nietzsche is linking his reflections on history to a Heraclitean understanding of reality. Thus, he begins the essay by claiming that the flux is so radical that having a conception of self requires an act of forgetting (HL ), and, later in the essay, he casts “sovereign becoming” as a “true but deadly” doctrine (HL ). In response to these “tragic” truths or those that stand in opposition to human flourishing, Nietzsche argues we ought to constrain the truth drive currently operative in scientific conceptions of history. Instead, history should be understood more like an art form (HL ) that is always pursued – albeit in different ways in different contexts – for the purposes of enhancing life. Heraclitus’ philosophy appears again toward the end of the essay, where Nietzsche seems to be drawing from Heraclitus’ critique of historie and polumathie. Specifically, Nietzsche claims that, in order to attain genuine culture in which humans overcome their fragmentation, it is necessary to follow the injunction of the Delphic oracle to “know thyself.” This means turning away from an excessive gathering of facts and turning toward introspection. According to Nietzsche, the ancient Greeks show us how to organize the chaos of history “by following the Delphic teaching and thinking back to themselves, that is, to their real needs, and letting their pseudo-needs die out” (HL ). 

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Nietzsche develops this idea in his third untimely meditation, Schopenhauer as Educator. Nietzsche calls on us – for the first time in his published writings – to become who we are (SE ), and he presents the philosopher as an educator and so the task of philosophy as that of educating oneself toward this end (SE ). To further culture, we need to remove “all the weeds, rubble and vermin” that inhibit the project of establishing the “fundamental law” of one’s “own true self.” According to Nietzsche, Schopenhauer provides the model for this task. He writes for and speaks primarily with himself, and his philosophical project is distinguished from scholarly pursuits in that it seeks to transfigure existence by determining the value of existence anew. According to Nietzsche, “it has been the proper task of all great thinkers to be lawgivers as to the measure, stamp, and weight of things” (SE ). One cannot help but notice the way in which the themes Nietzsche discusses here become central to his later writings. Whereas the idea of becoming who one is reemerges in The Gay Science (GS  and ) as well as Thus Spoke Zarathustra IV and then becomes the subtitle of Ecce Homo, the idea that philosophers need to be legislators of value is central to the philosophy of the future sketched in Beyond Good and Evil (BGE ). What is puzzling about Nietzsche’s corpus is that he seems to reject this understanding of philosophy in Human, a work he publishes only four years after Schopenhauer as Educator. Thus, Human creates a hiatus in Nietzsche’s oeuvre in which he operates much more like a traditional philosopher and a lot less like the Nietzsche of his early and later writings. The differences between Human and Nietzsche’s earlier reflections on philosophy are numerous and significant. First, Nietzsche dedicates the work to Voltaire, and he begins the  edition by quoting from Descartes’ Discourse on Method in which he declares that there is nothing more admirable than devoting one’s life to the pursuit of truth (KSA , p. ). This, of course, conflicts with Nietzsche’s earlier reflections on the need to restrain the truth drive for the purposes of art, life, and culture. Second, Nietzsche begins the work by adopting what he calls historical philosophy and criticizing philosophers for the lack of historical sense (HH  and ). This, however, conflicts with Nietzsche’s earlier criticism that his age suffers from an excess of history. Third, Nietzsche associates this historical philosophy with “chemistry” and so the natural sciences. Although Nietzsche exhibited a keen interest in the natural sciences just 

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after writing The Birth of Tragedy (Schlechta and Anders ), nowhere do we find him placing such a high value on scientific methods and associating scientific inquiry with the task of philosophy. Fourth, Nietzsche ends the first section of Human by embracing the joys of theoretical observation and contemplation, one that refrains from making any judgment about the meaning or value of existence (HH ). This, however, seems to be the stance of the “theoretical man” that Nietzsche associated with Socrates in The Birth of Tragedy and criticized accordingly. Finally, Nietzsche opposes, in Human, this scientific-cum-philosophical quest for truth to the very art he elevated, in The Birth of Tragedy, to the truly metaphysical task of this existence (BT , ). Nevertheless, there are at least four ways in which Nietzsche’s efforts in Human are continuous with his earlier reflections. Just as Nietzsche was not hostile to scientific inquiry as such in his earlier writings, he was also not entirely hostile to the Socratic quest for truth. Instead, he argued in The Birth of Tragedy that the quest for truth in the persons of Schopenhauer and Kant has generated a tragic understanding of existence and so laid the foundation for a rebirth of art. Second, Nietzsche adopts the strict methodology of the sciences to purge himself of any false beliefs. In this sense, Human can be understood as executing the first part of the educational program outlined in Schopenhauer as Educator, namely that of using a plowshare to remove the weeds and vermin that might inhibit the flourishing of culture (SE ). Third, although it conflicts with the metaphysics of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche’s attack on metaphysics in Human follows his rejection of the metaphysical tradition in Philosophy in the Tragic Age and his corresponding adoption of Heraclitean becoming in History for Life (HL  and ). As I have argued elsewhere (Meyer ), the problem of opposites that begins Human (HH ) is the very problem that Nietzsche uses to distinguish between Parmenides and Heraclitus in Philosophy in the Tragic Age. Finally, the first chapter of Human can be understood as an exercise in pessimistic or tragic philosophy in that it reveals truths hostile to human flourishing and life. This is why Nietzsche repeatedly mentions the threat of despair at the end of the first chapter (HH , , and ), and why, in a variant to the final aphorism, he refers to his efforts as a “preparation for a tragic philosophy” (KSA , p. ). In Nietzsche’s subsequent free spirit writings, his metaphilosophical views become even more perplexing because he presents additional conceptions of philosophy. In contrast to his explorations of “first and last 

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things” and the theoretical stance he embraces in Human, Nietzsche adopts, in The Wanderer and His Shadow (published only two years later as an appendix to Human), an attitude of indifference to grand metaphysical questions, evidenced by the first death-of-God passage in Nietzsche’s works (WS ). Instead, he encourages us to focus on what he calls “the closest things”; for example, food, clothing, and shelter (WS ). As Keith Ansell-Pearson () has recently stressed, Nietzsche embraces a heroic-idyllic conception of philosophy most associated with the writings of Epicurus (WS ). Here, philosophy is a therapeutic – rather than a theoretical – enterprise, and the philosopher celebrates what Nietzsche calls the trinity of joy: Thoughts that are elevating, calming, and enlightening (WS ). Although Nietzsche does present himself as an Epicurean in The Wanderer, Ansell-Pearson claims that Nietzsche maintains this stance throughout the “middle writings” (: ). One problem with Ansell-Pearson’s account is that the Epicurean quest for ataraxia in The Wanderer conflicts with the “passion for knowledge” that Nietzsche adopts in Daybreak and then develops in The Gay Science. Thus, Nietzsche embraces yet another conception of philosophy in Daybreak. Although it shares with Human the goal of truth-seeking, the passionate philosopher of Daybreak has little in common with the contemplative calm celebrated in Human and the Epicurean ataraxia of The Wanderer. In The Gay Science, Nietzsche develops a position that conflicts with Human but harkens back to the ideas of The Birth of Tragedy and Schopenhauer as Educator. Specifically, the Emersonian motto that Nietzsche affixes to the beginning of the text suggests that the aim of the  edition of The Gay Science is to achieve some sort of reconciliation between philosophy and art: “To the poet and the wise man all things are consecrated and friendly, all experiences useful, all days holy, all humans divine.” On my reading, this reconciliation between philosophy and art is not the starting point of the text – Nietzsche’s remarks in “Our Ultimate Gratitude to Art” suggest that art and truth-seeking are still opposed to each other in the second book (GS ) – but rather its goal, and this goal is only achieved in the fourth and final book of the  edition and therefore after the elimination of God’s shadow in book three (GS ). Thus, it is only in “Sanctus Januarius” that we are introduced to the idea that we need to love fate (GS ), become poets of our lives (GS ), and ultimately become who we are (GS ). 

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In addition to calling on us to become who we are, Nietzsche exhorts us to create “our own new tables of what is good” (GS ), and, although there are differences, the passage arguably foreshadows the conception of philosophy Nietzsche presents in Beyond Good and Evil. There, we find a conception of philosophy that stands even more at odds with the position of Human, as Nietzsche begins Beyond Good and Evil by critiquing the very will to truth that animates the free spirit project (BGE ). According to Nietzsche, philosophers like the Stoics, who believe they are driven by the will to truth, are “actors and self-deceivers” (BGE ). This is because philosophy is not about finding subject-independent truths, but rather an autobiographical exercise that “bears decided and decisive witness” to who one is (BGE ). At the same time, Nietzsche indicates that the philosopher of the future will be one who consciously creates the world in her own image (BGE ). In the sixth book of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche contrasts the future philosopher with “scholars,” and again we see the sharp difference between Nietzsche’s position here and the standpoint he adopts in Human. Rather than becoming the will-less subject of knowledge in Human, he now rejects the idea that a thinker should be an objective mirror of reality. According to Nietzsche, an objective philosopher is a neutered philosopher and, as such, he is nothing for women and so truth (BGE ). After arguing that future philosophers will go beyond the skepticism and criticism that characterize the age (BGE ), Nietzsche then distinguishes between philosophical laborers and genuine philosophers. Whereas philosophical laborers press already existing valuations into philosophical concepts and formulas, genuine philosophers are “commanders and legislators.” That is, they “determine the Whither and for What of man,” and, in so doing, their knowing is a form of creating and their will to truth is, in fact, a will to power (BGE ). Just as the language of legislating values recalls Nietzsche’s description of the philosopher in Philosophy in the Tragic Age and Schopenhauer as Educator, the idea that philosophy is a creative exercise recalls the concept of the “philosopher-artist” from the time of The Birth of Tragedy. Indeed, his prelude to a philosophy of the future ends with Nietzsche declaring himself to be a disciple of “the last philosopher of Dionysus” (BGE ), and one of the potential titles for the book that eventually became Beyond Good and Evil was “Dionysus: Attempt at a Divine Way of Philosophizing” (KSA :[]). Thus, it seems that whatever the philosophy of the future is supposed to be, it is going to be a form of both legislation and

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artistic creation, and it is going to have something to do with the Greek god Nietzsche celebrated in his very first book, Dionysus.

. The Dialectics of Nietzsche’s Metaphilosophies Based on this sketch of the various understandings of philosophy that populate Nietzsche’s writings, we can quickly see the difficulties involved in developing a coherent theory of Nietzsche’s metaphilosophy. Even if we declare that Nietzsche’s post-Zarathustra works represent his mature views on the subject and focus primarily on those, a number of puzzling features of Nietzsche’s reflections on the nature of philosophy remain unexplained. First, his so-called mature philosophy bears a striking resemblance to a number of the ideas he sketched in his earliest works. This not only leaves us wondering why he abandons his initial ideas only to return to them a few years later, it also destroys any linear narrative about Nietzsche’s development. Second, Nietzsche seems to be changing his mind about the nature of philosophy within the free spirit works, and it is not only odd that he repeatedly changes his mind in a mere four years in print, but that he then wants us to understand the free spirit works as a unified project. Finally, Nietzsche republishes the free spirit works just after he publishes Beyond Good and Evil. If the free spirit works contain a series of ideas that Nietzsche subsequently abandons in favor of a more mature philosophy, it is strange that he would republish ideas he now rejects at the same time he publishes his more mature philosophy. This would be akin to Kant republishing his precritical works at the same time he is publishing his critical philosophy. According to the thesis I defend elsewhere in more detail (Meyer ), the key to resolving these difficulties is to hold that the free spirit works are best understood as a consciously constructed dialectical Bildungsroman. By “Bildungsroman,” I mean that these works are not standard philosophical treatises that present and then revise a series of truth claims that the author holds at a given time; instead, they tell a story (Roman) or present a narrative about the education (Bildung) of Nietzsche qua free spirit. By “dialectical,” I mean that these works exhibit a movement of thought that is driven by internal tensions in the early stages of the project that result in new positions that resolve these initial tensions. By “consciously constructed,” I mean that these works do not just happen to manifest these dialectical transformations such that Nietzsche, qua author, is discovering at later stages of the project the internal tensions implicit in the earlier stages. Instead, I hold that he has written these works with the intention of

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exhibiting this dialectical movement. By “best understood,” I mean that, although there is no clear-cut evidence from the time Nietzsche began working on this project, that shows he intended these works to execute this dialectic, this reading best explains a number of peculiar features of these works that are left unexplained by the competing interpretive frameworks on offer in the secondary literature. Perhaps the best way to enter into this dialectical approach is to think of the free spirit works in the same way we now think of Zarathustra: as a single literary unit published in installments. To recall, Zarathustra was initially published in separate books, and it was only later that Nietzsche published the first three books together as a single unit (all four books were only published together after his death in ). However, we still understand – problems with the relationship between the first three and fourth parts notwithstanding – Zarathustra as a unified whole, and this is despite the fact that we lack any notes, sketches, or plans for further parts from the time Nietzsche was composing the first part of Zarathustra. One reason for thinking of the free spirit works as a single unit is that Nietzsche notes on the back cover of the  edition of The Gay Science that The Gay Science “marks the conclusion of a series of writings by FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE whose common goal it is to erect a new image and ideal of the free spirit.” Indeed, we know that Nietzsche wrote both Assorted Opinions and The Wanderer as continuations of Human and that he composed the first three books of The Gay Science as book six, seven, and eight of Daybreak (KSB : ). Thus, we know from their compositional history that he conceived a number of these texts as continuations of each other. Another reason for thinking of these texts as a single unit is that Nietzsche had entertained plans, as he was completing The Gay Science in , to publish the free spirit works as a two-volume set under a single title (KSA :[] and []). One of the possible titles Nietzsche considered for this two-volume set was the “plowshare.” This is important 



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Brusotti (a: ) uses this point to challenge the unity of the text by stressing that Nietzsche did not see the first part of Zarathustra as part of larger whole at the time of its composition (p. ). However, the lack of evidence that Nietzsche envisaged further parts at the time he was composing Zarathustra I does not show that he did not have such intentions. Instead, it simply means that we have no evidence of such intentions. However, see in KSA :[], a note that, as Paul Bishop and R. H. Stephenson () have argued, foreshadows the four-book structure of Zarathustra. Taken from the Kaufmann translation of GS (: ).

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not only because Nietzsche planned to use the plowshare as the title for Daybreak in  (KSA :[Title]), but also because he penned a collection of aphorisms that formed the basis for Human under this same title in  (KSA :[Title]). Thus, the theme of the plowshare effectively binds these works together. A final reason for thinking of the free spirit works as a single unit is that every work – with the possible exception of Assorted Opinions – concludes with an aphorism that points to further developments in the free spirit. Whereas Human ends with a wanderer seeking the philosophy of the morning and so Daybreak (HH ), The Wanderer ends with the claim that the free spirit stands “in the midst” of removing the chains of religion, metaphysics, and morality and the sickness they have caused (WS ). As the subtitle, “thoughts on the prejudices of morality,” indicates, removing the chains of morality is the primary task of Daybreak. Similarly, Daybreak ends with an inconclusive “or” (D ), thereby suggesting further developments in the project, and even the end of the  edition of The Gay Science foreshadows Zarathustra (GS ). In this way, the aphorisms of the free spirit works form what Nietzsche calls a Gedankenkette or “thought chain” that stretches from the beginnings of the project in  to its completion in  (KSB : ). Once we think of these works as a single unit, a number of peculiarities emerge. As Marco Brusotti has noted, these works do not present a single image of the free spirit, but a series of different lifeforms that often conflict (b: ). In my mind, the key to understanding how Nietzsche can both offer multiple images of the free spirit and still consider these works a unified project is to reject the assumption that the views presented in these texts necessarily represent the views Nietzsche holds at the time he publishes them. In contrast to a standard philosophical treatise, the purpose of these texts is to preserve and so monumentalize Nietzsche’s path of selfeducation (Brusotti b: ), one that results in a new ideal of the free spirit. Thus, we need to distinguish between Nietzsche, the author of these texts, and the free spirit that appears in these texts in much the same way that we distinguish between Descartes and the meditator of the Meditations or Plato and the figure of Socrates. Although the free spirit texts do express a number of Nietzsche’s views on important issues, this distinction means that we cannot immediately infer that Nietzsche holds a particular view at a particular time simply because it appears in one of these texts, just as we cannot immediately infer that Plato holds a particular view at a particular time simply because he has Socrates express it in a dialogue. In my mind, we should be reluctant to attribute to Nietzsche any view

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expressed during this period – such as the asceticism of Human or even the Epicureanism of The Wanderer – that directly conflicts with views he adopts in both his earlier and later writings. It is with this distinction in hand that we can begin to explain the peculiarities of the metaphilosophical positions Nietzsche adopts in these texts. For instance, the understanding of philosophy that Nietzsche embraces in Human – one that employs the methods of the natural sciences and pursues truth at any cost – but then modifies and eventually abandons at later stages of the free spirit project can be explained by the fact that he is starting with the basic presuppositions of the Enlightenment only to show how these presuppositions, when pushed to their limits, lead to a new conception of philosophy. Similarly, the conception of philosophy presented in these texts changes so rapidly during this time because the purpose of these texts is to execute a dialectic in which one conception of philosophy transforms into another. Finally, Nietzsche wants to republish these works at a later date because he sees them as providing a ladder by which someone wedded to a traditional conception of philosophy can advance to a new understanding of philosophy and so a higher stage of freedom and enlightenment. This, then, is why Nietzsche insists in his letters that it is necessary to read these works in the order in which they were written, and he adds prefaces to the – editions of these works because he wants to make this progression more explicit to his readers (KSB :  and ). Let’s now apply this interpretive framework to the issue of Nietzsche’s metaphilosophy in the free spirit works. Nietzsche begins Human and so the free spirit project with a traditional conception of philosophy as an unrestrained and uncompromising quest for truth. However, he immediately detaches the quest for truth from the two sources that traditionally justified this quest: () Socrates linked the quest for truth to the promise of happiness and flourishing (eudaimonia); () Plato argued that philosophical eros – or what Nietzsche would call the will to truth – ultimately aimed at the Form of the Good and so metaphysics. In Human, Nietzsche immediately rejects the metaphysical philosophy of the past by adopting his own brand of “historical philosophy” that he weds to the natural sciences (HH ), and in the first four chapters he repeatedly takes an axe to the metaphysical tradition as well as to what Schopenhauer calls the metaphysical need (HH , , , and ). Similarly, Nietzsche disassociates the free spirit’s quest for truth from the Socratic promise for meaning and happiness. Specifically, he argues that such promises in the past only perverted the quest for truth, and so, if one wants the latter, one

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must divorce philosophy from the former (HH  and ). Thus, it is not surprising that the quest for truth in Human has tragic results, and this is why the free spirit – much like Oedipus – is confronted with the threat of despair at the end of the first book (HH , , and ). So understood, Human establishes an implicit tension between the unrestrained quest for truth that drives the free spirit project and the results of this quest – that is, results that undermine the justification for unrestrained truth-seeking. On the one hand, Nietzsche adopts a method that divorces the quest for truth from the promise of meaning and happiness. On the other, this quest results in the destruction of a metaphysical world that was, according to Plato, supposed to be the true aim and object of the quest for truth. In these ways, the project of Human both embraces the unrestrained quest for truth and undermines the traditional justification for this quest. However, Nietzsche does not attempt to resolve – or even make explicit – this tension in Human. Instead, he responds to the threat of despair that these insights may engender by adopting a theoretical attitude that refrains from making judgments about the value of truth or even existence itself (HH ). In subsequent free spirit works, Nietzsche starts to modify and even abandon this theoretical standpoint that operates at a minimum of life. Thus, he begins The Wanderer by noting that “the tree of knowledge cannot be confounded with the tree of life” (WS ), and he appeals to the life-friendly philosophy of Epicurus in adopting an attitude of indifference toward metaphysical speculations. Thus, he focuses on the aforementioned “closest things,” for example, food, clothing, and shelter (WS ). In Daybreak, he continues to remove what he calls at the end of The Wanderer the chains of metaphysical errors and to cure himself of the sickness they have caused (WS ). In so doing, he transforms philosophy into a passionate quest for knowledge that is willing to violate conventions and sacrifice oneself to satisfy this need. To be sure, Nietzsche is still operating in these works within a tradition that places a high premium on truth, and so he is criticizing the “prejudices of morality” in Daybreak from this standpoint. However, his attack on the prejudices of morality in Daybreak initiates a process in which the aforementioned tension in Human will be resolved. This is because Nietzsche understands the uncompromising quest for truth to be a form of moral obligation, and so at the end of Nietzsche’s attack on the prejudices of morality is the rejection of the moral obligation to pursue truth at all costs. Because the rejection of the moral obligation to pursue truth at all costs is itself driven by the moral obligation to pursue truth at all costs in Human,

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Nietzsche’s attack on the prejudices of morality will culminate in what Nietzsche calls in the  preface to Daybreak a Selbstaufhebung of morality (D P:). In the preface to Daybreak, there is no mention of truth or what one might call the morality of truth. However, Nietzsche gives a more detailed account of the Selbstaufhebung of morality in the Genealogy, a text published in the same year as the preface to Daybreak. There, he quotes from the fifth book of The Gay Science – also published in  – to define Christian morality as “the concept of truthfulness taken more and more strictly,” and he claims that, once Christian morality destroys both dogma and then Christian morality itself, “Christian truthfulness” will ultimately pose the question “what is the meaning of all will to truth?” (GM III:). In short, at the heart of the Selbstaufhebung of morality is a Selbstaufhebung of the morality of truthfulness and the related will to truth. The account Nietzsche provides of the Selbstaufhebung of morality in the Genealogy is also important because it – like the reference from the preface to Daybreak – connects the Selbstaufhebung of morality to Nietzsche’s free spirit project. On the one hand, Nietzsche explicitly links his critique of ascetic ideals to the notion of the free spirit. Although scientific atheists believe that they are “free, very free spirits” and the true opponents of the ascetic ideal, Nietzsche claims that they are “far from being free spirits” precisely because “they still have faith in truth.” By faith in truth, Nietzsche does not mean a faith that truth exists. Instead, he means that they still have faith in “the absolute value of truth,” and so “this unconditional will to truth” still “constrains” these so-called free spirits (GM III:). On the other hand, Nietzsche argues that this faith rests on a “metaphysical value,” and, to make his point, he quotes extensively from another passage from the fifth book of The Gay Science. The reference to The Gay Science already suggests a connection between the account in the Genealogy and the free spirit works, and the contents of the passage Nietzsche quotes makes the link even more explicit. Specifically, Nietzsche claims in the passage that the faith in the absolute value of truth depends on a metaphysical belief in God, and once this belief in God is called into question, then the justification for this faith falls with it (GM III:; GS ). Taken together, we can see that a genuine free spirit is one who has overcome this faith in truth by “killing” God and eliminating his shadow. In terms of the free spirit works, the upshot of this account of the Selbstaufhebung of morality in the Genealogy is that the implicit tension in Human between the will to truth driving the free spirit project and the destruction of both the eudaimonistic and metaphysical traditions that

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originally justified the unrestrained truth drive is eventually thematized and resolved with the death of God and the elimination of his shadows in the third book of The Gay Science. Although some might worry that Nietzsche is retrospectively imposing meaning onto a text that was not initially there, especially because the death of God passage in The Gay Science says nothing explicit about the will to truth or a Selbstaufhebung of morality (GS ), Nietzsche’s notes from this time indicate that he initially understood the death of God in precisely these terms. For instance, he writes in his  notes that “morals die by morality” (KSA :[]) and “God has killed God” (KSA :[]). In another note from , Nietzsche speaks of a “suicide of morality” in which the demands of truth (Wahrheit) and honesty (Redlichkeit) place a rope around the neck of morality – and so the morality of truth – and strangle it. This, he tells us, is the final demand of morality (KSA :[]). Here, someone might still object: if the point of the death of God passage in The Gay Science is to enact this Selbstaufhebung or “suicide of morality,” then why isn’t there any mention of this in the passage itself? The answer is that Nietzsche presents this idea in a subsequent aphorism in the third book of The Gay Science in which the death of God is again the topic. The title of the aphorism is “Homo Poeta,” and it reads as follows: I myself, having made this tragedy of tragedies all by myself, insofar as it is finished – I, having first tied the knot of morality into existence before I drew it so tight that only a god could untie it (which is what Horace demands) – I myself have now slain all gods in the fourth act, for the sake of morality [aus Moralität]! Now, what is to become of the fifth act? From where am I to take the tragic solution? – Should I begin to think about a comic solution? (GS )

Here, Nietzsche speaks of a tragedy of tragedies that has been made by tying the knot of morality so tight that only a god could untie it. He then refers to what is effectively a Selbstaufhebung of morality: all gods have been slain in the forth act “for the sake of morality [aus Moralität].” In other words, morality has led to the destruction or overcoming of the gods and so morality, and, in this way, morality has undergone a Selbstaufhebung. Although there is no explicit mention of truth, the passage implies that the morality of truth is at stake. This is because Nietzsche refers to both tragic and comic solutions – both art forms associated with Dionysus – to the death of God, and Nietzsche explicitly associates, in the Genealogy and elsewhere, art with lies and deception, thereby contrasting it with the will to truth and the ascetic ideal (GM III:). The implication is that, now

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God is dead and his shadow has been eliminated, the free spirit can turn to the art forms associated with Dionysus to confront the threat of despair that has haunted the free spirit project since Human. In this way, the suggestion that Nietzsche presents in GS  that we must become gods ourselves to justify the death of God goes hand in hand with the idea, expressed in the Nachlass, that we must become most powerful and holy poets (KSA :[]). It is with the elimination of God’s shadow in book three of The Gay Science that the free spirit is now liberated from the asceticism that characterizes Human, and this is why Nietzsche can, in book four of The Gay Science, embrace art in a way that recalls The Birth of Tragedy. In terms of his conception of philosophy, it means that Nietzsche is now free to rethink the philosophical project in a way that restrains the unrestrained truth drive of Human and places philosophy in service of life. In so doing, the primary aim of philosophy will not be the discovery of truth, but rather the creation of value, and as a creative activity, philosophy will morph into a form of art. As noted earlier, Nietzsche hints at this understanding of philosophy in the aphorism, “Long Live Physics!” in which he calls upon free spirits to create “new tables of what is good” (GS ), and this task takes center stage in Beyond Good and Evil. What this suggests is that the new conception of philosophy Nietzsche develops in his “mature writings” is a direct result of the self-overcoming of the will to truth and the traditional conception of philosophy in the free spirit works.

. Toward Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Future? One of the reasons for thinking that Nietzsche has consciously constructed his free spirit works to execute this dialectic is that he had already sketched variants of a Selbstaufhebung of the Socratic project in The Birth of Tragedy (BT ) and then his  Nachlass notes (KSA :[]). On my reading, Nietzsche does not abandon this idea in Human. Instead, he changes how he presents this idea in his works. Rather than describing this dynamic in a work like The Birth of Tragedy or adopting the stance of an untimely meditator opposed to his time, as he does in his works from  to , Nietzsche provides an internal critique of the traditional conception of philosophy in the free spirit works. That is, he adopts the views of his age – or even an age just preceding his age – that is, the Enlightenment project of Descartes and Voltaire – to show how philosophy as unrestrained truthseeking undermines itself. This, in turn, paves the way, in his later works, for a new conception of philosophy that is aligned with artistic creation but

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is nevertheless continuous with the antimetaphysical naturalism he unpacks in Human. Such a reading would explain why Nietzsche returns, in Beyond Good and Evil, to a conception of philosophy that resembles his earlier sketches on the topic. As the subtitle suggests, the work functions as a prelude to a philosophy of the future and so a new conception of philosophy, and the work continues the reflections of the free spirit project now from a standpoint outside of a philosophical tradition that places an absolute value on truth. Thus, Nietzsche begins the work by critically questioning the very will to truth that animated the opening stages of the free spirit project (BGE ), and in the fourth aphorism, he replaces the ascetic standard of assessing judgments according to truth with a new standard of assessing judgments according to their capacity to enhance and promote life (BGE ). Moreover, Nietzsche titles the second chapter of the work, “The Free Spirit,” and the purpose of the chapter is not so much to explain what the free spirit is, but rather to transition from the free spirit to a new species of philosophers who will nevertheless be “free, very free spirits” (BGE ). What makes future philosophers “very free spirits” is that they are liberated from a metaphysical-moral tradition that obliges the philosopher to pursue truth at all costs, and it is here that Nietzsche returns to an alternative conception of philosophy that he sketched in his earliest works. The truth drive is now restrained by the overarching demands of life, and it is by restraining this truth drive that philosophy shifts away from the scientific ethos of Human and moves toward a form of philosophy that allows for simplification, falsification, and even anthropomorphism (BGE ). Here, the philosopher is no longer driven by a will to truth that seeks to discover a pre-given reality. Instead, the philosopher is driven by a will to power that creates life-promoting values (BGE ) that bear witness to who the philosopher is (BGE ). Of course, Nietzsche also claims in Beyond Good and Evil that this is precisely how philosophers of the past have philosophized: they, too, have been driven by the will to power and so created values that reflect the conditions of their own existence. The difference, however, between this philosopher of the past and the philosopher of the future is a matter of self-knowledge: whereas philosophers of the past were “actors and selfdeceivers” in that they claimed to have discovered the values, they were, in fact, creating (BGE ), the philosopher of the future understands that all value creation is a reflection of the psychology of the creator. Thus, the philosopher of the future will be one who embraces both subjectivity and

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creativity and transforms the project of philosophy into a self-conscious autobiography. If this is right, then we may very well find the philosophy of the future in Nietzsche’s latest works. This is because Ecce Homo bears decisive witness to who Nietzsche is (BGE ; EH P:), namely, a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus (BGE ; EH P:). Moreover, there are good reasons for thinking that Ecce Homo, and so his philosophy of the future, is a form of Dionysian art. This is because I have argued elsewhere that Ecce Homo is the centerpiece of Nietzsche’s own Dionysian comedy (Meyer ). Such a reading would make sense of why Nietzsche ends his prelude to a philosophy of the future with the claim that he is going to risk “an order of rank among philosophers depending on the rank of their laughter – all the way up to those capable of golden laughter” (BGE ) and why we find in his notes a proposed title from  that couples “Dionysos philosophos” with “Satura Menippea” and so the genres of satire and comedy (KSA :[]). So understood, Nietzsche’s philosophy of the future would have everything to do with Dionysus.  

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See More () for a similar reading. As More (: ) points out, Nietzsche refers to Petronius’ Satura Menippea in a draft variant to section three of “Why I am so Clever” in Ecce Homo, praising it for its freedom from morality and characterizing its effect as “Dionysian” (KSA : p. ). Nietzsche refers to Petronius, alongside Aristophanes, in BGE  and praises both for their free-spirited thought. I would like to thank attendees of the NiNE workshops in both Providence and Rome for their questions and feedback on this chapter, and I owe a particular debt to Paul Loeb and Jordan Rodgers for comments on previous drafts.

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 

Nietzsche as Metaphilosopher Antoine Panaïoti

The publication of Arthur Danto’s  monograph Nietzsche as Philosopher represents a turning point in the history of Nietzsche reception. The “analytic movement in philosophy,” Danto proclaimed, must “reclaim [Nietzsche] as a predecessor” (: ). To achieve this, analytically trained philosophers ought carefully to reconstruct Nietzsche’s “analyses in terms of logical features which he was unable to make explicit, but toward which he was unmistakably groping” (: ). Progress was slow at first, but the Analytical Nietzsche vessel has now reached full cruising speed. The last two decades have witnessed a veritable explosion in studies of Nietzsche’s philosophy that pride themselves for their clarity, rigor, and argumentative coherence. In accord with Danto’s method (if rarely with his results), these use the tools of rational reconstruction to extract from Nietzsche’s bombastic prose and argument-light aspersions claims and arguments that directly speak to the concerns of contemporary analytic metaphysicians, epistemologist, and moral philosophers. As Thomas Stern notes (), the figure of ‘Nietzsche as analytic philosopher’ is now the dominant Nietzsche in contemporary Englishlanguage Nietzsche reception. A persistent problem besets the Analytical Nietzsche approach, however. Briefly stated, there seems to be a mismatch between most analytic commentators’ views on what philosophy is and how it should be done and what appear to be Nietzsche’s sentiments concerning these matters. To wit, a cursory survey of Nietzsche’s mature metaphilosophical writing suggests that: () he did not believe it was the philosopher’s (and thus, a  



Prominent examples include Clark (), Leiter (), Richardson (, ), Strawson (), and Katsafanas (, ) to name but a few. Bernard Williams () is arguably the first analytically trained philosopher to have raised this issue. Robert Pippin () and Paul Loeb () have also taken this up, although, like Williams, they do not explicitly thematize this issue in metaphilosophical terms, as is done here. See, in particular, BGE VI.

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fortiori, his own) task to be a ‘rigorous thinker’ in the sense in which the term is now understood in analytic circles; () he took the philosopher’s (and thus his own) task to involve a type of activity and enquiry radically different in orientation, method, and goal from that of the type of thinker the analytic tradition has come to champion as the practitioner of ‘good’ philosophy, that is, the thinker qua ‘man of science’; and () he regarded it as one of the chief goals of his philosophical activity to transform philosophy by the lights of his insight into the genuine character of philosophical work. If a more detailed examination of Nietzsche’s writing were to confirm that these were indeed his views and goals, it would follow – embarrassingly – that the emergence and current preeminence of the ‘Nietzsche as analytic philosopher’ genre were only made possible by ignoring the metaphilosophical dimension of Nietzsche’s work. And it would follow, more importantly, that a sizable share of contemporary English-language Nietzsche reception is not just metaphilosophically discontinuous with Nietzsche’s understanding of and approach to philosophy, but expressive of a deep-set resistance to precisely those transformations in philosophy that Nietzsche sought to bring about. This chapter seeks to support just such a verdict, and, on this basis, to plead for a resolute metaphilosophical turn in Nietzsche studies. In Sections . and ., I examine certain developments in Nietzsche’s metaphilosophical reflections as they evolved from the early days of his professorship at Basel up to the mature writings of  and . By then, I argue, Nietzsche’s metaphilosophical meditations had crystallized around his critique of the so-called will to truth. In the final portion of the chapter, I argue that key to this critique is Nietzsche’s conviction that philosophical “knowledge” is not just different in kind to the type of knowledge produced by scholars and scientists, but that the two have contrary properties. I then mount, on the force of this, a Nietzschean metaphilosophical critique of the Analytical Nietzsche approach.

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The term I translate as ‘man of science’ is ‘Gelehrter’ (lit.: ‘learned (one)’). In Nietzsche’s use of the term, a Gelehrter designates any academically trained person whose life is devoted to ‘scientific’ pursuits, under a conception of science that covers rigorous scholarship in all academic disciplines. Thus, academic philosophers – of the late nineteenth as of the early twenty-first century – are all ‘men of science’ in the Nietzschean sense. What is more, as a scholar of Greek antiquity, Nietzsche never ceased to regard himself as a man of science (see BGE ), although, as we shall see, this only tells half the story. It should further be noted, in connection to the phrase ‘man of science,’ that Nietzsche’s language, whether he is talking about philosophers or academically trained individuals, is not gender neutral. Because much of this chapter is concerned with reporting Nietzsche’s views, I will follow his practice and use only masculine forms throughout.

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 ı¨ 

My method in the exegetical portions of this chapter is designed to respect both the particular emphases and the particular texture of Nietzsche’s metaphilosophical reflections. Nietzsche’s approach to metaphilosophy is peculiar by virtue of its content and its form. Nietzsche deviates from mainstream analytic approaches to metaphilosophy, where the central question tends to be “What is philosophy?,” and instead asks first “What kinds of persons are philosophers?” This is hardly surprising: Nietzsche famously chastised philosophers for “confusing the last and the first” (TI “‘Reason’” ), as is arguably the case when, in keeping with mainstream approaches to metaphilosophy, one regards the idea “philosophy” as primary, and the question “Who is it that philosophizes?” as secondary, if not outright irrelevant. As a metaphilosopher, Nietzsche treats the idea “philosophy” as the effect that it is, and focuses squarely on its ground, namely the person of the philosopher. Form-wise, Nietzsche’s metaphilosophical reflections also deviate from the norm in analytical metaphilosophical literature, which tends to be dry, technical – or (pseudo-) “scientific.” As in much of Nietzsche’s writing, playful images and evocative metaphors play a central, irreducible role in his exposition. In keeping with the person- and activity-centered concerns and the poetic texture of Nietzsche’s metaphilosophy, the exegetical elements of this section of this chapter will examine two extended metaphors that pervade Nietzsche’s corpus. These are: () the astral metaphor, which describes either the philosopher or his ‘truth’ as a star or sun and () the entomological metaphor, which invokes the contrast between winged and crawling insects to illustrate the differences between philosophers and men of science. In addition to being respectful of Nietzsche’s approach to doing and writing philosophy, paying attention to the ways in which Nietzsche redeploys certain key images at various stages in his career proves to be a convenient way of tracking the development of his thought through the years, leading up to his metaphilosophical critique of the will to truth.

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All translations in this chapter are my own. I provide KSA references only when citing from lengthy texts. Section numbers (together with the standard abbreviations used in this volume) alone are provided for shorter texts or aphorisms. Unless indicated, all emphases are Nietzsche’s. Loeb () makes a similar point, which he cashes out in terms of tensions between mainstream, viz., Aristotelean, conception of the history of philosophy and Nietzsche’s own approach to philosophy. Some of the occurrences of the images at play effectively involve similes, not metaphors, but this is a nuance that we may ignore without any serious prejudice to our enterprise.

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. The Astral Metaphor “So long as you continue to feel as though the stars were something ‘above you,’ you lack the perspective of the knower [der Erkennende],” reads aphorism  of BGE IV (). ‘Der Erkennende’ is a phrase Nietzsche frequently uses to refer to the figure of the philosopher, especially in BGE. Now, it stands to reason that for the genuine philosopher to feel as though the stars are no longer above him could only mean one thing, namely that his ‘perspective’ is none other than the perspective of an astral body. Indeed, the image of the philosopher as star – together with variants on this theme – appears throughout Nietzsche’s metaphilosophical writing. But what work could this image be doing? What is it about philosophers that make them star-like? And what do the ways in which Nietzsche’s uses of this image change through the years tell us about the development of his thought on the nature – and destiny – of philosophy? To begin answering these questions, we must travel back fourteen years and examine the earliest text in which the astral metaphor plays a central role. This is the unfinished, unpublished “On the Pathos of Truth” (). As its title indicates, this text focuses on philosophers’ relationship to truth – a theme, as we shall see, that is never far from sight when astral metaphors are deployed. Nietzsche begins “Pathos of Truth” by describing early Greek philosophers as “addicts of fame, convinced that they will discover their coat of arms hanging on a constellation” (PT/KSA , p. ). The first philosophers, Nietzsche explains, strove after truth animated by the quintessentially heroic desire for “immortality.” Truth being by definition timeless, possessing her affords a transcendence of temporality that will make her lover as undying and famous as the stars. But a star is more than just a very long-lived object of unequaled fame offering earthlings guidance on the treacherous ocean of life, it is also characterized by its isolation and loneliness. Nietzsche cites the example of Heraclitus as the prototype of the figure of the philosopher: “He is like a star without atmosphere. His burning eye is directed inwards; from without it looks dead and frigid, as if it looked outward merely for appearances’ sake. On all sides waves of illusion and confusion beat directly against the fortress of his pride, while he turns away in disgust” (PT/KSA , p. ). To become a  

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See BGE , , , , and . In this chapter, I make use of Nietzsche’s unpublished writing only for the purpose of tracking the development of his thought as it is recorded in his published work, and not as a self-standing source for Nietzsche’s views.

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

 ı¨ 

star himself, the philosopher must be star-like in his radical self-sufficiency and individualism. Such individualism, for Nietzsche, reaches much further than this. The primary task of the philosopher, he tells us, is to seek after himself. Heraclitus’ “love of truth,” Nietzsche reports, was nothing other than his “self-love” (PT/KSA , p. ). On the picture Nietzsche paints in “Pathos of Truth,” then, the philosopher’s knowledge of truth coincides with his knowledge of self. This points to another more important way in which philosophers are supposed to be like astral bodies: as a star burns and produces light by consuming its own ‘matter’ qua fuel, so does a philosopher somehow ‘feed off’ himself in producing his knowledge or ‘light.’ As though this were not baffling enough, Nietzsche proceeds to conclude this portion of his discussion with a blatantly paradoxical pronouncement: “The truth! Rapturous illusion of a God!” (PT/KSA , p. ). What are we to make of this seemingly oxymoronic statement? If, as Nietzsche has told us, the philosopher progresses toward knowledge of truth by shielding himself against ‘illusion and confusion,’ then is it not incoherent to claim that the truth the philosopher seeks to attain is also an illusion? It stands to reason that there must be two types of illusion at work here, that truth qua divine illusion is not the same kind of illusion as that against which the philosopher shields himself. Perhaps the difference lies in the source of the illusion at hand: while distracting illusions originate from without, truth qua divine illusion originates instead from the very core of the philosopher’s being. But this does not take us very far. It remains unclear precisely what Nietzsche had in mind when he described philosophic truth as the ‘illusion of a God,’ and what its illusoriness may have to do with the means by which it is sought after. Although Nietzsche was heavily invested in thinking and writing about early Greek thought in the two years that followed the composition of “Pathos of Truth,” he does not explore these questions further in the writing he produces in this period. Many of the ideas Nietzsche developed in the unfinished texts of –, however, are revisited in his later reflections on early Greek culture in Human, All Too Human (). Now, Nietzsche’s attitude to philosophy in this text is markedly different to what it had been just a few years earlier. The tone is skeptical and dismissive, where it had formerly been celebratory. HH  picks up many of loose threads left hanging in “Pathos of Truth,” again by means of an 

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Some of the passages on Heraclitus in “Pathos of Truth,” accordingly, are used again verbatim in PTAG (–).

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astral image, and weaves them into a somewhat more legible tapestry, albeit one whose tale has very different inflections. The key theme is the same in both texts, namely philosophic truth and its illusory character, but, in keeping with his pronouncements in the rest of the  edition of Human, Nietzsche is now significantly more condemnatory. It should be noted, moreover, that Nietzsche’s use of the astral image here is structurally closer to Plato’s in The Republic: the star in question is the sun, and this sun is identified not with the philosopher himself, but with the object of his striving, namely knowledge. Nietzsche begins HH  by stipulating that the “radiance of myth” is what gave its vitality and brightness to ancient Greek culture. He then considers an objection: and what about early Greek philosophers – they surely represent an exception to this rule, seeing as they rejected myth, and yet represent the brightest lights of the ancient world? To this objection Nietzsche responds as follows: “[F]undamentally these philosophers were only seeking a brighter sun, myths were not pure, not luminous enough for them. They discovered this light in their knowledge, in that which each of them called his ‘truth’.” Given the argumentative context in which it is made, Nietzsche’s claim has a striking implication. Lyrical poet or cosmogonist had ‘myth’ for their guiding star; the ‘truth’ sought by early philosophers was but a brighter star than that of the poet’s myths; and it is in this way that the law that the ‘radiance of myth’ is what gave Greek cultural life (including Greek philosophy) its greatness is confirmed. The implication is that the ‘truth’ early philosophers strove for was not the opposite of the myths of cosmogonic poetry, but rather something through which the ‘radiance of myth’ shone even brighter – that is, something which is in some sense continuous with myth, and not, we may infer, with the results of early scientific or ‘rational’ inquiry. Now, let ‘illusion’ stand as the genus of which ‘myth’ (including what is continuous with myth by virtue – say, of being endowed with its ‘radiance’) is a species, and we obtain a somewhat clearer understanding of the dialectic of truth and illusion in the account of the genesis of Greek 

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In a note dated  and which, I would argue, prefigures Nietzsche’s later writing on the topic (including in his more critical moments), he claims that philosophy is the result of the “continuation of mythical drive” after the rise of early science and that, as such, it represents the “overcoming of knowing [Wissens] through myth-creating forces” (KSA :[]). This needn’t imply that philosophical claims are mythological in the sense that they are, say, baldly anthropomorphic, only that whatever is responsible for myth-making is also responsible for the kind of supra-scientific work involved in the production of philosophical knowledge. The ambiguous relationship, on Nietzsche’s account, between philosophy and scientific enquiry is a topic I will discuss at length in the next section.

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 ı¨ 

thought that Nietzsche presents in HH : early Greek philosophers, as is well known, turned away from the ‘illusions’ of mytho-poetic fables, but, in their ascent to the firmament of philosophical knowledge, they were lured on by the enchantment of a new, higher kind of illusion – that is, the more radiant sun of their ‘truth.’ But what exactly, we may now ask, is supposed to be illusory about philosophers’ truths? What Nietzsche goes on to say in HH  helps answer this question. Nietzsche emphasizes the legislative ambitions of early Greek philosophers, each of whom sought to set down the principles of the optimal form of life and to implement his ethical-political vision either through direct political engagement or through more indirect, spiritual means. The philosopher here appears as a “tyrannical” legislator. As such, his truth or knowledge is not merely theoretical and disinterested (even though he may portray it as being so), but deeply normative. It does not, in the first instance, concern what is (and is not), but what matters and what is to be done. As such, Plato’s identification of ‘the Good’ with the Sun of pure knowledge is, on Nietzsche’s reading, symptomatic of what is at work in the production of all philosophical knowledge, namely a fundamentally axiological impetus parading in the guise of ‘pure’ theoretical enquiry. Now, it is well known that it is from the late seventies onward that Nietzsche began to regard the entire domain of normative discourse as belonging to the field of storytelling, or artistic creation. This suggests that it is precisely by virtue of their essentially legislative or axiological character that Nietzsche, in Human, regards philosopher-legislators’ truth as ‘illusory,’ or endowed with the seductive radiance of myth. Nietzsche also emphasizes the deeply idiosyncratic and self-aggrandizing nature of philosophic ‘truth’ in HH . Each philosopher regards what is really just his truth as the sun. This points to the deeply personal character of philosophers’ axiological legislation, to the coincidence – in the language of “Pathos of Truth” – between philosopher’s ‘self-love’ and ‘love of truth.’ And this is but another aspect of philosophy that Nietzsche, at the time of writing Human, seems to regard as little more than a sign of immaturity. Things radically change in Nietzsche’s mature writing. Most of what Nietzsche frowns upon in Human is revalued and celebrated anew from Thus Spoke Zarathustra (–) onward. Take the case of philosophical legislation, which gains special importance in Nietzsche’s 

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In fact, as Ansell-Pearson has recently shown (: ch. ), this shift begins as early as –, as is attested by Nietzsche’s more moderate take on these questions in the two works that would

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major poetic cum philosophical work, Zarathustra (–). Consider the following excerpts from “On the Way of Creator” (Z I), in which the image of the philosopher as star reappears in all of its splendor: Can you compel even the stars to revolve around you? . . . Can you give yourself your own evil and good and hang your will above yourself like a law? . . . It is terrifying to be alone with the judge and avenger of one’s own law. Thus does a star get ejected into desolate space and the icy breath of solitary being . . . They throw injustice and filth at the lonely one. But, my brother, if you want to be a star, then you must shine forth for them all the more!

Here, Nietzsche’s mouthpiece, Zarathustra, establishes a close relation between the philosopher’s self-reliance, self-knowledge, self-legislation, and radical loneliness. The philosopher’s self-knowledge, this passage suggests, coincides with his self-creation, or self-fashioning, under the philosopher’s own self-legislated laws. There is neither talk of illusion nor of unscientific immaturity here. Rather, Zarathustra merely points to the dual effects that the self-legislating philosopher-star’s ascent to the heaven of truth leads to, effects that, on the face of it, seem contradictory. On the one hand, the philosopher is ostracized and becomes an isolated, lonely star – an object of scorn and indignation. On the other hand, as an astral body, the philosopher also gains unprecedented radiance as well as massive gravitational pull, whereupon he gains the ability to compel other bodies to revolve around him and even ordains the trajectory of their orbit. Both the imagery and broader conceptual framework at work here is reminiscent of Nietzsche’s early discussion of the unparalleled success of Socrates’ philosophy in BT , a case which, in addition to its historical importance and attendant centrality to Nietzsche’s late metaphilosophical reflection, helps to illustrate how a philosopher-star may turn from pariah to immortalized hero. Nietzsche writes:

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later become the second instalment of Human: The Wanderer and His Shadow and Assorted Opinions and Maxims. Cf. what Plato tells us about the way those who have seen the ‘sun’ appear to those who have remained in the cave in Republic a: they appear foolish and, as a result, are misunderstood, ostracized, and despised. More generally, it would appear that one of the functions served by the astral extended metaphor is to subvert Plato’s account in the ‘allegory of the cave.’ The Sun – that is, the Good qua source of True Knowledge – is, on Nietzsche’s account, really just the philosopher’s exalted self, a fact that Plato was not strong enough to realize. See, in this connection, KSA :[].

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 ı¨  Once anyone clearly sees how, after Socrates . . . a never-imagined universal greed for knowledge through the widest extent of the educated world steered science around on the high seas as the essential task for every person of greater capabilities, a greed which it has been impossible since then completely to expel from science, how through this universality a common net of thinking was cast over the entire earth for the first time, with prospects, in fact, of the rule-bound workings of an entire solar system – whoever reminds himself of all this, together with that astonishingly high pyramid of knowledge, cannot deny the fact that in Socrates we see a turning point and vortex of so-called world history. (BT /KSA , p. ; my emphases)

In the pages that precede this passage, Nietzsche explains that Socrates’ philosophy is first and foremost the expression of a highly idiosyncratic truth. In Socrates, consciousness and logical thinking had for the first time come to dominate the “instincts,” thereupon inverting the natural hierarchy between instinct and intuition as “the truly creative power” and “conscious knowledge” as mere “critic” (BT /KSA , p. ). Hence the essence of Socratic truth, which states that the ability to distinguish “true knowledge” (the good) from “error” and “mere appearance” (evil) made possible by rigorous logical and scientific analysis holds the key for “correcting” all of existence (BT /KSA , p. ). Nietzsche insists that this is the ‘truth’ of an entirely new type of man, inconceivable before Socrates, namely the “theoretical man.” We may thus, by the lights of Zarathustra’s poetic account, describe Socrates’ case as follows: although Socrates’ discovery and championing of the deeply idiosyncratic laws of his own flourishing first cast him into desolate isolation – hence his execution as a dangerous criminal – his ‘truth’ eventually came to gives its sense, meaning, and structure to world in which we live. In time, Socrates became the philosopher-sun at the center of our cultural constellation, the astral body around which every aspect of our global scientific civilization now revolves and by the lights of which all of reality is now interpreted. This connects directly to Nietzsche’s foremost concerns in his mature metaphilosophical writings. In the post-Zarathustra works, Nietzsche ceases to tackle the question of philosophic ‘truth’ from the angle of its purported illusoriness, and turns instead to the Socratic metaphilosophical 

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Nietzsche returns to these themes in the ‘Socrates’ section of his late Twilight of the Idols (). Although his language and angle are different in this late text, his discussion is in many ways continuous with his treatment of Socrates in BT –. On Nietzsche’s appreciation of the continuity of his thinking on this subject in his early and late work, see BT “Attempt” –.

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legacy of the will to truth’s hegemony over philosopher. What, Nietzsche now asks, does it mean – and betray – for philosophers to have given supreme value to knowledge of truth (and destruction of error) and to continue to do so today? To be clear: artistry and creativity continue to be described as essential to the philosopher’s tool kit in this phase of Nietzsche’s metaphilosophical reflections, but Nietzsche no longer draws the implication, on the basis of this, that philosophers are in the business of generating grand, seductive illusions. Granted, Nietzsche calls for a philosophical praxis that makes use of “mocking, light, fleeting, divinely untroubled, divinely artificial art, that, like a bright flame, blazes into an unclouded sky” (GS P:) so that philosophers may “constantly transform all that [they] are into light and flame” (GS P:), but such astral performances are no longer understood as involving the creation of falsehoods. Instead, this marks a thorough rejection of the “will to truth” as a form of “bad taste” (GS P:). What could it mean for the will to truth to represent a form of bad taste? Why should the ‘philosophers of the future,’ in Nietzsche’s opinion, seek to overcome the will to truth that, since Socrates, has fueled not just scientific, but also philosophical enquiry? And what does such overcoming imply as regards philosophical praxis? These are questions that we will only be able to answer satisfactorily at the end of Section ., after exploring the role of entomological images in Nietzsche’s metaphilosophical writings. These, as we shall see, play a key role in Nietzsche’s critical discussion of the will to truth.

. The Entomological Metaphor At SE  () Nietzsche reports – presumably on the basis of first-hand knowledge – that in moments of lucidity men of science “know in the depths of their heart that they are not flying, but crawling creatures” (SE /KSA , p. ). Nietzsche goes on to suggest that their awareness of their lowly status tends to make them resentful and hostile toward ‘flying creatures’ – that is, such visionary geniuses as philosophers, great artists, and saints. Painfully aware that he is fundamentally “sterile” for lack of  

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See, in particular, the opening sections of BGE I, but also GS , and the third essay of the Genealogy, particularly its closing sections. Indeed, although his primary focus in this text is the figure of the exemplary philosopher as embodied by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche’s discussion in Schopenhauer as Educator () is broader than this, and also concerns, albeit tangentially, other such figures of the genius as that of the ‘great artist’ and the ‘saint.’ Although Nietzsche’s views on these two latter types would change

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imagination, self-confidence, and creativity, the man of science, writes Nietzsche, is prone to a “natural hatred” vis-à-vis such a “fertile man” as the great philosopher (SE /KSA , p. ). In order to flesh out the difference between these two types, Nietzsche redeploys the late medieval trope of critiquing students of human anatomy for their purportedly vicious fascination with dead bodies: sterile men of science wish only “to kill, dissect, and understand nature,” while the fertile philosophical genius wishes instead “to augment it with a new living nature” (SE /KSA , p. ). Here, a brutal contrast is set up between crawling maggots gnawing at the remains of some decomposing organism (men of science) and a beautiful winged creature carrying in its bosom the seed of a new form of life (the philosopher). The two types of creature Nietzsche described at SE  appear to be such fundamentally different types as to be separated by an impassable gulf. But Nietzsche’s account is in fact significantly more sophisticated than that, as is immediately revealed at SE . Here, Nietzsche explains that Kant never succeeded in becoming a genuine philosopher, “but instead remained until the end as it were in a chrysalis stage” (SE /KSA , p. ). Why so? Well, because Kant never ceased to be a man of science and, as Nietzsche stipulates, “a man of science can never become a philosopher” (SE /KSA , p. ). Nietzsche supports this bold metaphilosophical principle by explaining that it is a matter of necessity that a philosopher, if he is to make any progress, be capable of a kind of immediate apprehension both of things in general and of himself in particular. The greatest heights of philosophical insight, he reports, are achieved through self-education and reach their zenith when the philosopher comes to see himself as “a reflection and abbreviation of the whole world,” which requires a type of self-understanding entirely untainted by other people’s views and opinions (SE /KSA , p. ). The man of science, however, “lets concepts, opinions, past events, books, step between himself and things.” “It is no wonder,” Nietzsche concludes, “if he sees in himself nothing but the opinions of others!” This is why he regards it as inconceivable for a man of science to attain the kind of selfknowledge and -understanding that is constitutive of philosophical insight. considerably in the years to follow, most key elements of his account of the character, vocation, and fundamental task of the philosopher in Schopenhauer as Educator remain central to his later metaphilosophical mediations, especially in the form they take in book six of Beyond Good and Evil, “We, Men of Science” (see in this connection, Nietzsche’s appraisal of this text at EH “Books” UM:). Hence my decision to treat Schopenhauer as Educator as a metaphilosophical text, even though its discussion of the genius covers a broader domain.

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Although he may have been a “great thinker,” Kant thus failed to become a genuine philosopher, and instead remained stuck in a chrysalis state. In Schopenhauer as Educator, Nietzsche opposes scholarly communitymindedness, conformism, and self-effacingness to philosophical individualism, independence, and self-affirmation. If the man of science is something of a herd-animal (to use a phrase from Nietzsche’s later writing), the philosopher is a profoundly solitary being. Nevertheless, Nietzsche’s use of the image of the chrysalis suggests that he is really only telling half the story when he stipulates that “[a] man of science can never become a philosopher.” Indeed, the entomological image he makes use of at SE  suggests that men of science and philosophers, although very different in nature, are not separated by an impassable gulf, but rather represent separate stages on a single continuum. Rather than being a type of creature whose constitution and dispositions are innately different from those of the man of science, the philosopher is revealed to be a former man of science who somehow came radically to overcome his lowly station. Nietzsche’s initial pronouncement is thus in need of an important qualification: certainly, the man of science has no hope of become a philosopher so long as he remains a mere man science, but the deeper truth here is that it is only men of science who may one day become philosophers, albeit by means of a radical qualitative leap. Let us now turn to Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, an unpublished text from roughly the same period, to get a clearer idea of what the early Nietzsche took such a leap to involve, and why he might have thought that only men of science may become philosophers. I shall focus on section three of this text, which, although nominally devoted to the first attested Greek philosopher, Thales, is really concerned with the broader question of philosophical insight and its relation to scientific knowledge. Referring once again to the inhabitants of the insect kingdom, Nietzsche here asserts that great synthetic philosophical pronouncements such as Thales’ tradition-founding proposition “all is water” can only be arrived at when a human being learns to “leap above the wormlike probing and creeping-about of the particular sciences, divines the ultimate resolution of all things, and, through this insight, overcomes the vulgar restrictions of the lower grades of knowledge” (PTAG /KSA , p. –; my emphasis). Nietzsche explains that philosophers deploy a type of “legislation” that allows them to “tame” the so-called knowledge-drive and gain mastery over its “blind untrammelled desire[s].” Only then can the philosopher allow “the echoes of the world-symphony to resonate

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within him,” whereupon he “feels himself swell into a macrocosm, all the while maintaining self-control, a certain way of seeing himself coldly as a mirror of the world.” In the very similar language of SE , it is at this stage that he comes to see himself “as a reflection and an abbreviation of the whole world” (SE /KSA , p. ). Let us set aside for the time being the question of what such an experience may involve. Note, for now, how Nietzsche describes the transition from scientific worm to winged insect soaring above the relative chaos of the particular sciences as involving a kind of self-mastery whereupon the energy one formerly squandered in pursuit of the “lower grades of knowledge” is rechanneled toward superior aims. In order to attain to the highest kinds of insights, Nietzsche suggests, one must willingly renounce less valuable sorts of knowledge – that is, scientific knowledge, ‘factgathering’ and the like – and come to see the pursuit of such knowledge as a distraction. Nietzsche’s discussion at PTAG  further suggests that the differences between philosophic and scientific approaches to knowledge do not only concern the kind of knowledge one is after, but also the methods employed in securing it. In his upward flight toward the celestial regions of great philosophical insight, the philosopher does not, as the scientists does, proceed by means of careful inferences or stable, repeatable steps, but is instead propelled by the “illogical power” of “creative imagination” (PTAG /KSA , p. ). The core claims of his philosophy are thus, by virtue of their very status as philosophical propositions, scientifically unwarranted, as was the case with Thales’ seemingly “absurd” proposition, “All is water” (PTAG /KSA , pp. –). Evaluated as a scientific claim, Nietzsche insists, Thales’ proposition – like those of other early Greek thinkers – can only be regarded as the product of gross overgeneralization and thus as unwarranted (PTAG /KSA , p. ). When the philosopher deploys reasoning and logical demonstrations to ‘support’ his “vision,” Nietzsche continues, he does so retroactively (PTAG /KSA , p. ). Dialectics come after transfiguring vision or insight, as a means of maintaining one’s grip on one’s inexpressible insight and, derivatively, of ‘showing the way’ so that others may follow in one’s footsteps (PTAG /KSA , p. ). This helps explain why Nietzsche believes only former men of science may one day transform themselves into philosophers. To wit, if it is a necessary condition that philosophers be able to (re-)describe their all-encompassing 

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No careful student of Plato can fail to recognize in such texts as the first paragraphs of PTAG  a subversive reinterpretation of Plato’s description of the philosophic method at Republic b–c.

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insights into the nature of existence as the ‘results’ or ‘conclusions’ of some deductive demonstration or empirically warranted inductive generalization in order for them to maintain their grip on themselves and be able to communicate their insights, then it is no wonder if only those individuals that already have a solid grasp of the methods of rigorous science and logical thought will be capable, not just of achieving, but – more importantly – of formulating properly philosophical insights. The main takeaway of Nietzsche’s account in PTAG , however, is that philosophical insights are arrived at through thoroughly unscientific means. Conversely, Nietzsche’s point is that the employment of scientific rationality and ‘slow’ inferential methods could never yield properly philosophical results. What, we may now ask, could it mean for the philosopher to see himself as “a reflection and abbreviation of the whole world” (SE ), and what is the connection between this kind of exalted self-knowledge and his vocation, qua fertile individual, to augment life “with a new living nature” (SE )? Nietzsche’s discussion of Schopenhauer in SE  is helpful in this connection. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche tells us, learned to resist the scholarly urge to focus on localized analytic tasks and instead embarked on the more challenging project of painting a synthetic “regulatory global picture” (SE /KSA , p. ) of nature as a whole, whereupon he could come to realize “the meaning of [his] own life” (SE /KSA , p. ). Nietzsche thus characterizes the “exalted and transfiguring overall goal” of Schopenhauer’s philosophical quest as that of “acquir[ing] power so as to assist the evolution of physis and to be for a while the corrector of its follies and inadequacies. At first only for yourself, to be sure; but through yourself ultimately for everyone.” This passage attests to the philosopher’s vocation to transform the world on the basis of the quasi-“mystical” coincidence between self-knowledge and knowledge of the basic character and meaning of existence as a whole. As is well known, Nietzsche turned against Schopenhauer shortly after the publication of Schopenhauer as Educator. But it is clear from his later metaphilosophical writing that, in spite of this rupture, Nietzsche continued to stand by the account of the nature philosophical thought that he first developed and applied to the case of his “educator” in this text. In an  note that accompanied Nietzsche’s gift of this work to Lou Andreas 

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This is a point Nietzsche will insist on again, albeit in a very different context, in BGE . See also BGE , with its claim that philosophers are deluded when they think they arrive at their results through “the self-evolving of a cold, pure, divinely indifferent dialectic.”

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Salomé, Nietzsche declares that SE contained “[his] deepest and most fundamental feelings.” And at EH “Books” UM: (), Nietzsche explains that, just like ‘Socrates’ was a ‘semiotic’ for Plato in the Platonic dialogues, the figure of ‘Schopenhauer’ in Schopenhauer as Educator is really a cipher for Nietzsche himself; that Schopenhauer as Educator was really a study in his own self-understanding as a philosopher. He writes: The way I understand the philosopher, as a terrible explosion before which all is in danger, the way I separate my concept of “the philosopher” miles and miles from a concept which still includes even a Kant, not to speak of scholarly “ruminants” and other professors of philosophy: this essay gives an invaluable lesson therein. (EH “Books” UM:)

Let us now consider a passage from Zarathustra that, while it attests to the fundamental continuity between Nietzsche’s early and late metaphilosophical reflections, bring into relief the distinctive emphases of his mature writing on the nature of philosophy. Incidentally, this passage also makes it clearer what Nietzsche meant when he describes the philosopher as a “terrible explosion” in Ecce Homo. In “Of Human Prudence,” Nietzsche’s mythical mouthpiece recounts the circumstances in which he acquired wings and became a flying creature. Zarathustra speaks of his disappointment with so-called “high and best men” for fearing and calling ‘evil’ the arising of the genuinely new – that is, the overcoming of mankind as we know it in and through the advent of the Übermensch. “Then,” he reports, “I sprouted wings to soar away into distant futures.” The philosopher-butterfly’s flight, this text suggests, is not just a flight upward toward a position affording synthetic perspectives, but has, in addition to this, an important temporal dimension. It is also a flight forward toward mankind’s future, toward – to use the language of Schopenhauer as Educator – the “new living nature” with which it wishes to “augment” life, however dangerous, ‘evil,’ or explosive his contemporaries may deem his vision. The distinctive temporal orientation and transgressive character of philosophical thought that becomes central to Nietzsche’s metaphilosophy from Zarathustra onward is worth dwelling upon for a moment longer. In BGE –, Nietzsche discusses the contrary temporal stance of 

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Cited in Breazeale (: xxv). Given that metaphilosophy is apparently one of the things Nietzsche felt most strongly about and that it is the principle theme of Schopenhauer as Educator, we can safely assume that Nietzsche took this work to contain his most fundamental metaphilosophical feelings. While Zarathustra’s talk of flying creatures often concerns birds, and only occasionally flying insects, it seems clear that the notion of sprouting wings refers to the entomological and not the ornithological domain. To wit, birds do not sprout wings, but some insects do.

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“genuine philosophers,” on the one hand, and their scientific pseudophilosopher counterparts (and subalterns), on the other. Scientific pseudo-philosophers like Kant or Hegel, Nietzsche writes, are exclusively concerned with the past. Their axiological work consists in nothing more than abstracting and universalizing the basic principles at work in past evaluative schemata, including those that have been fully internalized and thus now seem timelessly “true” (BGE ). Genuine philosophers, in contrast, are first struck with a vision of “a new greatness in humanity, a new, untraveled path to human greatness,” and then turn back on the present dominant normative ideals, finding in these the sworn “enemy” of their necessarily “untimely” future values (BGE ). True philosophers, Nietzsche explains, are thus always “of tomorrow”; they are always at odds with the world in which they inhabit. But this is not because they ‘conclude on the basis of the evidence’ that there is something wrong with today’s dominant axiological schemata. Rather, it is because they first soar upward and forward into the future on the wings of philosophical imagination and then, when they look back on the present, see in it all that is an obstacle to the new ideal of human greatness they see coming. If science is oriented toward the past and is, as such, fundamentally conservative, genuine philosophy is resolutely oriented toward the future and considers the past and present through the lens of its future-oriented projects. Nietzsche draws the following implication: “[genuine philosophers’] ‘knowing’ (‘Erkennen’) is creation, their creation is legislation, their will to truth is – will to power” (BGE ). This prompts us to return to the questions with which we ended our examination of the astral metaphor. What kind of ‘knowledge’ is it, on Nietzsche’s mature metaphilosophical account, that philosophers produce? How truthful – or untruthful/illusory – does he take this knowledge to be? What relation does he take philosophers to have borne to the will to truth, and what relation does he call upon them to bear to it in the future? And, we must now add, what does philosophers’ ‘will to power’ have to do with any of this? 

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Nietzsche’s language in both BGE  and  leaves little doubt as to his understanding of what comes first in philosophy, namely a vision of the future. In the first of these texts, he explains that genuine philosophers “first [erst] determine the Where to? and To what end? of humankind and, in doing so [dabei], gain mastery over the preliminary work of philosophical workers.” At BGE , Nietzsche writes that philosophers’ critique of current axiological orthodoxy betrays their secret, namely that they harbor a vision for a radically new form of future human greatness. The suggestion here is that specific dreams and hopes for the future are what shapes philosophers’ critical take on the past and present – the dream of the future comes first, and it is only in relation to this that the present appears as a nightmare.

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Nietzsche’s redeployment of the now familiar caterpillar-to-butterfly trope in GM III throws some light on these matters. Nietzsche writes that philosophers have up until now only been allowed to “adopt and creep around in” the form of the “ascetic priest,” which he describes as the “vile and dismal form of a caterpillar.” Nietzsche then asks: Has the brightly colored, dangerous winged-insect, the ‘spirit’ that the caterpillar hid within itself, really thrown off the monk’s habit and emerged into the light . . . ? Is there [now] enough pride, daring, courage, selfconfidence, will of spirit, will to take responsibility, freedom of will, for ‘the philosopher’ on earth to be really – possible? (GM III:)

In subsequent sections of On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche famously identifies contemporary science or scholarship as the ascetic ideal’s “most recent and noble manifestation” (GM III:) and the “unconditional will to truth” as “faith in the ascetic ideal itself ” (GM III:). Piecing these bits together, it becomes evident that for today’s and tomorrow’s philosopher to throw off the ‘monk’s habit’ will mean overcoming the will to truth and ceasing to pretend one is a mere man of science. Instead, the philosopher is called upon to embrace what has really always been fundamental to philosophers’ nature as (hidden) butterflies, namely the will not to impersonal, scholarly truth, but to self-affirmation and great responsibility in and through axiological legislation – or, in a word, the creative will to power. Failure to do is as arguably what Nietzsche refers to as “bad taste” in  (GS P:, cited earlier). In most of the texts composed in the last three years of Nietzsche’s productive life however, philosophers’ resolute coming into their own becomes more than a question of taste, but instead a matter of life and death. The unchecked will to truth, he warns, now risks leading humankind into the abyss of nihilism, as sober men of science disclose the universal scope of what, from a perspective of zero tolerance for deception, appears as error, illusion, and falsehood. New values are required for our unavoidable ‘error’-suffused existence to be affirmed – values, ideally, that positively affirm ‘errors’ of at least some type. Hence Nietzsche’s valuation of the will to interpretation and creation – or, in a word, the will to power. What, then, is Nietzsche’s final verdict on the validity of philosophical visions, past, present, and future? If “truth” in the scientific or scholarly 

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Much more could be said about the will-to-power doctrine and how it connects both to Nietzsche’s metaphilosophy and to his reading of the modern cultural-historical predicament. This being but a preliminary exploration of what is deserving of a far deeper treatment, I will abstain from saying anything more in the present context.

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sense is not what is aimed at to begin with, and if philosophical vision is achieved by means not of “the self-evolving of a cold, pure, divinely indifferent dialectic,” but rather of something close to the mystics’ “inspiration” (BGE ), then are philosophers merely in the business of inventing falsehoods, as Nietzsche believed when he wrote Human? A careful reading of BGE  suggests a negative answer to this question. The idea here is that genuine philosophers are those who gain an insight into precisely that new ideal of future human greatness that, at the precise historical juncture at which the philosopher intervenes, is required for humanity to thrive and surpass itself. Nietzsche invokes the example of Socrates in this connection, with the added qualification that what may have been lifepromoting in his particular context has now become life-threatening. Returning to the question of the validity of philosophical insight, then, we may say this: although what justifies a philosophical vision – what makes it right – has nothing to do, fundamentally, with any of the “reasons” a philosopher could adduce in its favor, let alone its “truth” in the sense of a “correct description” of existence and of its value, this need not imply that philosophic knowledge is entirely unjustified, unwarranted. What warrant it does have is not rational or empirical, but rather a kind of context-relative world-historical warrant. As such, philosophical “knowledge” is no mere misleading illusion; it is only that it has a type of validity firmly distinct from that of warranted scientific knowledge.

. “Analytical Nietzsche” and Its Discontents In the final section of this essay, I wish to synthesize and mobilize the exegetical results secured in the two preceding sections to mount a Nietzschean metaphilosophical critique of the Analytical Nietzsche genre. Let us begin by reviewing some of the things we have learnt about Nietzsche’s mature views on the profound differences between scientific and philosophic knowledge: () While scientific knowledge is third-personal or ‘public,’ impersonal, and predicated on a kind of ascetic self-negation, philosophic

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The implications of my account of Nietzsche’s metaphilosophy as regards the intended truth-value of such first-order philosophical doctrines as Nietzsche’s teaching of eternal recurrence as “cosmology” and will to power as “ontology” cannot be addressed here. Such important, complex, and controversial a topic would be deserving of (at least) a second essay in its own right.

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

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 ı¨  knowledge is, in the first instance, fundamentally first-personal or ‘private,’ idiosyncratic, and it is predicated on self-affirmation. While scientific knowledge is analytic (in that it quite literally ‘breaks things down’ into ever smaller units of analysis), highly localized, fundamentally descriptive, and arrived at through the use of inferential reason, philosophic knowledge is synthetic, all-encompassing, fundamentally axiological and prescriptive, and arrived at through something like what we may describe, for lack of a better term, as ‘inspiration.’ While scientific knowledge is past-oriented and conservative, philosophic knowledge is prospective and transgressive.

All of these points converge upon Nietzsche’s final verdict and plea: past philosophers’ pretense of laboring under the aegis of the quintessentially scientific will to truth was but bad faith, lack of self-confidence, unquestioned Socratism, or all of these at once (depending on the case); conditions are now ripe for the emergence of honest and transparent philosophizing – philosophizing that aims not for ‘neutral’ scientific veridicality, but engaged world-transformative axiological legislation. It would be no exaggeration to say that Nietzsche’s metaphilosophical reflections pose a challenge to the very foundations of ‘mainstream’ or analytic philosophical self-understanding in the English-speaking world. According to this self-understanding, genuine philosophy, if it is not simply a science, ought at least to be ‘continuous’ with the social and natural sciences in its methods and its findings. Philosophy, on this account, ought to follow the sciences’ lead. 



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Like French, German distinguishes between ‘wissen’ (French: savoir) – which suggests a universal, there-for-all-to-see kind of knowledge – and ‘kennen’ (French: connaître, from which is derived, significantly, the English ‘connoisseur’) – which, along with the derivative ‘erkennen,’ in principle (usage does not strictly follow the rule) suggests a more personal, intimate, not-obviously-replicable nor accessible-to-all kind of knowledge. Thus, one does not say ‘Ich weiß ihn,’ but ‘Ich kenne ihn’ (“I know him”). Although this nuance is lost in translation into English, it is not insignificant that Nietzsche tends to use forms derived from the infinitives ‘kennen’ and especially ‘erkennen’ (as opposed to ‘wissen’) when discussing philosophical activity. The German word for science, of course, is Wissenschaft. As his pronouncements at BGE  make abundantly clear, Nietzsche came to be convinced that scientific discourse is never ideologically neutral. Some legislators’ ideals are always part of scientific theories’ subtext. As such, while scientific discourse is fundamentally descriptive, it unavoidably describes the world as it appears from a given axiological perspective. Here and in all that follows in this chapter, I refer to Nietzsche’s late metaphilosophical views. Most contemporary analytic philosophers, I should add, would not be much happier with what the Nietzsche of Human has to say on these matters, namely that positive (cf. strictly critical) philosophy is fantasy and that modern science will soon spell its demise.

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For reasons that should now be obvious, Nietzsche would regard this understanding of philosophy as profoundly confused. It betrays either lack of self-awareness or persistent bad faith on behalf of philosophers. It precludes the emergence of genuinely challenging, world-transforming ‘big ideas.’ And it is the unhappy result of an ‘inversion’ of “the order of rank” between philosophy and science (see BGE ) that, qua axiological shift, must itself be traced back to the once ‘warranted,’ but now life-threatening teaching of some philosopher-legislator, viz., Socrates. To be clear, Nietzsche did not wish philosophy to be antiscientific. In fact, given his belief that philosophy and science represent two such radically separate types of human endeavor, he would have regarded the idea that the properties ‘scientific’ and ‘antiscientific’ could even applicable to ‘philosophy’ as the result of some profound category mistake. What Nietzsche did want is for philosophers to begin deliberately to guide the sciences by means of new forms of axiological legislation, beginning with Nietzsche’s own devaluation of the (purportedly) nihilistic will to truth in favor of his (purportedly) life-promoting will-to-power doctrine. The Analytical Nietzsche tradition, in contrast, is founded on the Socratic conviction that the purpose of philosophical enquiry is to secure ‘truth’ through the application of the same basic methods as are used in the sciences to find solutions to a strictly circumscribed set of ‘philosophical problems.’ As such, it is primarily concerned with extracting or reconstructing ‘rationally defensible theories’ from Nietzsche’s texts that address these problems and, in doing so, might assist philosophers in their quest for the truth. Diverse interpretative strategies are employed in order to “do Nietzsche the philosopher a favor” (Leiter : ; his emphasis) by repackaging his interrogations, aspersions, and open-ended suggestions in the form of claims and arguments. But before proceeding to ‘do him favors as a philosopher,’ ought we not first to make sure that Nietzsche even had the ambition of being a ‘philosopher’ as we understand the term? – that he even shared our conception of what ‘being a philosopher’ means, or, more importantly, of what philosophy ought to become? Paying heed to Nietzsche’s metaphilosophical reflections and to the details of his own performance as a philosopher casts serious doubts on whether Nietzsche regarded it as his task as a philosopher to form ‘rationally defensible theories’ on the basis of careful reasoned enquiry. In fact, it suggests that he made it his mission, as a metaphilosophically self-aware philosopher, not to build ‘rationally defensible theories’ susceptible of being accepted by all reasonable, right-thinking inquirers, but rather to give expression to an inspiration-born ‘regulative global picture’

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(SE ) – which, although it be in the first instance deeply idiosyncratic, would in time come to gain world-historical significance – and, in doing so, to encourage and challenge other ‘philosophers of the future’ to leap their way up to their own synthetic, axiological insights – to their own personal, all too personal ‘truths’ (BGE ), which may also end up contributing to humanity’s self-reinvention. This, I submit, forces us to “go meta” – for lack of a better term – on Analytical Nietzsche scholarship. To begin, there is in this tradition of Nietzsche studies a problem of method, which is really also a deeper problem of interpretation. For all of its strengths as rigorous analytical commentary, the vast majority of contemporary Anglo-American Nietzsche reception is metaphilosophically discontinuous with Nietzsche; it assumes the appropriateness of precisely that conception of philosophy that Nietzsche contests. But we can and must go further than this. Given Nietzsche’s understanding of his fundamental task as a philosopher-legislator – given the axiologically pregnant will expressed in his legislative metaphilosophy itself – the fact that analytic commentators work under precisely that conception of philosophy that Nietzsche wished to contest justifies a far more severe judgment. Beyond its methodological faux pas, the Analytical Nietzsche tradition is guilty of reinforcing precisely what Nietzsche, as metaphilosopher, sought to combat and reverse. This is the self-inflicted demotion of philosophy from the paroxysm of human accomplishment responsible for humankind’s ongoing self-surpassing to an inconsequential subfield among the sciences, whom no one, least of all the man of science, takes seriously. What is more, beyond promoting what he wished to combat, the Analytical Nietzsche turns ‘Nietzsche’ himself into a weapon in the battle against the legacy Nietzsche wished to bestow upon future generations. This amounts to more than a mere castration or silencing of Nietzsche; it involves transforming Nietzsche into an enemy of the future he envisioned. To this affront a robust response is called for. I thus conclude in shamelessly unscholarly fashion with my own bit of legislation: Against “Nietzsche as philosopher,” a new front must come into full self-conscious being. . . its war cry: Nietzsche as metaphilosopher! 

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I am not the first to note this. Loeb () arrives at a very similar conclusion. Pippin () also makes a similar point.

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The Nature of Philosophy

 

The Relationship between Science and Philosophy as a Key Feature of Nietzsche’s Metaphilosophy Rebecca Bamford

My main aim in this chapter is to clarify Nietzsche’s approach to the relationship between philosophy and the natural and physical sciences. The German word ‘Wissenschaft’ can refer not only to the natural and physical sciences, but also to the social sciences, humanities, and arts, including philology, philosophy, and poetics; when Nietzsche discusses ‘Wissenschaft,’ he has a broader notion of ‘science’ in mind than does contemporary philosophy of science (Babich ). Here, I shall use ‘the sciences’ to refer to the natural and physical sciences. I treat the relationship between Nietzsche and the sciences in his free spirit writings as a key aspect of Nietzsche’s metaphilosophy, on the basis that our understanding of how philosophy ought to be done rests in significant part on whether or not we agree that the sciences must inform, or constrain, philosophical investigations in at least some respects. In assessing Nietzsche’s approach to the relationship between the sciences and philosophy in his free spirit writings, it is tempting either to prioritize Nietzsche’s positive remarks about the sciences or to prioritize his critical remarks about them. Yet, even within a single free spirit text, Nietzsche makes both positive and negative remarks about the sciences. For example, in The Gay Science, Nietzsche claims that a “‘scientific’ interpretation of the world as you understand it might consequently still be one of the stupidest, that is to say, the most destitute of significance, of all possible world-interpretations” (GS ). Yet, he also claims that, “we must become the best learners and discoverers of everything that is lawful and necessary in the world: we must become physicists in order to be able to be creators in this sense – while hitherto all valuations and ideals have been  

While Nietzsche also has interesting things to say about social and quantitative sciences, I lack space to discuss them here. I use the following translations: AOM (); BGE (); D (); GM (); GS (); HH (); WS (). Where I have modified a particular translation, I indicate this in footnotes.



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based on ignorance of physics or were constructed so as to contradict it. Therefore: long live physics!” (GS ). If we cannot reconcile Nietzsche’s positive and negative remarks on science in this context, his thought remains open to the charge of inconsistency, and we will continue to lack clarity about this key aspect of his metaphilosophy. I show that attending to Nietzsche’s free spirit project may help to clarify the relationship between philosophy and the sciences in Nietzsche’s free spirit writings. In Section . I discuss Nietzsche’s commitments in his free spirit project and how these inform his understanding of required philosophical work. In order for his new ideal of the free spirit to become possible, Nietzsche requires the development of a type of philosopher who can experiment, and who will therefore be able to create and legislate new values. Current philosophers, according to him, are not able to do this work because of the metaphysical biases and assumptions upon which their approach to philosophy depends. I suggest in Section . that Nietzsche’s requirement for this new type of philosopher who is capable of experimenting entails a relationship of dynamic co-constitution between philosophy and the sciences, in which philosophy and the sciences act as partners in a continuous process of experimentation. In Section ., I argue that adopting this approach to understanding the relationship between philosophy and the sciences strengthens the case for an aesthetic naturalist interpretation of the relationship between philosophy and the sciences in Nietzsche (Acampora ; Cox ; Meyer ).

. Nietzsche’s Context: The Free Spirit Project In this section I will explain some of the key components of Nietzsche’s free spirit project and will then explain why new psychological types are required for this project, including a new type of philosopher, and a new approach to inquiry. Nietzsche claims that free spirits are those who think “differently” from what would have been expected of them “on the basis of his origin, environment, his class and profession, or on the basis of the dominant views of the age” (HH ). Such spirits have liberated themselves from tradition, “whether the outcome has been successful or a failure” (HH ). Free spirits demand reasons, while others demand faith (HH ). Current philosophers are poorly adjusted to such liberation, because their metaphysical presuppositions are governed by customary morality, which conditions them to understand values as given by tradition. To address this, Nietzsche envisages a newer type of philosopher, who is uninhibited

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by metaphysical assumptions, and who is therefore capable of legislating values. Nietzsche distinguishes between “metaphysical” and what he calls “historical” philosophy (HH ). By appealing to the concept of the thing in itself, Nietzsche claims, metaphysical philosophy denies that something can originate in its opposite (HH ). However, he claims, historical philosophy, “can no longer be thought of as separate from the natural sciences [welche gar nicht mehr getrennt von der Naturwissenschaft zu denken ist]” (HH ). He claims that historical philosophy is the “youngest” philosophical method; it holds that there are no opposites beyond metaphysical exaggerations, and that the perception of opposites rests on error (HH ). Once we understand this, Nietzsche suggests, All we require, and what can be given us only now that the individual sciences have attained their present level, is a chemistry of the moral, religious and aesthetic conceptions and sensations, likewise of all the agitations we experience within ourselves in cultural and social intercourse, and indeed even when we are alone: what if this chemistry would end up by revealing that in this domain too the most glorious colors are derived from base, indeed from despised materials? Will there be many who desire to pursue such researches? (HH )

This relationship or “chemistry,” should be understood as characteristic of the inquiry Nietzsche thinks is necessary for his free spirit project. Such inquiry comes at the cost of revealing that what we value most might be drawn from base, rather than divine, sources. Nietzsche thinks that we cannot reach the new ideal of the free spirit through an assessment of humanity as it is now, because everything that the metaphysical philosopher has declared about humanity is “no more than a testimony as to the man of a very limited period of time” (HH ). Current, observable, human instincts have been wrongly assumed to be unalterable facts about humanity by such philosophers; Nietzsche points out that better historical awareness would have prevented them from making such assumptions (HH ). Therefore, Nietzsche claims that we need “historical philosophizing, and with it the virtue of modesty” to combat these assumptions (HH ). For the same reason, he claims that we need more respect for “little unpretentious truths” that are uncovered through the more rigorous method of historical philosophy than the errors handed down by metaphysical philosophy, which merely “blind” us and “make us happy” (HH ). Nietzsche claims that even if they are mocked initially, estimation of “unpretentious 

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Translation modified.

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

 

truths and the scientific spirit [unscheinbaren Wahrheiten und der wissenschaftliche Geist]” will come to dominate, as these things mark out a higher culture (HH ). Paul Franco points out (i) that Nietzsche’s approach to inquiry here emphasizes process – the relentless questioning of claims to certain knowledge – rather than the products of inquiry and (ii) that what Nietzsche prioritizes in his talk of science here is the “scientific spirit [wissenschaftliche Geist],” which involves mistrust rather than conviction, instead of the products of science (HH ; Franco : –; Abbey ). Similarly, Nietzsche differentiates between “the pathos of possessing truth,” which he claims counts for less than the “gentler and less noisy pathos of seeking truth,” which focuses on “learning and examining anew” (HH ). How such inquiry begins is important to understanding the connection between the free spirit project and inquiry as informed by the scientific spirit. Nietzsche claims that such inquiry began in conflicts of personal opinion, developed from out of this via appeals to authority and violent defense of perceived epistemic authority, and depends on the “personal strife of thinkers,” which rendered their inquiry procedures so acute that truth could be discovered (HH  and ). Nietzsche claims that passing through different convictions is important, because being able to do so is a condition for real learning (HH ). He contrasts those who are carried away by convictions with those who are able to take an objective interest and pursue certainty, even at the expense of increasing strength or personal advantage (HH ). Opinions, he claims, grow out of passions, and stiffen into convictions through “inertia of the spirit”; however, a person whose “spirit is free and relentlessly alive” can prevent this, through “continual change” (HH ). Nietzsche compares the “free spirits [freien Geister]” who are “wanderers and philosophers [Wanderer und Philosophen]” with someone who has achieved a degree of “freedom of mind [Freheit der Vernunft]” (HH ). These free spirits seek the “philosophy of the morning” and are characterized by their capacity to take pleasure in “change and transience,” despite the difficulties of their travels; they are wanderers, and, as Franco points out, the figure of the wanderer is emblematic of the free spirit (HH ; Franco : ). Hence, free spirits are not travelers to a final destination, because, according to Nietzsche, such a destination does not exist (HH ). The same emphasis on change of opinion and avoidance of fixed conviction is evident in Dawn and The Gay Science. According to Nietzsche, free spirits hold the “rare and preeminent distinction” of “being able to alter” their opinions (D ; Bamford ). The capacity to alter

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opinions is important for Nietzsche’s campaign against morality, begun in Dawn, which forms an important part of his free spirit project (Bamford , ). Nietzsche problematizes morality that is based upon longheld customs, and which strongly discourages changing opinions or independent thinking through inculcating fear of error and contravention of tradition in inquirers (Bamford , ). Nietzsche’s critique of customary morality and of philosophy based on morality is reflected in his thinking on the sciences in his free spirit writings. Today’s moral precepts, Nietzsche claims, rest on “hypotheses of the most meager scientific worth” that cannot be proven or refuted according to results (D ). The chilling effect of current morality means that inquiry lacks the impetus to critique “moral valuations” and hence is missing “scientific curiosity,” which he describes as the kind of “refined, experimental imagination of psychologists and historians” that “anticipates a problem and catches it in flight without quite knowing what it has caught” (GS ). As Bernard Reginster suggests, experimentation is a paradigmatic case of Nietzschean curiosity, which should be understood as an activity or process of truth-seeking and of inquiry (Reginster a). To address the problematic lack of scientific curiosity, Nietzsche suggests we approach inquiry as experimenters (D ; Bamford ). A Nietzschean inquirer must be willing to be judged negatively from the perspective of customary morality, to resist the fear that it inculcates in them, and to seek knowledge beyond such morality (D ; Bamford , ). He emphasizes that inquirers must seize “the good courage to make mistakes, attempts [Versuch]” in their knowledge-seeking (D ; Bamford ). Nietzsche asserts a similar point when he claims that “we cannot prevent the chemist from occasionally poisoning or burning himself in the course of his experiments,” and suggests that this is also true of our culture, as the pursuit of knowledge may sometimes harm us and require “ointments to counter burning” and “antidotes to poison” (AOM ). Nietzsche claims to affirm any “skepsis” to which the reply “Let us try it!” can be made, and that he will hear nothing about “things and questions that do not permit any experiment,” because this would be incompatible with the courage that he thinks is essential to inquiry (GS ). And he reaffirms this point in his  preface to Human, All Too Human, writing that “great health” enables the free spirit to enjoy the “dangerous privilege of living experimentally,” and claiming that “access to many and contradictory modes of thought” is important to his free spirit project, characterizing “mature freedom of spirit” as “equally self-mastery and discipline of the heart” (HH I P:).

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

 

. Experimentation in Philosophy and the Natural Sciences I want to now turn to more detailed consideration of how the new philosophers Nietzsche requires for his free spirit project do their work through experimenting, and what consequences this carries for the relationship between the sciences and philosophy. Nietzsche refers to scientific procedures or methods (die wissenschaftlichen Methoden) as plural, as part of claiming that the scientific spirit should be dependent on insight into procedures, rather than products, of scientific inquiry (HH ). But the scientific spirit is difficult to adopt: Nietzsche acknowledges that we gain pleasure from customs, grounded in habit, that have proven useful, in contrast to “novel experimentations” which have yet to prove themselves (HH ). In order to do so, Nietzsche suggests, we need to realize that within ourselves we contain “a ladder with a hundred rungs” that we can use to “climb to knowledge” (HH ). To do so, Nietzsche claims, we must absorb “all” we “experience,” including “experiments, errors, faults, delusions, passions, your love and your hope” into the goal of becoming “a necessary chain of rings of culture” from which we can recognize the necessity “inherent in the course of culture in general” (HH ). Nietzsche also critiques the illusion that science is value-free and independent from human life. He differentiates between efficient scholars or “employees of science,” and those who are neither employers nor employees of science (WS ). Of the latter he remarks that Natures such as this produce, with their personality-informed structures of knowledge, that illusion that a science (or even the whole of philosophy) is finished and has reached its goal; it is the life in their structure that performs this magic, which has at times been very fateful for science and misleading for those able and efficient workers of the spirit just described. (WS )

As he points out, members of this latter group are usually “given the name philosophers”: they can be a balm during times of exhaustion and aridity, but they are misleading to the efficient scholars and “fateful” for science (WS ). According to Nietzsche, these philosophers are characterized by a “narrow limitedness” that makes them useless “instruments” (WS ). Similarly, Nietzsche claims that what we call ‘objectivity’ is often misconstrued as being free of affect: Anyone who, as a child, perceived diverse and powerful feelings on the part of relatives and acquaintances among whom he grew up without, however,

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their having much subtlety of judgement and pleasure in intellectual honesty – and who has consequently exhausted his best time and energy in the imitation of feelings – will notice about himself as an adult that every new thing, every new person immediately excites in him attraction or revulsion, envy or disgust; under the weight of this experience, against which he feels powerless, he admires neutrality of sentiment or ‘objectivity’ as a thing of wonder, a matter of genius or of the rarest morality, and refuses to believe that it too is merely an offshoot of discipline and habit. (D )

Objectivity is misunderstood when it is wrongly imagined to be observerindependent. According to Nietzsche here, objectivity is possible as a matter of disciplined feeling and habit, but is not possible as a matter of the complete absence of any human feeling or behavior (other than as a metaphysical philosopher’s illusion). In his discussion of “[r]esearchers and experimenters” in Dawn, Nietzsche challenges simplistic and reductive approaches to understanding scientific methodology, claiming that “there is no one and only scientific method that leads to knowledge [alleinwissendmachende Methode der Wissenschaft]” (D ). Free-spirited Nietzschean inquirers do not simply make empirical observations about the world: they actively seek to produce new sensations and reflections through experimenting (D ). Experimentation means deploying diverse ways of being toward the world in order to know it. This specifically includes the deployment of diverse affects in addition to reasoning and phenomenal experiences. As Nietzsche claims, we must “proceed experimentally with things, be sometimes angry, sometimes affectionate towards them and allow justice, passion, and coldness towards them to follow one upon the other.” We need to do this because it is our affects that allow us to “converse with” different facets of, and types of, things: Sometimes one wrings something from them through sympathy, sometimes through violent force; reverence for their mysteries leads one person forward and eventually to insight, whereas another employs indiscretion and roguery in the explanation of secrets (D ).

Experimental ways of being toward the world should be multiple in number and diverse in affective behavior; hence, for Nietzsche, experimenting involves our producing new experiences, especially affective experiences (Bamford : ). In developing this critical view of assumptions about scientific methodology and objectivity, Nietzsche’s point is not that method doesn’t exist at all. His concern is to show that if we understand method in light of the scientific spirit, with an emphasis

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 

on the procedures of inquiry instead of on the product of inquiry, then how we think about what we are doing as inquirers needs to change: instead of believing we follow a method as if it is a set of instructions guiding us to arrive at a specific answer, we ought to inquire experimentally. It is important to note that experimentation is involved in all knowledge-seeking activity in the context of the free spirit project. Nietzsche treats experimentation as part of what human life should involve, not merely as a feature of scholarship in the sciences or in philosophy. Notice for instance that Nietzsche claims that morality’s discouragement of experimentation is not only a way of chilling resistance to any given dominant set of social norms, but is also a means of inhibiting a key aspect of our lives as human beings (D ). Instead of accepting this, he proposes that those people who are able to do so should set up “little experimental nations” in themselves and understand themselves as being experiments, because, according to him, “[w]e are experiments” (D ). Experimentation here is a matter of how we live, not only a matter of scientific or philosophical research projects. Nietzsche claims that attempting, experimenting, and making mistakes are ways of releasing strength; because they constitute a natural part of living humanity, it is similarly natural for humans to want to practice them (D ). Taking ourselves and our knowledge of the world provisionally is also a natural part of human life. The free spirit project entails that humans, including free spirits, are always already under development; free spirit types emerge out of fettered spirit types, and further higher types emerge out of free spirit types (D ; Bamford , : ; Mitcheson ; Mullin ). And for Nietzsche here, “individuals and generations” are able to experiment with themselves on a grand scale (D ). Experimentation with individual selves is not all that is at stake: humanity’s ongoing experimentation with itself as a living species is also at stake (Bamford : –). Nietzsche maintains his commitment to connecting philosophy, the sciences, and human life through experimentation in The Gay Science. He writes that knowledge became a piece of life itself, and hence a continually growing power – until eventually knowledge collided with those primeval basic errors: two lives, two powers, both in the same human being. A thinker is now that being in whom the impulse for truth and those life-preserving errors clash for their first fight, after the impulse for truth has proved to be also a life-preserving power. Compared to the significance of this

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fight, everything else is a matter of indifference: the ultimate question about the conditions of life has been posed here, and we confront the first attempt to answer this question by experiment. To what extent can truth endure incorporation? That is the question; that is the experiment. (GS )

Nietzsche is suggesting here that the most fundamental experiment free spirits can make concerns the conditions of human life. In the context of such an experiment, a thinker becomes a being in whom a clash between the impulse toward truth as life-preserving, and life-preserving errors, is embodied. In her analysis of this aphorism and its significance to Nietzsche’s free spirit project, Katrina Mitcheson points out that, while the free spirit may need a conviction in the value of truth to begin the process of overturning other convictions, ultimately, they may seek to “incorporate a truth that will be prepared to question everything, even the value of truth,” and they must, if consistent, continue to question their subsequent desire for unbounded truth, or new truth grounded in uncertainty, instead of metaphysical truth as grounded in certainty (: –). Thus, a free-spirited thinker – a thinker in the scientific spirit – will not merely find themselves subjected to a clash of convictions, but will ultimately seek such clashes out as part of their inquiry, continually transforming not only the sciences, but also truth and philosophy in so doing. Mitcheson points out that Nietzsche recognized in his  preface to Human that he had earlier been wrong to think there were already free spirits, and that he later acknowledges that science does not seem like a good model for unbounded truth as he had assumed in Human because belief in truth gets in the way (GM III:; Mitcheson : –). Yet, it is worth noting (i) that in GM III:, Nietzsche affirms the requirement of free spirits to experiment with truth as anticipated in GS , even if such experimentation had not already happened in Human and even given the free spirits’ current faith in truth and (ii) that in his Human preface remarks, Nietzsche still anticipates “physically present and palpable” free spirits in its “sons of tomorrow and the next day” and sees them “already coming, slowly, slowly” (HH I P:). In other words, while Nietzsche does have differing commitments in discrete texts, he continues to affirm the set of requirements concerning experimentation that he places on free spirits. The same commitment is also evident in The Gay Science, when Nietzsche claims that we ourselves “wish to be our experiments and guinea pigs” (GS ). He argues that our approach to our experiences should be honest and involve scrutiny performed as “severely” as that done by

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 

scientists, making our experiences “a matter of conscience for knowledge” (GS , ). He describes free spiritedness as initially a kind of polytheism, in which new “eyes” or perspectives” are created (GS ). Free spirits take liberties – including with science (GS ). He challenges the view that scientific inquiry automatically produces truth, claiming that in science convictions have no right of citizenship; modest hypotheses and regulative fictions are permitted but remain under the supervision of the “police of mistrust” (GS ). It might seem as if a genuinely scientific spirit would not permit itself convictions at all, in the interests of objectivity. However, Nietzsche points out that the scientific enterprise requires a “commanding and unconditional” conviction that “sacrifices all other convictions to itself” to get under way, and that, therefore, “science also rests on a faith” (GS ). Here, this is the conviction that “[n]othing is needed more than truth, and in relation to it everything else has only second-rate value,” which according to Nietzsche is an example of the unconditional will to truth (GS ; Bamford ). Nietzsche thus affirms his earlier critique of convictions as things free spirits need in order to move past them (HH –; Franco ). On the one hand, Nietzsche claims that a conviction is required for inquiry, yet, on the other, he acknowledges that police supervision of all convictions is also needed (GS ). Nietzsche notes that “godless anti-metaphysicians” also take inspiration from the metaphysical faith “that God is the truth, that truth is divine” (GS ). On this basis, he raises a ‘what if’ question at the end of this aphorism: what if such a God should prove to be “our most enduring lie”? (GS ). Thinking through this question, grappling with it, engaging with it, is another critical experiment for his free spirit project. For Nietzsche, those who are truthful, in the sense presupposed by those with metaphysical faith in science, affirm another world in contrast to our lived human world of experience; recognizing this opens up the question of whether and how such affirmation negates “its counterpart, this world, our world” (GS ). Free spirits cannot remain dependent on enduring lies indefinitely; they must grapple with values that are solidified from out of convictions as part of seeking knowledge. Nietzsche’s commitment to experimentation thus entails a relationship of dynamic co-constitution between philosophy and the sciences on his part. By ‘dynamic co-constitution,’ I mean that, for Nietzsche, the sciences and philosophy are equally engaged in the process of continuous development through experimentation. While Nietzsche has different commitments in the individual texts of his free spirit writings, his thinking on this particular point is consistent in these texts. To sum up: inquiry in the

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scientific spirit is a matter of the procedures, not the product, of inquiry; experimenting has been limited by morality in philosophy, in the sciences, and in human life more broadly; we can move past the constraints of morality by conducting inquiry in the scientific spirit through experimentation; experimentation in the sciences that confronts the constraints of morality reinforces experimentation in philosophy, and vice versa; all such experimentation has the potential to transform human life from out of the constraints imposed on it by customary morality. In his assessment of the relationship of the scientific spirit to the ascetic ideal in On the Genealogy of Morals, Bernard Reginster points out that, in principle, science could be placed at the service of a “presumably life-affirming rather than lifenegating ideal” (a: ). In the free spirit texts preceding the Genealogy, the way in which experimentation in the scientific spirit co-constitutes inquiry in philosophy, the sciences, and in human life shows how this view can be supported in practice. There is a clear relationship between Nietzsche’s thinking about the sciences and his metaphilosophical and wider cultural concerns (Bamford : ).

. Affect and Naturalism My position as discussed thus far has been that Nietzsche’s view of the relationship between philosophy and the sciences should be clarified by placing in the context of his free spirit project. One focal area of scholarly debate on the science–philosophy relationship in Nietzsche has been whether or not Nietzsche’s philosophy is fundamentally naturalist. Scholars have either tended to reject the position that Nietzsche is a naturalist philosopher in favor of treating his work as distinctively aestheticist, or have tended to attribute naturalism (of different kinds) to Nietzsche. Here, I examine where my view fits in with previous debate. Alexander Nehamas is an excellent example of those who read Nietzsche as fundamentally an aestheticist philosopher. He has argued that Nietzsche looks at the world as if it were a sort of artwork, particularly a work of literature (Nehamas : ). According to Nehamas, the view that an 

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I lack the space to develop this point here, but it is worth noting that further investigation would identify that Nietzsche’s commitment to experimentation as described here is continued in Beyond Good and Evil. For example, Nietzsche explicitly claims that science is alive (BGE ), that the new ideal involves emerging free spirits in testing themselves to avoid developing problematic dependencies (BGE ), and that the very free spirits, whom he also calls philosophers of the future, are “experimenters” – a description of them that he considers to be itself “only an experiment” and “a temptation” (BGE ). See also Clark and Dudrick ().

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interpretation is a ‘mere’ interpretation is rooted in a view of interpretation as a “second-best mode of understanding.” He argues that we should embrace interpretation as a key aspect of Nietzsche’s perspectivism, defined as the view that “every view is only one among many possible interpretations” (: , –). Nehamas denies that there could ever be a complete theory or interpretation of anything that would account for “all the facts” on the basis that “we must deny the claim that the notion of ‘all the facts’ is sensible in the first place.” Similarly, Allan Megill argues that aestheticism is the phenomenon of extending the aesthetic, in order to embrace the whole of reality (: ). Nehamas thus takes Nietzsche to deny any dogmatic approach to scientific inquiry, on the basis that interpretation is involved in science (: –). In contrast, Brian Leiter has argued that Nietzsche is a naturalist because he “thought of his theoretical endeavors as proceeding in tandem with empirical inquiry,” in the sense that philosophical claims are supported or entailed by “the results of successful sciences” (: –, ). According to Leiter, Nietzsche’s commitment is to scientific method and thus entails a continuity of method between philosophy and the sciences; Leiter also sometimes holds that Nietzsche is also committed to the common nineteenth-century German results continuity thesis that man is of the same origin as the rest of nature (: –; Bamford : ). In a more recent essay, Leiter has confirmed his commitment to reading Nietzsche as a “speculative M-Naturalist,” by which he means (i) that Nietzsche is a methodological naturalist in the sense that philosophical inquiry should be continuous with empirical inquiry in the sciences; (ii) that Nietzsche is a results naturalist in the sense that philosophical theories should be supported or justified by the results of the sciences, and in Nietzsche’s case the physiological sciences; and (iii) that Nietzsche is speculative in the sense that, while his data and methods were not as rigorous as those developed by the social and natural sciences since the end of the nineteenth century, they do include some data such as personal observation of his own and others’ behavior and observations by others, as well as Nietzsche’s knowledge of contemporaneous scientific information and methods (Leiter : –, –). A different, conciliatory, thread in the available literature suggests that it is unnecessary to treat aestheticism and naturalism as antagonists in assessing Nietzsche’s thinking about the relationship between philosophy and the sciences. Christoph Cox has pointed out that what is problematic about dogmatism – including dogmatism about science – is that it is ascetic, and hence anti-natural, because it denies the “multiplicity,

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struggle, and change” that consistently manifest themselves in our experiential world. Cox therefore argues that our understanding of naturalism must move beyond scientific reductionism to embrace the “primacy and irreducibility of interpretation” as a key aspect of aesthetic understanding (: , ). John Richardson has argued that the return of art plays a part in Nietzsche’s project of transvaluing values, alongside truth and science, and thus art ought not to be left out of our assessment of Nietzsche’s work (: –). Christa Davis Acampora has argued that Nietzsche’s naturalism should be understood as an “artful naturalism” that orients and shapes inquiry through imaginative projection and artistic innovations (: ). Matthew Meyer has pointed out that the distinction between an aestheticist Nietzsche on the one hand and a naturalist Nietzsche on the other is a false one (). Meyer points out that aspects of both the naturalist and aestheticist positions can be reconciled into an account of Nietzsche’s “naturalized aestheticism” (: ). He holds that, on the basis of a relationalist ontology, Nietzsche does rely on the results of the natural sciences, but that he does so in order to replace a “metaphysical-moral understanding of the world” with an alternative “dynamic conception of the natural world” that is compatible with a turn toward art and with an “aesthetic affirmation of existence” (Meyer : ). I think the conciliatory approach to the naturalism-aestheticism debate is most promising. It can help us to reconcile seemingly contradictory positions in Nietzsche’s texts, and it enables us to recognize everything that can comprise scientific procedures or ‘Wissenschaft’ as significant aspects of human life. I also want to suggest that the conciliatory approach has another advantage: if we take seriously the importance of experimentation, the conciliatory approach can explain why Nietzsche thought his new ideal of the free spirit might stand at least some chance of coming into being, and why he took care to explore the relevant experimentation required for the development of free spirits in writing. Affect is already recognized as playing an important role within Nietzsche’s philosophy (Westerdale ). Nietzsche acknowledges that feelings – but not thoughts – are inherited (D ). He contends that moral feelings are transmitted by children observing adults’ inclinations for, and aversions against, actions, and subsequently imitating these inclinations and aversions (D ). While he acknowledges that judgments do originate in feelings, he points out that our feelings originate in judgments that we inherit through social transmission of inclination and aversion (D ; Janaway : –). This is why unfree spirits seek to avoid

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punishment for transgressing against customary morality, and feel aversion to fear-inducing acts of transgression (Bamford ). Understanding this, Nietzsche deploys rhetorical strategies in order to take advantage of the phenomenon of the social transmission of affects. Something other than a fear-response to innovation and independence in thinking and moral reasoning can be transmitted to the readers of his texts. Eliciting diverse experiential responses creates a possibility of non-fearful affective experiences of innovation in thinking and behavior, which in turn form the essential raw materials for more active experimentation by (at least potentially) free spirits. Such experiments are essentially open-ended; while Nietzsche might hope that his free spirit project might succeed through experimentation, he cannot guarantee this. Someone might wonder whether this view is borne out by the findings of the contemporary sciences. To deter a possible objection, it is worth noting that the phenomenon that forms the basis of Nietzsche’s experimental deployment of the affective is well-known today: emotional contagion, in which affective states are mirrored among individuals in social groups. This phenomenon is often considered to be a precursor of empathy; it offers us information on the mental states of other people as well as the motivation for cooperative behavior and communication (Hari & Kujala : ). Emotional contagion relies in part on unconscious mimicry and bodily changes, as well as on neural mechanisms that allow one person to share the emotional state of another (Hari & Kujala : ). As well as explaining, for example, why children become angry with peers after witnessing anger in adults, the phenomenon of emotional contagion also explains the unconscious synchronization of movement between, for example, mothers and babies (Hari & Kujala : ). That Nietzsche conducted experiments in writing means that readers can be entirely alone with his texts, and the phenomenon would still occur. Contemporary scholarship likewise affirms that face-to-face interaction is not always necessary for emotional contagion to happen. Processes associated with empathy, for example, may contribute to the intensity of felt emotion during reading of literary works and also when listening to music (Omigie ). Similarly, the contentious background to its publication notwithstanding, it is worth noting that a  Facebook mood study showed a small effect of transmission in positive and negative moods via online social networks (Kramer, Guillory, & Hancock ). Hence there is at least some contemporary scientific evidence available to support the view that readers of Nietzsche’s free spirit writings could become carriers of

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the affects needed to counter the fear that is prompted and sustained by dominant social norms and moral customs, which inhibits experimentation in the sciences, philosophy, and in life. A second main strand of scholarly debate has focused on the question of whether or not Nietzsche thinks that science is nihilistic. Justin Remhof characterizes two key positions within the scholarly literature. The first is the “Negative View,” which holds that Nietzsche thinks science is nihilistic, either because science presumes that the world is “some way that it is not” or because science functions on the “erroneous” view that “truth, rather than some other mode of evaluation, such as aesthetic evaluation, is best for humanity.” The second is the “Positive View,” which holds that Nietzsche thinks science is not nihilistic since science “represents the way the world is,” or because science can uncover “important truths for humankind” (: ). According to Remhof, the Negative View appears unwarranted because Nietzsche does not reject facts altogether, merely facts in themselves; hence, science does not seek to represent facts in themselves, only facts dependent on our practices (: ). Science understood as representing facts dependent on our practices thus seeks to deliver something that is deliverable (Remhof : ). Remhof argues that it is only reasonable to accept the Positive View if we also accept Nietzsche’s constructivism about objects – the view that “objects are brought into view by social practices” – on the basis that only a conception of science that accepts constructivism about facts can avoid nihilism (: , ). My own position in a previous essay has been characterized as sympathetic to the Negative View, and also as an example of the Positive View (Remhof : , : , ). It is incorrect to describe my position as sympathetic to the Negative View, as I denied that Nietzsche’s thinking can be simply characterized in terms of the Negative View (Bamford : , ). I proposed that we ought to distinguish between Nietzsche’s remarks affirming science, on the one hand, and his rejection of conceptions of science that involve an ideal of objective value – that is, conceptions of science as fully objective, observer independent, and value-free – on the other hand (Bamford ). If Nietzsche were to endorse such an ‘ideal’ view of science and if he were to suggest that this view of it should direct our understanding of philosophy, then he would endorse a form of nihilism; however, as I also argued in Section ., Nietzsche treats science as involving interpretation, affect, and human experience, and he denies that it is objective in the sense of being wholly observer-independent and value-free (Bamford : –, ).

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In Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche makes a remark on the future of science as tied to the future of humanity, which underlines his early commitment to seeing both philosophy and the sciences as significant to his free spirit project: Future of science.—Science bestows upon him who labours and experiments in it much satisfaction, upon him who learns its results very little. As all the important truths of science must gradually become common and everyday, however, even this little satisfaction will cease: just as we have long since ceased to take pleasure in learning the admirable two times-table. But if science provides us with less and less pleasure, and deprives us of more and more pleasure through casting suspicion on the consolations of metaphysics, religion and art, then that mightiest source of joy to which mankind owes almost all its humanity will become impoverished. For this reason a higher culture must give to man a double-brain, as it were two brainventricles, one for the perceptions of science, the other for those of nonscience: lying beside one another, not confused together, separable, capable of being shut off; this is a demand of health. In one domain lies the powersource, in the other the regulator: it must be heated with illusions, onesidednesses, passions, the evil and perilous consequences of overheating must be obviated with the aid of the knowledge furnished by science. – If this demand of higher culture is not met, then the future course of human evolution can be foretold almost with certainty: interest in truth will cease the less pleasure it gives: because they are associated with pleasure, illusion, error and fantasy will regain step by step the ground they formerly held: the ruination of science, a sinking back into barbarism, will be the immediate consequence; mankind will have to begin again at the weaving of its tapestry, after having, like Penelope, unwoven it at night. But who can guarantee to us that it will always find the strength for it? (HH )

According to Nietzsche in this aphorism, “science [Wissenschaft]” must work in partnership with “non-science [Nicht-Wissenschaft],” which he describes as the “consolations of metaphysics, religion, and art.” This partnership enables higher culture to develop in humanity what Nietzsche terms a “double-brain [Doppelgehirn]” that permits humans to engage in ongoing inquiry and development. Nietzsche points out here that it is a demand of health that humanity develop these two “brain ventricles [Hirnkammern],” which work in tandem with one another. Given Nietzsche’s earlier claim that historical philosophy cannot be understood as separate from the natural sciences, it seems reasonable to see him as treating “science [Wissenschaft]” as including historical philosophy here, and contrasting it with “metaphysics, religion, and art” (HH ). If science does not work in partnership with non-science, as Nietzsche

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suggests ought to be the case here, then the consequences for human development will be dire. Truth will hold no interest for us, the very possibility of science will be ruined, and error and fantasy will be pursued instead of science because they give rise to greater pleasure for us. Most worrying of all, there would be no guarantee that humanity would ever have the requisite strength to regain its capacity for scientific inquiry, or for the pursuit of truth and knowledge more generally. This early image of the double brain as power-source and regulator for inquiry helps us to understand the dynamism of the relationship Nietzsche goes on to explore between philosophy and the sciences within the context of biological life in his later writing. At least in the context of free spirit writings such as Human, if Nietzsche were a naturalist philosopher who thinks that philosophy should be continuous with the methods and/or results of the sciences (Leiter , ), then his claims in this aphorism – that (i) science provides us with decreasing pleasure and (ii) science impoverishes human joy by depriving us of the consolations of metaphysics, religion, and art – would be inconsistent with that position. The naturalist reading presupposes that such consolations would get in the way of pursuing inquiry that aims at truth and knowledge about ourselves and the world. Yet, Nietzsche’s explicit argument here is that science alone is insufficient for humanity’s future, and that “non-science [Nicht-Wissenschaft]” such as the consolations provided by “metaphysics, religion, and art” is also important, because it spurs on science (HH ). The remarks in this aphorism sound a warning note against incorporating scientism into our understanding of Nietzsche’s thinking on the relationship between philosophy and the sciences (Bamford ).

. Conclusion My modest thesis in this chapter was that attending to the specific context of Nietzsche’s new idea of the free spirit helps to clarify his view of the relationship between philosophy and the sciences in his free spirit writings. I suggested that, when analyzed from the free spirit project perspective, the science–philosophy relationship there emerges as one of dynamic coconstitution: experimentation is not limited to scientific inquiries alone, but can be extended to other forms of inquiry such as philosophy, as well as forming part of human life. Philosophy and the sciences are partners in a relationship that is dynamic and co-constitutive through the commitment

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to experimentation. Nietzsche thus responds positively to the sciences as far as his free spirit project metaphilosophical concerns allow in these texts, while also criticizing claims about scientific method or objectivity or conceptions of the sciences and philosophy that misunderstand these as being free from affect and value (Bamford : ). In adopting this view, I follow Stephen Houlgate, who suggests we ought to note a distinction between science as a means and science as an end in Nietzsche’s philosophy (: ), and Christian Emden, who contends that Nietzsche’s remarks on science emerge from Nietzsche’s own concerns, rather than as expressions of commitment to some particular debate in the philosophy of science (: –, ). Moreover, my account helps to support the view that Nietzsche is best characterized as a naturalized aestheticist (Meyer ; see also Cox ; Acampora ).

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Genuine Philosophers, Value-Creation, and Will to Power An Exegesis of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil § Paul S. Loeb There is a consensus among Nietzsche scholars today, one I agree with, that section  of Beyond Good and Evil, as contextualized by the surrounding discussion, contains his clearest, most direct, and most extensive exposition of the central thesis of his mature metaphilosophy. Briefly put, this is the claim that real or genuine (wirklichen, eigentlichen) philosophers are the type of human beings who express their will to power by creating values. There is, however, much less agreement about what Nietzsche means by this and about how he saw his own work fitting this formula. Some of the questions that worry scholars include the following: () Why does Nietzsche believe that genuine philosophers are uniquely suited and predestined for the task of creating values? This sounds like a very unusual metaphilosophy. What kinds of values does he mean? If he means existential or moral values, isn’t this also, or perhaps especially, the province of religious thinkers, founders, and leaders? And if he means something more than this, for example, as he mentions in BGE , values belonging to the realm of logic, politics, or art, isn’t this also, or perhaps especially, the work of specialists and practitioners in these fields? Besides, what about the tasks that have traditionally been associated with philosophy, especially the quest for truth, knowledge, and wisdom? () What does Nietzsche mean by “values” and “value judgments” (Werthe, Werthschätzungen)? Does he think that values have some basis other than human convention? If so, how does he think they can be created by humans? If not, how does he think newly created values acquire 

Cf. the essays collected in Nietzsche-Studien volume : () and also the recent essays by Neil Sinhababu (), Alex Silk (), Harold Langsam (), and Thomas Lambert (). Most of these essays are primarily concerned with understanding Nietzsche’s metaethics, not his metaphilosophy. The interpretation I offer here has substantial implications for understanding Nietzsche’s metaethics, but this topic is outside the scope of my chapter.

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their normative authority? Indeed, what does Nietzsche mean by “value-creation” (Werthschöpfung)? Does he really think this is something that can be accomplished by just a few genuine philosophers instead of an entire community? How does he explain those values that preexisted the historical emergence of philosophers? () What does Nietzsche mean by “will to power” (Wille zur Macht)? Why does he think this theory best explains the nature of genuine philosophers? How does the genuine philosopher’s will to power differ from that of other types of human beings? And how exactly does valuecreation express the genuine philosopher’s will to power? () As for Nietzsche himself, he certainly is a strong critic of most past values, but it’s difficult to see how he thinks he has created new values. Where should we look for this creative activity and what are these new values? Should we concentrate on his ethics of power? Or in his claim to have revaluated all values? Or does he not regard himself as a genuine philosopher – perhaps because he doesn’t have sufficient will to power? Is this why he subtitles his book, “Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future”?

.

Values as Ideals and Idealistic Values

I will begin to answer these important and difficult questions by offering an interpretation of the sentence in BGE  that Nietzsche emphasizes the most. After announcing that the real philosophers’ task requires them to create values, he explains: “But the genuine philosophers are those who issue commands and laws: they say ‘it shall be so!’ (Die eigentlichen Philosophen aber sind Befehlende und Gesetzgeber: sie sagen “so soll es sein!).” Nietzsche’s compressed point in this passage is that what it means for genuine philosophers to create values is for them to give commands and make laws. This is why he writes in the next sentence that the genuine philosopher’s creation is a legislation (ihr Schaffen ist eine Gesetzgebung). Given this association with values, we need to interpret his mention of philosophical commands and laws as meaning normative commands and 



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Cf. also BGE –, , –. The translations in this chapter are my own, with the exception of passages from KSA  and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which are taken from my collaborative translation with David F. Tinsley of volumes CWFN  (). I have not followed other translators in rendering Nietzsche’s term, “Befehlende,” as “commanders” because the conjunction with “Gesetzgeber” places the emphasis on the act of giving commands or orders rather than on the position or title of commander (as would be the case, for example, with “Befelshaber”). Thanks to David Tinsley for his advice on this point. Langsam (: –) touches on this idea at the end of his paper.

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laws, and his mention of the philosophical pronouncement “it shall be so!” as also meaning “it should be so!” This is an important consideration because otherwise this passage can easily be misinterpreted as concerning only the way things actually will be in the future. For instance, a declaration of martial law might include this phrase. Or we can imagine a demand for some future action that should not be performed. For example, a prideful military commander might use this phrase when ordering an attack that he knows will be easily defeated. Explained in this way, and leaving aside for a moment the language about commands and laws, Nietzsche’s account of genuine philosophers is actually not so far from the traditional account. For philosophers have generally regarded themselves as the kind of people who conceive normative ideals and propose that things should be other than they are. This doesn’t exclude their interest in understanding how things actually are and in knowing the truth about the world. But Nietzsche insists in BGE  that we should avoid confusing real philosophers with scientific human beings generally (u¨berhaupt die wissenschaftlichen Menschen). For the latter, he believes, are only interested in knowing how things are, not how they should be. Nietzsche discusses these scientific types at more length elsewhere in Beyond Good and Evil (§§ , –). However, his central point in BGE  is that, by contrast with scientists generally, real philosophers want to acquire knowledge for the sake of creating new values and ideals. Knowing the truth about how things are is an essential tool for conceiving and issuing new laws about how things should be. This is why Nietzsche writes elliptically that, for genuine philosophers, “knowing” is creating ([i]hr “Erkennen” ist Schaffen), which is in turn lawmaking. Of course, genuine philosophers search for truth and want to find evidence and reasons to support their claims to knowledge. But Nietzsche thinks that the values and ideals they conceive on the basis of this knowledge are not themselves properly called knowledge or truth. This is why he puts “Erkennen” in scare quotes when he mentions the genuine philosophers’





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In a departure from other translators, Judith Norman translates “so soll es sein!” as “That is how it should be!” But this is an inaccurate translation because the verb “soll” is in the indicative mood and “should” would be expressed by “sollte” – as in, “so sollte es sein!” On my reading of this passage, it is not the word “soll” on its own that carries normative connotations, but rather its close association with the idea that values are being created. Thanks to David Tinsley for his advice on this point. Cf. KSA :[]: “Honest science begins in this way: it asks: what is? and not: what is it worth?” In his later Genealogy, Nietzsche writes explicitly that modern science (Wissenschaft) is not self-sufficient because it “first requires in every respect a value-ideal, a value-creating power, in the service of which it is allowed to believe in itself – it itself is never value-creating” (GM III:).

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 . 

value-creating and this is why he comments that the previously dominant value-creations were called “truths.” Now there are two points in this exposition that are potentially confusing. The first is that it might seem that by “ideals” Nietzsche means the same thing as “idealistic.” Giving a command about how things should be other than they are might seem to be the same thing as favoring some alternative that is supernatural, transcendent, or other-worldly. However, in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche explains how his Protestant upbringing and education were damaging to him because the ideals embodied in them were idealistic – that is, normatively oriented away from the actual world, his body, his health, and all the seemingly trivial, but actually most important, aspects of life (EH “Clever” , “Destiny” ). There is no doubt that Nietzsche thinks that Plato, for example, was a philosopher who expressed his will to power by creating new values (BGE P, ). But Nietzsche is extremely critical of these values because he believed they were an attempt to falsify and devalue the reality of this actual, immanent, and natural world by juxtaposing it with the supposedly more authentic reality of another fictional, transcendent, and supernatural world (TI “Real World”). Plato, he writes, was an advocate of the beyond and a great slanderer of life (GM III:). In fact, Nietzsche thinks that most past philosophers, with perhaps a few exceptions such as Heraclitus, were concerned, like Plato, to create other-worldly values and ideals. In this respect, he argues, they were all very much akin to religious leaders, priests and theologians. I think this is the most important reason why Nietzsche expresses skepticism at the end of BGE  as to whether there have been any genuine philosophers yet – as opposed to priestly philosophers (BGE ).

. Priestly Philosophers and Philosophical Laborers In his next book, On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche offers an explanation as to why almost all philosophical value-creations so far have been idealistic. It has to do, he argues, with the evolutionary psychology of the philosophical type of human being. When they first emerged, the philosophers’ strong skeptical inclinations, stemming from their overflowing health and strength, were perceived as a threat to the established social 

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In his preparatory note for BGE  (KSA :[]/WP ), Nietzsche aligns Plato with Mohammed, the founder of the Islamic religion, as similar creators of new values. Since he doesn’t think that religious leaders are genuine philosophers (BGE –), he thereby implies that Plato was not a genuine philosopher. In The Antichrist, Nietzsche also aligns Plato with Mohammed, and, in addition, Manu, Confucius, and the Christian Church (A ).

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order (GM III:–). So, in order to survive, they had to camouflage themselves as the kind of contemplative type who was driven by a lust to rule and who was already in charge at the time, namely, the religious and priestly type (BGE ). But this type was also obsessed with dietary and hygienic purity and was therefore disposed toward a kind of sickliness that was only made worse by naive priestly remedies (GM I:–, III:–). This combination of impotence and strong will to power drove the priestly type to become vengeful toward life and toward all those other types of human beings who were healthy, strong, and happy (BGE ; GM III:–). And in this way there emerged among human beings an ascetic ideal that became the ruling value-system for thousands of years. Here is perhaps Nietzsche’s best summary of this ideal, in the final sentences of the Genealogy: [T]he hatred of what is human, more still of what is animal, more still of what is material, this horror of the senses, of reason itself, this fear of happiness and beauty, this longing to get away from all appearance, change, becoming, death, wishing, from longing itself – all of this means – let us dare to grasp it – a will to nothingness, an aversion to life, a rebellion against the most fundamental presuppositions of life. (GM III:)

Nietzsche also notes that the sickly priestly type was not strong enough to compel others to obey its new commands and laws about how things should be. So this type had to invent manipulative lies about proxy supernatural beings who issued commands and laws and who would eternally punish those who did not obey the priests (A , ). It follows, he writes, that this degenerate and parasitical type of human being “lied itself into the position of determining values”: “And in fact, that is my insight: the teachers, the leaders of humankind, all of them theologians, were also all décadents: hence the revaluation of all values into those that are hostile to life, hence morality . . .” (EH “Destiny” ). Unfortunately, Nietzsche argues, in order to successfully camouflage themselves as religious and priestly types, philosophers had to pretend, even to themselves, that they were actually the same in all these ways (GM III:). Philosophers had to believe, that is, that they were only interested in creating idealistic values and that they needed to resort to the same kinds 

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In Zarathustra’s speech, “On the Thousand and One Goals,” Nietzsche suggests that there was a time in early human history when peoples (Völker) were value-creators instead of individuals (Einzelne). As examples he offers the ancient Greeks, Hebrews, and Persians. But he cites Zoroaster in connection with the Persian values, which raises the question whether he thinks that it was still the priestly individuals who formulated the normative commands and laws that best expressed their peoples’ distinctive will to power.

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 . 

of manipulative lies in order to compel others to obey their new commands and laws. Throughout history, indeed until the most recent times, nearly all philosophers have been self-deceived priestly philosophers instead of real philosophers. Hence, Nietzsche wonders when philosophers will become strong enough to dispense with their self-imposed priestly camouflage, expose all the reigning priestly lies and values, and overthrow the priestly type that has ruled humankind so far (BGE –; GM III:). Expanding on his concluding questions in BGE  as to whether genuine philosophers ever existed in the past, or whether they exist even now, Nietzsche writes: Has this really changed? Has the colorful and dangerous winged animal, that “spirit” that this caterpillar concealed within itself, really – thanks to a sunnier, warmer, more brightly lit world – finally been defrocked after all and let out into the light? Is there already enough pride, daring, bravery, self-assuredness in existence today, enough will of the spirit, will to responsibility, freedom of the will so that henceforth on earth “the philosopher” is truly – possible? . . . (GM III:)

The other potential confusion in Nietzsche’s exposition has to do with his focus in BGE  on the type of philosophers he calls “scientifically-minded laborers of philosophy” (die wissenschaftlichen Arbeiter der Philosophie) or “philosophical laborers” (philosophischen Arbeiter). This type occupies an intermediate space between real philosophers and scientifically minded human beings in general. They belong to philosophy because they are interested in values. They investigate, compare, explain, abbreviate, and codify all past value-creations. But they are not real or genuine philosophers because they must remain at this level and don’t have the resources that are needed to go further and create values. They also belong to science – in the broad sense of the term Wissenschaft – because they research facts, survey history, and acquire knowledge. On the other hand, they are not scientifically minded human beings in general because they only want to know facts about values and about the history of past value-creations. Nevertheless, the specialized and preliminary work of these intermediate types is an essential tool for genuine philosophers who need to understand the entire history of previous value-creations in order to go beyond it and create new values themselves. In a startling aside, Nietzsche remarks that even canonical giants like Kant and Hegel were, unbeknown to themselves, merely philosophical laborers and servants for future 

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See Loeb (a) for Nietzsche’s critique of Kant’s priestly philosophy as his most extended and detailed case study in support of this thesis.

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genuine philosophers (cf. also BGE ). As Laurence Lampert notes (: ), this is because he thinks that Kant and Hegel rested content with the preexisting and dominant value-posits of Christianized Platonism.

. Philosophical Will to Power At this point, then, perhaps we can provisionally agree with Nietzsche that genuine, emancipated, and autonomous philosophers are different from both religious and scientific thinkers because they are concerned above all with conceiving this-worldly values and ideals. But we are still left with the question as to why Nietzsche thinks that this genuine philosophical preoccupation is a vehicle for will to power. Why does he think that philosophical value-creation consists in the issuing of commands and laws about how things should be? It won’t do here to compare Nietzsche’s point to the traditional Kantian talk about obeying the moral law or about the kinds of normative commands that are built into morality. For Nietzsche is of course opposed to all such talk as belonging to selfdeceiving priestly philosophy (TI “Errors” ). What he has in mind instead is the much more radical idea that genuine philosophers strive to gain power by creating values that are actually commands and laws about how people should think and act. This aspect of Nietzsche’s metaphilosophy is indeed very unusual and idiosyncratic. Most traditional philosophers would probably call it cynical or even absurd, something more likely to be found among the ideological and conspiratorial theories of Plato’s Thrasymachus, Machiavelli’s Prince, or Marx’s German Ideology. But this is not at all the sense in which Nietzsche intends his idea. He is not aiming to debunk the pretensions of philosophers from some external political standpoint, but rather to honor everything he thinks is best and most genuine about them.

 



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See Loeb (a). Cf. KSA :[]: “Nothing that has value in itself – nothing that commands ‘thou shalt’.” And KSA :[]: “Go ahead and admit to yourself what this will to create is – lust for mastery, which cannot be satisfied just anywhere. ‘Friends?’ You want to have tools!” It might seem that Socrates’ response to Thrasymachus in the Republic includes a metaphilosophy that is similar to Nietzsche’s, since the philosophers rule all the other castes through the values they create. But these values are other-worldly and Socrates insists that the proper philosophical rulers don’t want to rule and only return to the cave out of a sense of duty (a–e). Nietzsche, by contrast, argues that real philosophers want to rule and that they should want to rule (Z:III “Tablets” ). Their “lust to rule” is actually a gift-giving to those whom they rule (Z:III “Three Evils” ).

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 . 

So why does Nietzsche think we should believe this radical idea? I would like to propose that the answer to this question lies in Nietzsche’s overarching naturalistic project of translating human beings back into nature (BGE ). In Beyond Good and Evil he repeatedly claims that life is will to power and that all living beings essentially want to control, master, and dominate everything they can (BGE , , , , ). Whatever living beings do, they do for the sake of gaining power; and they want this power for its own sake, not for the sake of anything else. But of course human beings are themselves living beings, so this is what they want too. Hence, so do genuine philosophers – that is, the kind of human beings who are concerned above all to create values and ideals. From which it follows that value-creation is the specific and essential means by which genuine philosophers strive to gain power. In short, these philosophical values and ideals are actually normative commands and laws for directing the thoughts and actions of others – that is, instruments of domination, mastery, and control. Careful readers will notice three points in this proposal that find little explicit support in the brief text of BGE . The first of these is my suggestion that Nietzsche is making a background appeal to his naturalistic methodology; second, my claim that he is assuming his theory that life is will to power; and, third, my claim that he is applying this theory to his idea that genuine philosophers are value-creators. As for the first point, most scholars today agree about the background influence of Nietzsche’s naturalistic methodology in all of his mature thinking. Here I am simply extending this agreement to the question about how best to interpret his metaphilosophical remarks in BGE . Although there is some debate about the meaning of Nietzsche’s naturalism, no one would disagree that at the very least it means incorporating Darwin’s insistence that human beings are animals with animal origins and animal instincts (BGE ). Modifying Nietzsche’s remark in BGE  just a little bit, we can say that he asks us to reject the lures of the old metaphysical bird catchers who have been whistling for far too long: “You philosophers are more! You are higher! You have a different origin!” It is true, of course, that Nietzsche rejects Darwin’s theory of natural selection in favor of his own theory of will to power. Perhaps his best and most concise expression of this disagreement is this one from the fifth book of The Gay Science: “The struggle for survival is only an exception, a temporary restriction of the will to life; the great and small struggle revolves everywhere around preponderance, around growth and expansion, around power and in accordance with the will to power, which is simply the will to life” (GS ). Nevertheless, it is clear that

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Nietzsche intends his own competing theory to be naturalistic on a par with Darwin’s. And this leads him to argue that philosophical human animals are driven to create values because they have the same fundamental and overriding life-instinct as all organic beings, namely to expand their power and discharge their strength (cf. BGE ; GM II:). As for the second and third points, these are easily supported by a close examination of Nietzsche’s earlier formulation of his BGE  metaphilosophy. Students of Thus Spoke Zarathustra agree that one of the most important speeches in this book is the speech on self-overcoming. This is where Nietzsche formally introduces his new theory of life as will to power. But this introduction actually emerges in the context of Zarathustra’s claim, which is reiterated in Nietzsche’s own voice in BGE , that the will to truth of those who are the wisest – that is, real philosophers – is actually a will to power. What he means by this, he says, is that those who are the wisest want to make all of existence bend and submit to their intellect. Precisely because they doubt, with proper suspicion, whether existence is even intellectually conceivable, they want to make it such – that is, they want to create a world in the image of their own intellect that is smooth and subject to their intellect and that is its mirror and reflection. Metaphorically speaking, they issue normative commands and laws to all of existence. For example, the Stoics demanded that nature be nature according to Stoa and that it therefore let itself be subject to the laws they gave themselves (BGE ). This, then, is another sense in which “knowing” is creating for genuine philosophers. At the same time, Zarathustra says, all those who are not wise obey these same normative commands and laws, and so they too are made to submit to the dominating will of the genuine philosophers. Here is the key passage: Of course, the ones who are not wise, the common people – they are like a river on which a bark is drifting along; and in the bark there sit value judgments, solemn and disguised. You launched your will and your values on the river of becoming; what is believed by the common people to be good and evil reveals to me an ancient will to power.

 

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See The translators’ Afterword in Loeb and Tinsley (). On my reading of BGE , Nietzsche is criticizing this anthropomorphizing tendency in the Stoics and in the traditional practice of philosophy so far. Elsewhere, Nietzsche insists that existence is not subject to the human intellect (GS ), so future philosophers must adopt a new de-anthropomorphizing methodology that resists and corrects this tendency (GS ).

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 .  It was you, you wisest ones, who launched such guests in this bark and gave them pageantry and names of which they could be proud, – you and your dominating will! (Z:II “On Self-overcoming”)

Next Zarathustra says that this account of good and evil needs to be explained further with his teaching about life and the nature of all living beings. Here is where Nietzsche explicitly translates genuine philosophers back into nature; introduces a theory of life as will to power that he explicitly applies to philosophical value-creators; and prefigures his BGE  conception of philosophical value-creation as the issuing of normative commands and laws. His argument, as stated by Zarathustra, takes place in two stages. First, he claims that the nature of living beings is to command and obey, and he asks what persuades (u¨berreden) them to do this. Second, he provides the answer to this question, namely, that life is will to power and that all living beings strive to dominate (Herr sein). More specifically, he argues, stronger living beings are persuaded to command weaker living beings because they strive to dominate them. And weaker living beings are persuaded to obey these commands because this allows them to steal power that they can then use to dominate living beings that are weaker than themselves. This answer thus sheds light on his account of good and evil. The genuine philosophers’ values and ideals are revealed to be normative commands through which they strive to dominate all of existence, including all those people who are not philosophers. Likewise, the people’s adoption of these values and ideals is revealed to be an obedience to these normative commands that aids them in their dominance of those who are weaker than themselves.

. The Genuine Philosopher Type This closer explication of Nietzsche’s later argument in BGE  now puts me in a position to answer some of the other questions I reviewed at the start. In the first place, it turns out that Nietzsche thinks that human values do have a basis in something other than human convention – namely, in the naturalistic fact that all living beings strive to increase their power. From this point Nietzsche derives his answer to my second, and related, question as to the normative authority of all human values – including those that are newly created by real philosophers. This authority, he argues, rests quite simply on the same naturalistic fact of life as will to power. Genuine philosophers who issue the normative commands and laws that we call “values” are persuaded to do so because they strive to

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increase their power. And all those who adopt these values, that is, who obey these commands and laws, are persuaded to do so for the same reason – because they strive to increase their power. Finally, in response to our question as to how Nietzsche thinks that just a very few real philosophers could be in a position to create values that guide everyone else, he would point to his conception of them as those who give commands and make laws. We have no trouble imagining how just a few military commanders or political legislators are able to issue normative commands and laws that direct the thoughts and actions of a large population. According to Nietzsche, once we translate real philosophers back into nature, we should have no trouble imagining that they also have this ability. In GS , one of Nietzsche’s most famous passages about philosophical value-creation, he considers the relation between “contemplatives,” on the one hand, and other commanding human types such as military leaders or political legislators. Here he argues that, whatever appearances and universal opinion might say to the contrary, practical and action-oriented people (practischen Menschen, handelden Menschen) simply lack the creative power that would enable them to invent values and ideals. Instead, it is only “contemplatives,” the superior types of human beings, the poetic “thinking-feeling” types, who possess this creative power and who are constantly making, giving, and granting “the whole perpetually growing world of valuations, colors, weights, perspectives, scales, affirmations, and negations.” According to Nietzsche, these value-creations are then “continuously internalized, drilled, translated into flesh and reality, indeed, into the commonplace, by the so-called practical people.” As Nietzsche puts it in his next book: “The world revolves around the inventors of new values – it revolves invisibly” (Z:I “Flies of the Market Place”). Explained in terms of his later formulation in BGE , this means that creative genuine philosophers issue normative commands and laws to all those so-called practical types who issue normative commands and laws to others. This is true even in the more abstract case of political and economic philosophers like Machiavelli and Adam Smith who guide the actions of practical experts in these fields. Real philosophers, that is, command the  

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As GM III: shows, Nietzsche’s term “Contemplativen” includes religious thinkers and philosophers. In this passage, Nietzsche is also concerned to point out that most “contemplatives” have called themselves such because they suffered from the delusion that they were merely contemplating values that inhere in nature rather than actively creating those values themselves. In his next book, then, Nietzsche depicts Zarathustra as fully aware of his own creative power and as intentionally and consciously issuing his new normative commands and laws.

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 . 

military commanders and give laws to the political lawgivers. Hence, insofar as real philosophers control those who are typically (but mistakenly) regarded as controlling all other human beings, they should be acknowledged as the type of human beings who have the strongest will to power and who (by contrast with sickly religious types) are best able to express this will to power. This superiority is precisely what Nietzsche thinks is most characteristic of genuine philosophers and this is why he singles them out for his highest praise in BGE . In the third essay of the Genealogy, Nietzsche extends his account of the background influence of value-creating “contemplatives” to those other human types who are not practical or action-oriented, but are nevertheless extremely influential in their own right. We have already seen what he says about religious and scientific types. Because they are sickly, priests are only concerned to create other-worldly values, and for this reason they must eventually be governed and used as tools by healthy genuine philosophers who have dispensed with all religious camouflage and are creating thisworldly values (BGE –). The scientists are only concerned with the world as it is, and for this reason they must also be used as servants by genuine philosophers who are able to imagine the world as it should be (BGE –). In both cases, then, the greater power lies with the genuine philosophers who can dominate and who are able to issue normative commands and laws that are obeyed by their religious and scientific functionaries. Among the scientific functionaries, Nietzsche includes historians (GM III:), philologists (BGE ), and those he calls “formal” scientists or scientists of signs and sign-convention, that is, logicians and those applied logicians who are called mathematicians (TI “Reason” ; A ). None of these human types, he argues, are able to create values – not even methodological values having to do with their own practices. Instead, they are always guided in their work by the genuinely philosophical work of those who study their fields and create methodological values for them (for example, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, and Hegel). This work is what we now call the philosophy of natural science in general, or the philosophy of the particular natural sciences, like physics and biology, or the philosophy of history, logic, and math. Now, the artistic human types might seem different, since they are obviously creative and are also deeply concerned with values. But even here, Nietzsche argues (GM III:), we need to notice that tremendously influential artists (like Wagner) are always guided in their general ideals, and even in their methodological values, by the genuinely philosophical work of those (like Plato and Schopenhauer) who study metaphysics,

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epistemology, morality, art, theater, and music. Artists, too, lack the power needed to issue normative commands and laws. Finally, Nietzsche is of course not precluding the possibility that an expert practitioner in a specialized field might evolve into something much more, that is, into a genuine philosopher with respect to that field (or even in general). Indeed, he argues for the necessity of such transitions. All that is required is that this specialist harbors the strength of will that is needed to begin conceiving and issuing normative commands and laws that compel the obedience of other practitioners in the field (or even of people in general). As examples, he might have cited Descartes’ philosophical ascent from his study of geometry, or even his own philosophical growth far beyond his initial philological studies.

. Nietzsche as Philosophical Laborer and Herald of Future Philosophy With this last point, I want to return now to my final introductory questions about Nietzsche’s understanding of his own philosophical status. Did he think he was a genuine philosopher in the sense I have just outlined? If so, where should we look in his texts for his creation of new values? Or did he regard himself as a philosophical laborer along the lines of Kant and Hegel – someone who was playing an essential role in preparing the way for future genuine philosophers? I think it must be admitted that Nietzsche sets a high bar that he didn’t think he could meet. This is suggested especially by his concluding questions in BGE : “Are there philosophers like this today? Have there ever been philosophers like this? Won’t there have to be philosophers like this?” If Nietzsche thought he was such a genuine philosopher, he probably wouldn’t have asked these questions, especially the first one. But if he regarded himself as a preparatory figure, these questions, especially the third, make a lot of sense. These questions also make sense in the context of several other places in Beyond Good and Evil, including its subtitle “Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future” (Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft), where Nietzsche explicitly points to the future emergence of a new species of commanding and

 

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Cf. KSA :[]: “someone who creates is someone who creates new values. But not the artist!” Cf. also BGE : “(if there could be philosophers today).”

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 . 

legislating philosophers and calls himself their “herald” (Herold) and “precursor” (Vorläufer). In sum, we shouldn’t assume that Nietzsche regards himself as a real philosopher just because he claims to have discovered a new and more accurate understanding of this type. Moreover, his distinction between real philosophers and philosophical laborers raises the question whether he regarded himself as one of the latter. The inclusivity of the title of this part of Beyond Good and Evil, “We Scholars,” would suggest that he does. But the enthusiastic tone of Nietzsche’s presentation in these particular sections would suggest that he doesn’t. So we need to look more carefully at his works with this distinction in mind. Is Beyond Good and Evil itself the work of a genuine philosopher or of a philosophical laborer? What about the Genealogy book that Nietzsche wrote immediately after? Consider in particular the genealogical project Nietzsche conducts in Part  of Beyond Good and Evil, “Natural History of Morality” and in BGE , and then in the book-long extension of these sections in the Genealogy, along with their later supplement in The Antichrist. Isn’t this exactly the kind of investigating, comparing, explaining, abbreviating, and codifying of past values that he says is needed as a kind of preparatory service to some future genuine philosopher who will succeed in creating new values? For example, in the first essay of the Genealogy he reduces all moralities to master and slave moralities; in the second essay he unearths the general punitive context of most human values so far; and in the third essay he offers a wide-angle survey of the unopposed reign of the ascetic ideal in all human history so far. Indeed, there is a scientific and scholarly air that permeates the entire Genealogy analysis of past values, including the kind of evidence that Nietzsche cites throughout the text in support of his central claims. This evidence is drawn widely and deeply from the academic fields of philology, history, anthropology, ethnology, economics, sociology, and physiology. In his concluding note to the first essay, Nietzsche even sends out a formal call to his fellow scholars and academics to initiate further linguistic and medical investigations of the questions he has raised: “All the sciences have from now on to prepare the way for the future task of the philosophers: this task understood as the solution of the problem of value, the determination of the order of rank among values” (GM I:).



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Cf. especially BGE , and also BGE , –, and . Sometimes Nietzsche also writes about the genuine philosopher as someone who is especially concerned with the future (BGE –). See Nehamas () and Loeb () for a discussion of this ambiguity in Nietzsche’s presentation.

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Most scholars would agree, I think, that neither Beyond Good and Evil nor the Genealogy includes the creation of new values. Of course, there are places in both texts where Nietzsche advocates a return to ancient preChristian values, but this is not the same thing as creating new values. For example, toward the end of the first essay of the Genealogy, he writes: “Should there not someday have to be an even more terrible flaring up of the ancient fire, one much longer in the making? Still more: would precisely that not be something to wish for with all our might? even to will? even to promote?” (GM I:). This is also true of the later work that Nietzsche prepared for publication, The Antichrist, which he explicitly describes as a revaluation of all Christian values, something that he says was already accomplished in the Renaissance (A ). Some scholars have argued recently that Nietzsche introduces a new ethics of power at the start of this book (A ). But actually this is something as old as Realpolitik (GS ). Indeed, Nietzsche is obviously influenced here by the political philosophy of Machiavelli, who made an ethics of power the cornerstone of his thinking (TI “Ancients” ). It is also noteworthy that in his retrospective Ecce Homo Nietzsche says that in Beyond Good and Evil and in all the works that followed he had performed a revaluation of all past values as part of his No-saying and No-doing task (EH “Books” BGE:). So this was a negative revaluation of all past values. But in Zarathustra’s first speech to his disciples, “On the Three Transformations,” the lionspirited rejection of all previous values is characterized as merely a precondition for the child-spirited creation of new values. And in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche says that this Yes-saying creative part of his task had been entirely solved in the Zarathustra book he published prior to Beyond Good and Evil. It is especially significant, then, that Nietzsche calls himself a herald and precursor to the philosophical value-creators who will emerge in the future. For this self-conscious understanding of his task is not something he associates with philosophical laborers. They are historically minded students of all value-creations in the past, not visionaries of the kinds of valuecreators who might emerge in the future. So I think this is the one very specific and important sense in which Nietzsche believes he is doing something different and more advanced than philosophical laborers like   

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Cf. Acampora and Ansell Pearson (: –). Cf. Reginster (: ); and Katsafanas (). See also Nietzsche’s positive references to Cesare Borgia, Machiavelli’s exemplar, in The Prince (BGE ; TI “Skirmishes” ; A ; EH “Books” ).

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Kant and Hegel. In particular, he tells us in Ecce Homo that his greatest philosophical achievement was to envision the future emergence of one such genuine philosopher and value-creator to whom he gives the name “Zarathustra.” Nietzsche makes an explicit reference to this figure in his poem at the very end of Beyond Good and Evil and he includes several other implicit references before this (cf. BGE ). However, by far the most illuminating account of this Zarathustra figure, and of his own selfassigned status as the herald and precursor to this figure, is given by Nietzsche in the two sections at the end of the second essay of his next book (GM II:–). So I want to examine this account a little before turning to Zarathustra. In the context of the exegesis of BGE  that I’ve offered here, Nietzsche’s most important point in these two sections of the Genealogy is that the future Zarathustra will be strong. This is something that he repeats throughout the passage. The godless Zarathustra will be strong enough to wed the bad conscience to all human ideals so far – that is, to the religious and priestly ideals that have been hostile to life in this world. He will be someone who has been strengthened by war and victory in a future age that is stronger than the decaying and self-doubting modern age in which Nietzsche himself is writing. He will be a creative mind whose compelling strength will not allow him to rest in any beyond. And, finally, he will be stronger than Nietzsche himself, which means that Nietzsche must be careful not to usurp those tasks to which only the stronger Zarathustra has a right. This repeated emphasis on strength, together with the mention of Zarathustra’s “creative mind” (schöpferischer Geist), allude back to Nietzsche’s claim in BGE  that real philosophers are able to create new values because they are strong enough to issue normative commands and laws that will be obeyed by all other human types. I think this Genealogy account provides us with good reasons for thinking that Nietzsche did not believe he was strong enough to be a real  

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See Loeb (, b) for a more extended discussion of Nietzsche’s conception of his relation to Zarathustra. It might seem that Nietzsche nonetheless ended up usurping some of these tasks in his last works. But I’ve argued in Loeb (: ch. , and b) that Nietzsche describes the future Zarathustra, not himself, as the victor over God and nihilism because these tasks require the affirmation of life’s eternal recurrence – which is distinct from amor fati and that he says he is not strong enough to accomplish. So Nietzsche’s point in GM III: is that he should refrain from attempting to create new values because, despite all his best efforts, he still remains too closely related to the life-denying priestly philosopher. Just as a Homer and Goethe would not have imaginatively conceived the figures of Achilles and Faust if they had been these figures, so too Nietzsche would not have envisioned the future Zarathustra if he had been Zarathustra (GM III:).

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philosopher in the very precise sense that he defines that term. He was strong enough to destroy the old ideals, but not strong enough to erect new ones. In terms of Zarathustra’s first speech to his disciples, Nietzsche sees himself as the lion-spirited philosopher who goes to war against the ancient and mightiest dragon named “Thou shalt!” on whose golden scales are represented all of humankind’s past created values. He finds illusion and caprice in all these past values and in that way he earns the freedom of “I will!” to create new values. But Zarathustra is perfectly clear that the spirit of the lion cannot create new values, that this feat is not within its power. So Nietzsche has actually earned this freedom for his future philosophical heir. He is the philosophical laborer who overwhelms the past so that the genuine philosophers may create the future (BGE ). This is why he warns himself that he should avoid usurping the valuecreating task to which only the stronger future Zarathustra has the right. From all this it follows, I think, that we should stop looking for places in Nietzsche’s texts where he himself, writing in his own voice, creates new values. But it is still very interesting that he nevertheless believes that he has enough strength – more than any philosophical laborer before him – to imagine in great detail what a far stronger philosopher than him will be like. Thus Spoke Zarathustra is therefore the key place in his writings where we should look to find out how exactly Nietzsche envisioned a future philosophical value-creation. Since he tells us in BGE  that this great event will consist in the genuine philosopher issuing commands and laws about how things should be, the exegetical question for us is where exactly in Zarathustra does Nietzsche portray the new species of philosopher as doing just this.

. Zarathustra’s Creation of New Values My suggestion is that this happens right at the start of the book, where the now superabundantly wise Zarathustra descends from his mountain cave in order to impart his new teaching. Although he speaks to the assembled  

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For detailed commentary on this specific aspect of Nietzsche’s book, see Gooding-Williams () and Loeb (: ch. ). In his preparatory note for BGE , Nietzsche describes the state of mind of a philosopher who does not feel prepared for the burden of creating new values, but then experiences a redeeming hour of ripeness in which this deed is accomplished easily and unintentionally (KSA :[]/WP ). This is also how Nietzsche had already described Zarathustra’s state of mind at the end of Part II of Z in the chapter entitled “The Stillest Hour” – a chapter that anticipates Zarathustra’s transformation at the end of Part III from a lion-spirited slayer of past values to a child-spirited creator of new values (Loeb : ch. ).

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people in the town square, he is also addressing all of humankind. The famous opening words of this teaching are: “I teach you about the superhumans. Humans are something that must be overcome. What have you done to overcome them?” (Z I “Prologue” ). He then goes on to say that humans were once apes and that even now humans are more ape than any apes. So it is time for humans to create something beyond themselves, just as apes and all other creatures have done in the past. This “something” is of course the superhumans, and he says that they will surpass humans just as humans now surpass apes. And so he tells humankind, in his role as a genuine philosopher who gives commands and says “it shall be so!”: “The superhumans are the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the superhumans shall be the meaning of the earth!” (Z:I “Prologue” ). As scholars have noted from the start, Nietzsche’s reference here to apes, and to the idea that human beings were once apes, is an allusion to Darwin’s theory of evolution. Following Darwin, who began “the last great scientific movement” (GS ), Nietzsche is assuming that all living species have an evolutionary origin, are capable of evolutionary change, and may be subject to evolutionary extinction. Therefore, humans too, translated back into nature as a kind of animal species that is descended from the apes, may evolve and even come to an end. Inspired by this discovery, Nietzsche depicts the future Zarathustra as commanding human beings to take their evolutionary destiny into their own hands by creating a species that will far surpass them. Just as apes created “super-apes” (der Überaffe), so too these super-apes, that is, humans, should now create super-humans (der Übermensch) (KSA :[]). Not, however, by a process of natural selection, which, as we’ve seen, Nietzsche rejects, but rather by an action he calls “self-overcoming” (Selbstu¨berwindung). What he means by this, Zarathustra explains in the chapter with this term as the title, is that all living creatures are always striving for greater power. But those that have gained complete dominance no longer have any competition to overcome. So all they can do in order to gain still more power is to overcome themselves so as to allow still greater descendants to emerge. Here is the relevant passage:



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See the Translators’ Afterword in Loeb and Tinsley () for our philological argument that Nietzsche’s use in Z of the collective singular term, der Übermensch, is best translated with the plural English term, “superhumans,” as referring to a kind or species (analogous to the standard translation of the collective singular term, der Mensch, as “humans”). We also offer a textual and philosophical argument against the long scholarly tradition, based partly on a grammatical misunderstanding, that assumes this use refers to a superior (male) individual.

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“And just as the lesser surrender to the greater, in order that they may take pleasure in their power over the least: in this way even the greatest may still surrender and for the sake of power wager – life itself. “The surrender of the greatest is this, that there is risk and danger and a death-defying roll of the dice [. . .] “I will rather perish than renounce this one thing; and truly, wherever there is downfall and the falling of leaves, behold, there life sacrifices itself – for power!” (Z:II “Self-Overcoming”)

Nietzsche’s point here, as articulated by the future Zarathustra, is that human beings have reached the point in their evolutionary journey where they are the supremely dominant species and no longer have any competition left on earth (Z:III “Tablets” ). But, nevertheless, because life is will to power, they cannot help but strive for still more power. So what they must do next, if they are not to become the stagnant and sterile “last humans,” is sacrifice themselves for the sake of a superhuman species that will surpass them in every way. They must now make the fateful decision that they want this new species to replace them as the meaning of the earth. Just as parents extend their power by advancing the good fortunes of their superior children (KSA :[]), so too humans can expand the reach of their uncontested domination by becoming ancestors of the more powerful superhumans. Thus, in these opening passages of Zarathustra, Nietzsche envisions a key moment in human history when a future genuine philosopher named “Zarathustra” will follow the law of life’s self-overcoming and issue the new command that humankind must overcome itself. Given his BGE  conception of philosophical value-creation as the issuing of new normative commands, he is thereby also envisioning Zarathustra’s creation of new values. In the rest of his speech in the marketplace, and in his later speeches, “Old and New Tablets” and “Superior Humans,” Zarathustra outlines the new system of values that follows from this original normative command. These include extensive instructions for conducting all personal, familial, educational, cultural, social, institutional, and political



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As I argue in Loeb (: ch. ), the crucial difference between Zarathustra’s inaugural teaching of these new values in the preface to Zarathustra and his later teaching of these new values in the “Tablets” and “Superior Humans” chapters is that in the inaugural teaching he does not yet have a receptive audience who is ready to obey his new normative law of the self-overcoming of humankind.

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affairs with the goal of facilitating the self-overcoming of humans and the emergence of the superhumans. These values are completely new in the history of humankind because human values were first created during a time when humans were still competing with other species for power. Moreover, as Nietzsche explains at length at the start of GS, the ancient, unconscious, and instinctive assumption of such competition has continued to play a background role in the creation of all later human values (GS ). This means that the meta-ideal for all previous human values has been the preservation of the human species. As Nietzsche writes in a preparatory note for Z: “Morality up to now has had its boundaries dictated by the species: all moralities up to now were useful for establishing first and foremost the unconditional stability of the species: when this has been achieved, the goal can be set higher” (KSA :[]). According to Nietzsche, the stability of the human species has now been achieved, so it is time for humankind to create new moralities that will set a higher goal: “Humankind has no goal: it can even set a goal for itself – not for the end, not for preserving the species, but rather for abolishing it” (KSA :[]). And this self-overcoming, he writes, will allow the emergence of a species that surpasses it, a species that is no longer human, but rather superhuman: “Let humans be the impetus for something that is no longer human [das nicht Mensch mehr ist]! You want species-preservation? I say: speciesovercoming!” (KSA :[], p. ). It is time, he writes, “[t]o play the great game – to wager the existence of humankind on the poss[ibility] of achieving something higher than the preservation of the species” (KSA :[]). This is what Nietzsche is alluding to in BGE  when he writes that the genuine philosopher determines where humans are going and why (das Wohin? und Wozu? des Menschen). Scholars who have written about Nietzsche’s concept of superhumans have often claimed that he must have abandoned this teaching because it plays less of a role toward the end of Z and because he barely mentions it in the texts that he published, or prepared for publication, after Z. I have already offered an interpretation that explains why Nietzsche refused to teach anything in his own voice about the future philosopher’s creation of



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It is noteworthy, I think, that Nietzsche begins the first edition of GS with an extended meditation on this point and then ends his book in GS  with a proclamation of the beginning of actual tragedy and the introduction of Zarathustra, a brand new kind of teacher of the purpose of human existence – one who, it is implied, will no longer advocate the preservation of the human species, but rather its downfall (Untergang).

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humankind’s new self-overcoming values. Still, in his retrospective Ecce Homo, Nietzsche mentions Zarathustra’s concept of the superhumans several times in the context of valorizing Zarathustra as his most important work and even offers some instructions about how to interpret it. As for the scholarly point about the abandoned development of this concept within Zarathustra, this is simply an exegetical mistake. Nietzsche returns to this concept repeatedly throughout the entire book, culminating in a summary of the concept in the decisive “Tablets” chapter toward the end of Part III and in the crucial “Superior Humans” speech toward the end of Part IV. The latter summary is especially interesting because here Nietzsche has Zarathustra repeat his command that humankind should overcome itself to the assembled superior men (Z:IV “Superior Humans” ). These superior men represent all the various types of human beings that I have reviewed as being guided by the genuine philosopher’s created values: the soothsayer as priestly philosopher, the pope as religious leader, the leech-student as scientist, the sorcerer as artist, and the two kings as political-military leaders. All of them have been seeking Zarathustra because they believe that his teaching will help them overcome their great distress. Just as Zarathustra commanded, they are full of self-contempt and they are leading the way for all human beings to sacrifice themselves. This point shows, incidentally, that Zarathustra is not commanding the cultivation of superior human beings or the enhancement of the human species. In fact, he tells the superior men that he is not concerned with them or with the best human beings, since even they must sacrifice themselves for the sake of a new species that will be “no longer human” (nicht mehr Mensch) (KSA :[], p. ; Z:III “On the Vision and the Riddle” ).

. Conclusion More needs to be said here about Nietzsche’s favorite book, and especially about the role that Zarathustra’s other central teaching, eternal recurrence, plays in his command for human self-overcoming. I have written about these topics at length elsewhere, so I will conclude this chapter by asking about the plausibility of Nietzsche’s metaphilosophy as I have interpreted it here. As I have said, most traditional philosophers would probably accept his claim that they are concerned with the invention of new ideals. I think they would also be sympathetic to his distinction between philosophical and religious ideals, to his assertion that scientists don’t concern themselves with ideals at all, and to his suggestion that philosophers are

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interested in the methodological ideals of disciplines outside of their own. However, I doubt that most traditional philosophers would be receptive to Nietzsche’s stern distinction between genuine philosophers and philosophical laborers, much less to his suggestion that giants like Kant and Hegel belong among the latter. But they might consider that Nietzsche seems to include himself among the latter. And they might agree with his claim that there is an important difference between studying past ideals and creating new ones. Finally, they might agree with Nietzsche that most canonical philosophers have not been genuine philosophers in the sense of thinking independently of any religious or theological influence. Where traditional philosophers would really draw the line, though, is with Nietzsche’s conception of philosophers as issuing normative commands and laws. As I have said, they would most likely find this conception foreign and perhaps even absurd. Here I think we need to imagine on Nietzsche’s behalf a series of responses, ranked in order of their potential to persuade these critics. In the first place, and most persuasively, he would point to his observation that philosophical values and ideals, even when created by those who serve the ascetic ideal and are not genuinely philosophical (GM III:), or even when created by those who are not selfconsciously aware of their own value-creating activities (GS ), tend to have a strong background influence on the activities of non-philosophers – including, for example, military and political leaders, artists, scientists, economists, and historians. And he might agree that all canonical philosophers have at one time or another conceived such ideals and thus engaged in some kind of genuinely philosophical activity – even if they have not been concerned, like Zarathustra, to determine the future direction of humankind. Second, Nietzsche would remind these critics that he is concerned to translate philosophers back into nature. They are animals and, as such, their characteristic activities should be explained in terms of their animal origins and instincts. Even if his critics disagree with his naturalistic theory of life as will to power, it is incumbent on them to naturalize their own conception of philosophy. If they did this, they would find that many their most cherished assumptions about the nature, method, and aims of philosophy would now seem foreign and perhaps even absurd. Finally, and probably least persuasively for these critics, he would argue that the great majority of traditional philosophers are not genuine philosophers in the fullest sense of the term and are therefore not in a position to understand his conception of genuine philosophy from their own experience (BGE ). He thinks it is obvious that ancient

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philosophers like Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Plato would agree with his conception. But he would argue that, especially more recently, the dominance of natural science and the pervasive bias of democratic ideology have led comparably great legislators to give up their philosophical rights and to abdicate their philosophical responsibilities (BGE ). 

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I am grateful to Chris Janaway, Scott Jenkins, Matthew Meyer, and David Tinsley for their very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay.

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 

Nietzsche’s Masks Philosophy and Religion in Beyond Good and Evil Robert B. Pippin

My main interest in the following lies in demonstrating something that sounds extremely simple, even simplistic: that a great deal in our understanding of Nietzsche will change if we read him as he asked to be read – very slowly and very closely. In the  preface to Morgenröthe (Dawn), he wrote that, whatever he wanted to say, he wanted to say it slowly, and that he and his books are “friends of the lento,” and: “It is not for nothing that one has been a philologist, perhaps one is a philologist still, that is a teacher of slow reading [ein Lehrer des langsamen Lesens]” and that it had become his habit and taste “no longer to write anything which does not reduce to despair every sort of man who is in a hurry.” He asks of his readers only, “Learn to read me well! [Lernt mich gut lesen!]” And he emphasizes the same quality, which he also calls “rumination [Wiederkäuen]” at the end of the preface to On the Genealogy of Morality. So, there is no secret or key to reading him as he meant to be read. We simply need to pay attention to what he tells us and proceed accordingly. But that, it will turn out, is easier said than done. Noticing what one notices when one does slow way down makes everything a good deal more puzzling, and makes one’s own writing “slower.” But doing so is critically important for one theme especially: Nietzsche’s conception of philosophy. (There is surely a deep connection between anyone’s conception of what philosophy is, and how one thinks it is to be written.) With some sense of how he wants his work to be approached, I also want to show what difference that might make for understanding one of his central topics: religion. Accordingly, if the question concerns Nietzsche’s understanding of philosophy, or his “metaphilosophy,” then surely some significant dimensions  

“Nichts mehr zu schreiben, womit nicht jede Art Mensch, die ‘Eile hat’, zur Verzweiflung gebracht wird” (KGW V/: p. ). My translation.  Ibid. KGW VI/: p. . My translation.

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of the answer should be available in a book subtitled, “Prelude [Vorspiel ] to a Philosophy of the Future”; that is, in Beyond Good and Evil. And we do find there a wealth of details, often expressed in elaborate similes, metaphors, and allusions, about what he seems to think has gone wrong in the philosophical tradition. Most prominent is that very way of introducing the problem – historically. Future philosophy must be different; something has happened that makes unavailable the past philosophical tradition that extends from pre-Socratics to Schopenhauer. A hasty conclusion about what Nietzsche thinks might have happened would be that philosophy has been exposed as fraudulent, that we now realize there just is no such thing, in the same way in which it would be foolish to ask for a better version of astrology or alchemy. There is no such better or even alternate version, because there never was such a thing as astrology or alchemy. So, accordingly, we should be doing something else, like natural science or depth psychology. But, according to Nietzsche, what we clearly need in the future is still “philosophy.” And, in the first two parts of the book, Nietzsche has quite a bit to say about how philosophy failed us, and he offers some, but much less, detail about what a new philosophy must look like. Here are some obvious features of the philosophy of future. Its relation to truth will be different. It will not be committed to truth “in itself,” where committed means not committed to the importance of such a search; as he says, it will not be committed to the value of truth. (Status of commitment is the question; not the nature of truth.) A hasty conclusion, drawn by many, might be that Nietzsche is, self-defeatingly, rejecting the possibility of objective truth at all. There are passages where it has seemed to some that this is what he is claiming. But, in the very first paragraph of the book, he is quite clear that his interest lies in challenging the value of truth. He wants to show us that whatever we think we know will not do for us, will not be transformative, in the way Socrates promised. It will be a philosophy that understands that “psychology is again the path to the fundamental problems [Denn Psychologie ist nunmehr der Weg zu den Grundproblemen]” (BGE ). He does not mean that the new philosophy will simply concentrate on problems of human motivation, on psychological explanations of thought and action. Psychology will be

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I defend this emphasis more thoroughly in Pippin (a: –). The following translations are used: BGE (); D (); GM (); GS ().

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 . 

“the queen of [all the] the sciences [Herrin der Wissenschaften],” displacing first philosophy or metaphysics. From the perspective of the philosophy of the future, past philosophy appears “a long actual [eigentlich] tragedy,” and one that has “come to an end” (BGE ). He does not explain what such a tragedy is, and, typically, even such a straightforward-sounding claim is subject to a qualification that can seem gratuitous, as Nietzsche adds, “assuming that every philosophy was in its origin, a long tragedy [vorausgesetzt, dass jede Philosophie im Entstehen eine lange Tragödie war].” The new philosophy will involve a novel mode of valuation, a mode not committed to “opposite values,” but rather will acknowledge a “gradation in values [wo es nur Grade und mancherlei Feinheit der Stufen giebt].” Given the title of the book, it would be reasonable to think that he most of all means that future philosophy will be beyond any commitment to the strictly opposing values of good and evil, and will encourage us to see them too in terms of gradation. But this can be puzzling, since he also seems to mean “beyond” the distinction entirely, rejecting any valuation formulated in terms of considerations of egoism and selflessness, rather than seeing the pair as part of one continuum and so linked with each other and still indispensable. (In actual treatment, it is the latter, continuum view that predominates, but there are more radical sounding passages.) There are other characterizations, scattered throughout the first part on the “Prejudices of Philosophers.” We learn that the new philosophy will realize its instinctual origins (BGE ) and come to see itself as what it has always been, the rationalization of wishes (BGE ). It will understand that it has been the involuntary confessions of its authors, revealing unacknowledged noble and ignoble intentions as what it strives to satisfy (BGE ). Philosophers have been actors, and sycophants to the powerful (BGE ), and self-deceived (BGE ). But the most complicating aspect of the philosophy of the future is introduced in the preface and emphasized again in BGE  of the second part on “The Free Spirit.” That aspect is the esoteric character of philosophy, both in the past and in the future. (This is clearly one of the strong points of continuity between past and future philosophy.) In the  

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Pippin (). Is this supposed to be a qualification, a way of suggesting that philosophy might not be a long tragedy, or that it might only be one, or not be one, in its arising, “im Enstehen”? What would be the point of that warning, as it were? This problem was posed for me by Chris Janaway. I have more to say about the issue and about the general question of Nietzsche’s figurative style, in Pippin ().

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preface, he had said that “all great things, in order to inscribe eternal demands in the heart of humanity, must first wander the earth under monstrous and terrifying masks” and that dogmatic philosophy was such a mask or grimace (Fratze). This sort of formulation is already an example of a kind of rhetoric that I would like to spend some time exploring, especially because it is also a first principle of the kind of writing being proposed for a philosophy of the future. It is especially important because, apart from commentators influenced by the hermeneutics of Leo Strauss (Stanley Rosen [], Laurence Lampert [], Heinrich Meier []), it is not taken all that seriously, and this for an understandable reason. Given the great passion and energy of Nietzsche’s polemical writing, his readers are often tempted to race through passages, as if that passion requires, to do it justice, such speed. But much of what is actually said is, and is meant to be, puzzling, and that puzzlement, properly attended to, slows one down. Dogmatic philosophy (that is, all prior philosophy), he insists, should be understood to be one of the “great things” that have striven to “inscribe eternal demands in the human heart.” And then the slow down starts. What does this mean? Why call the demands “eternal”? What demands in particular? Does he mean Plato’s invention of the pure spirit and the Good in itself that he mentions in the very next sentence? But these are not “demands.” Perhaps Plato, he is suggesting, wanted to inscribe an aspiration for purity of spirit and for the good in itself in the human heart, but, if he did, he did not seem optimistic about such an aspiration for the vast majority of human hearts, and rather than “inscribe” such demands in hearts, he seemed more interested in simply convincing a few people of their truth. What should inscribe such demands is the elenchus itself, not any Fratze. And even if we could sort all this out, just why would it be possible to do so only if masked, or “making a face, grimacing”? And, even more puzzling, why would the mask have to be monstrous and terrifying? Was Plato’s mask or visage monstrous? Does Nietzsche mean that the Platonic view of the human passions as so unruly and dangerous was only a pose (not his true view), and meant to frighten his readers, so that they would accept the demand for purity of spirit and the good in itself? How exactly would that go? And even if all this were so,



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“Es scheint, dass alle grossen Dinge, um der Menschheit sich mit ewigen Forderungen in das Herz einzuschreiben, erst als ungeheure und furchteinflössende Fratzen u¨ber die Erde hinwandeln mu¨ssen: eine solche Fratze war die dogmatische Philosophie.” A Fratze here might just mean a grimace or grotesque face; all great things first appear terrifying. But the passage needs to be read together with BGE . Judith Norman does translate it as “grimace” when Fratze appears in BGE .

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why would such a pose be necessary, the only way to inscribe such demands? So the philosophy of future can be summarized as having these characteristics: () no over-valuation of the value of truth. () Prior philosophy ended as a tragedy; the new philosophy will not be tragic. () There will be a new emphasis on psychology as the new first philosophy. () There are no strictly oppositional values, like either good or evil; or, perhaps, to anticipate, either religious or nonreligious. () There will be a new self-awareness of the “instinctual” origins of philosophy. () There is one mark of continuity with the old philosophy: it was esoteric and the new philosophy will be esoteric also. This complexity is even more prominent in his other characterizations of the esoteric character of philosophy. In BGE , he famously writes that “Everything deep [tief ] loves masks; the deepest things even hate images and likenesses.” Surely he considers his own philosophy deep, profound; so it would be crucial to know why he makes this claim, even insisting that the love for masks is so intense that the deepest things hate even images and likenesses; that is, anything not the original, but that, like an image, still reveals the original. The mask, apparently, must completely conceal the original or what is masked. If we ask why this should be, he does not (not here anyway) suggest an answer familiar in esoteric traditions; such as, to protect the author from political danger or because the unwise, the many, will misunderstand what is written, and might even be demoralized and left in confusion if the writing did not speak to two audiences at once. Nietzsche tells us here that the deepest things love masks for a strikingly unusual reason, one paradigmatic for the stylistic elements that slow us down. He writes, “Wouldn’t just the opposite be the proper disguise for the shame of a god [Sollte nicht erst der Gegensatz die rechte Verkleidung sein, in der der Scham eines Gottes einhergienge]?” He appears to mean “the opposite” of image and likeness, or a completely disguising mask, but the reference to shame, and the shame of a god at that, is quite unexpected, and, as far as I know, not discussed in the literature. This is surprising because shame is certainly a major theme in the book, interwoven throughout, especially in the epigrams and interludes (where there are   

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This is not to say that these declarations about past philosophy as a tragedy that has ended provide a complete picture of Nietzsche’s views of tragedy, especially of Greek tragic poetry or of Zarathustra. “Alles, was tief ist, liebt die Maske; die allertiefsten Dinge haben sogar einen Hass auf Bild und Gleichniss.” He does suggest something like the second reason in BGE  and BGE . See the discussion of the latter later in this chapter.

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seven aphorisms about shame) and it figures very prominently in his frequent discussions of women (a crucial theme for many reasons, not least because the book began by suggesting that truth is a woman, and philosophers clumsy lovers). Moreover, the penultimate paragraph of the book (BGE ) reminds us that there was a god without shame, Dionysus, but when, in such shamelessness, he proposed helping humans be “stronger, more evil, more profound . . . more beautiful,” (or exactly what many believe Nietzsche wants to help us become) Nietzsche in effect responds in our voice by reminding Dionysus and us that such a god lacks more than shame and he could learn a thing or two from human beings, who are, after all, “more human” than the god. None of this is clear; most of it is actually mysterious, and none of it has been much attended to. It appears that Nietzsche is suggesting at the close of the book that the connection between “the shame of a god” and writing “masked” should not be abandoned; there remain good reasons to be ashamed, but it is not clear why. I would suggest as a provisional interpretation that Nietzsche is first comparing all past philosophers to gods, or at least mortals who have striven for centuries for eternal and so divine truth, who have thought of themselves as god-like (that is certainly an image used by Plato), and, in the current age, the enlightened age, have now become ashamed, as he notes in BGE , that their thinking has succeeded only in playing the greatest joke (den allergrössten Schabernack) on them, has made philosophers into the biggest fools (das Wesen, welches bisher auf Erden immer am besten genarrt worden ist), and that such a situation is shameful. (There is also, of course, shame in being exposed as “clumsy lovers [linkische Liebhaber],” to revert to the book’s opening image.) I would suggest, finally, that the connection between shame and writing in a masked way stems essentially from an anxiety that whatever one writes that addresses philosophical topics will be interpreted as another chapter in a tradition that has been exposed as, at its worst, a “joke” or foolish; that any philosophy of the future will inevitably be read as an episode in traditional philosophy. (This is, of course, overwhelmingly what has happened.) Another way of writing is necessary to prevent this, and Beyond Good and Evil appears to be an example of such a new style.   

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Cf. Pippin (b). Nietzsche offers no reason for characterizing Dionysus as without shame, but he presumably takes it as obvious that Dionysian, orgiastic revels alone make the point. “stärker, böser, tiefer.”

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But he goes farther and suggests that, in the current age, the philosopher (and he seems to mean the true philosopher of the future) is ashamed of “acts of love and extravagant generosity [Handlungen der Liebe und einer ausschweifenden Grossmuth]” that he has something “precious and vulnerable [etwas Kostbares und Verletzliches]” that he wants to hide even from his good friends (BGE ). This is because he knows that what he is hiding will very likely be badly misinterpreted, and indeed his own reception has not been focused on anything like Nietzsche’s acts of “love and generosity,” or anything “precious” and especially “vulnerable.” In fact, the crude misinterpretations will insure, whether he intends it or not, that “a mask is constantly growing around every profound spirit, thanks to the consistently false (which is to say shallow) interpretation of every word, every step, every sign of life he displays” (BGE ). This is itself a fascinating contemporary topic. Let us call it: the hidden shame of philosophers about their own past tradition, a kind of embarrassment about ancient thought and scholasticism prominent in Descartes and Hobbes at the beginning of modernity, and reaching a revolutionary point in Kant’s explicit suggestion that, in the face of the accomplishments of Newtonian physics especially, philosophers should be ashamed that centuries of speculation have produced no consensus, can point to no progress. It is an even more interesting issue in the current climate surrounding university education and the humanities especially. The suspicion that in such disciplines and even in philosophy, supposedly the most rigorous and ambitious of the humanistic disciplines, not only is nothing professionally useful known, but that nothing is known at all, has become a more and more acceptable charge, not least by some philosophers themselves. From the Nietzschean point of view we have just begun to sketch, this is all understandable and not at all bad; there can be, he writes, a subtlety (Feinheit) and something deep, profound (Tiefe) in shame (BGE ), but, in the contemporary case from Nietzsche’s point of view, ultimately the shame stems from a complete misunderstanding of the enterprise of philosophy itself. I suggest that in the book as a whole he is suggesting the deeper source of such shame is not that we have failed to accomplish philosophical progress, but that we ever thought that philosophy was such as to “progress” systematically. This is why his philosophical



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“Jeder tiefe Geist braucht eine Maske: mehr noch, um jeden tiefen Geist wächst fortwährend eine Maske, Dank der beständig falschen, nämlich f l a c h e n Auslegung jedes Wortes, jedes Schrittes, jedes Lebens-Zeichens, das er giebt.”

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heroes are Heraclitus, Thucydides, Montaigne, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, Goethe, and for a time, Wagner and Schopenhauer. But why will the philosopher of the future still be subject to such constant misinterpretation? Why will his “acts of love and generosity,” whatever he has that is “precious and vulnerable,” be so misinterpreted, and what exactly are these things anyway? I think the answer has something to do with the fact that Nietzsche, for all of the famous supposed doctrinal claims in epistemology, like perspectivism, or in metaphysics, like the eternal return or the will to power, is not a traditional doctrinal philosopher, but one much more interested in a completely different way of thinking about the central element in his philosophy, valuing – the main reason that what he is doing is still “philosophy” – and so a completely different way of coming to understand higher and lower values, and that all means that he wants to portray a “life properly valued” in a different way. I mean a way not first built on some rationally defensible standard of what ought to be valued, and then, therefore, accepted. Such a traditional account of the structure of value would simply already express a highest value (what can be rationally defended), and not help us understand the role of value in a life. That would already presuppose a specific value (rationality) and it being valuable. Of course, any such provisional summary already sounds like a doctrine that should be available to demands for argument, evidence and the like, and that is why these masks keep obscuring what is masked. As we have seen, in all of this, Nietzsche is always proceeding in heightened anxiety that nothing he writes will be understood properly, that what he offers in “love and generosity,” something “precious and vulnerable,” will be misinterpreted, and he gives us to believe, will be badly misinterpreted, most likely as the opposite of these things, as mean-spirited and uncharitable, dismissive, contemptuous. So our task in what follows lies in trying to observe his metastylistic principles and so to understand what lies behind the mask offered to an anonymous reading public, and that of course means trying to see rightly the mask itself. If we take a further statement of Nietzschean hermeneutics in BGE  to heart, one of the most extraordinary in his corpus, the task becomes exponentially more difficult, perhaps even impossible, because he goes so far as to suggest that behind any such masks we find only further masks, that “Every philosophy conceals a philosophy too: every opinion is also a hiding place; every word is also a mask [ Jede Philosophie verbirgt auch eine Philosophie; jede Meinung ist auch ein Versteck, jedes Wort auch eine Maske].” There is thus no final position

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available to the philosopher – underneath every explored cave, there is yet another cave. But first things first. How might a new philosophy of the future, committed to the “account-giving and writing” principles and haunted by the anxiety that Nietzsche has expressed, account for and evaluate its rival for a claim to wisdom about the highest or first things, the most important values - religion? We should note first that Beyond Good and Evil has an obvious structure. There are first three parts (Hauptstu¨cke) on varieties of the intellectual or theoretical, reflective life: philosophers, free spirits (or “intellectuals”), and the religious type. There is then a kind of caesura, the “Epigrams and Interludes (Spru¨che und Zwischenspiele), and then five parts dealing with practical life, the life of action: a natural history of morals, the life of the scholar, especially the scientist (viewed as a way of life), virtues, peoples and fatherlands, or politics, and the nature of nobility. It is not clear if this structure is supposed to imply that the active life depends on what is settled about value in a more theoretical life, that it depends on being theoretically convinced that one way of life is more valuable than another. But that is unlikely. Nietzsche makes clear that he thinks there is no way to isolate the theoretical life from the practical; any theoretical enterprise already reflects a practical commitment, and any practical commitment is reflective, has an intellectual conscience. Still, the structure must reflect some sort of real, not completely illusory, hierarchy and dependence. After all, Nietzsche led a reflective, not an active, life. In the first three parts, most of the topics addressed have to do with why such lives are valuable to those committed to them, and the assumptions about value, especially about “the highest values,” from which such commitments descend. The commitments of traditional philosophers are exposed as “prejudices,” commitments assumed without reflection, with a lack of sufficient self-consciousness about why the values are valued (especially the value of truth). (It is not clear what for Nietzsche would entitle one to any such commitment to value, if anything, if this, entitlement, is even the right question.) In the free spirits part, free spirits, as precursors and, to some extent, avatars of the philosophers of the future are, if Nietzsche finds something promising in them, named – the Abbé Galiani, Diderot, Voltaire, Aristophanes, Petronius, Lessing, Machiavelli – and the qualities of the true free spirits (the kind of free spirit the philosopher of the future will be, even though a philosopher is also 

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See Pippin ().

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“something more, higher, greater, and fundamentally different” than a free spirit) are distinguished from merely apparent free spirits or intellectuals, the “libre-penseurs, liberi pensatori, Freidenker” (BGE ). That the philosophers of the future will be more recognizably like the free spirits than dogmatic philosophers or doctrinal philosophers (does Diderot have a “doctrine”?) seems to be part of the point of this aphorism. And then Nietzsche turns to what is, for most people, the source of their most basic commitments or values, religion. If we keep in mind what has been highlighted, we are somewhat prepared for the initial strangeness of the third part of Beyond Good and Evil, “The Religious Essence [Das religiöse Wesen].” Such a title is puzzling because the idea of an “essence,” and with it the idea of necessity, or the necessary properties that it requires, does not seem a very Nietzschean notion. The very capable English translator for the Cambridge University Press version of the book, Judith Norman, translates the title as, “The Religious Character,” at once giving a psychological character to the inquiry (itself not at all inappropriate, especially given that Nietzsche says in BGE  that he calls the “religious neurosis” the “religious essence,” Wesen) and that title suggests rightly a logically much looser set of requirements for identifying a character. But Nietzsche’s title still seems to express some sort of irony that is lost if we do not, yet again, slow down and wonder why he does not simply say that he wants to understand why people are religious, which is certainly also an interest of his and prominent in the part. (It is unlikely that he thinks there is a religiosity in common between ancient Greek religion and Protestant Christianity, for example. Or even between the Hebrew and Christian bible.) Several of the aphorisms present religiosity in the “naturalistic” fashion familiar to readers of Nietzsche’s other texts. That is, the dependence of any concrete religiosity on such things as geography, climate, history, and so forth is presupposed. Early Christianity, viewed as a form of existence rather than just a set of beliefs, was not the “simple, rude, peon’s faith [treuherzige und bärbeissige Untertanen-Glaube]” of Luther or Cromwell or any other northern barbarian version, and was closer to Pascal’s agonized appreciation of the suffering and sacrifice required by Christianity, its “protracted suicide of reason [Selbstmorde der Vernunft],” its “self-derision [Selbst-Verhöhnung]” and “self-mutilation [Selbst-Vertstu¨mmelung]” (BGE ). With the exception of the Celts, the Northern European races have little talent for religiosity (BGE ). Ancient Greek religion is distinguished by its gratitude (Dankbarkeit); it was only when such gratitude was overgrown with fear that Christianity

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was on the horizon (BGE ). And it is useful to pause and note that this aspect, gratitude, is the characteristic of religiosity that Nietzsche is not only interested in, but uses in his evaluation of religion, and even of his own apparent religiosity (Nietzsche also mentions his own Dankbarkeit at the beginning of Ecce Homo). I mean by his own “religiosity” that it cannot be incidental to our topic that he calls himself “the last disciple and initiate of the god Dionysus [der letzter Ju¨nger und Eingeweihte des Gottes Dionysus]” (BGE ; see Pippin ; Strauss ), nor irrelevant that he mocks his modern readers’ suspicion of religiosity in general: “I have been told that you do not like believing in God and gods these days [den ihr glaubt heute ungern, wie man mir verrathen hat, an Gott und Götter]” and he writes that he will have to take “frankness [Freimu¨tigkeit]” farther in his religious allegiance and his divergence to shock them out of this complacency. This, the positive character of religion we will return to later, but Nietzsche, in his own voice, explains what he means by his own religion of gratitude in a familiar way in BGE . He wants to affirm an ideal other than the pessimism in Christianity, Schopenhauer, and Buddhism, “the ideal of the most high-spirited, vital, world-affirming individual, who has learned not just to go along with what was and what is, but who wants it again just as it was through all eternity.” But this affirmation of Zarathustra’s eternal return of the same is given a fascinating twist by Nietzsche’s invocation of the theater, that such a person affirms not just “the play [Stu¨ck]” he is in and not just his “performance [Schauspiel]” in it, but affirms “da capo,” from the beginning, in order that, he writes (slowing everything down again), he will affirm all this “to the one who needs precisely [nötig hat] this performance – and makes it necessary: because again and again he needs himself – and makes himself necessary. – What? And that wouldn’t be – circulus vitiosus deus?” (BGE ). 





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In Ecce Homo, where he calls Beyond Good and Evil “critique of modernity,” and emphasizes its negative task, he uses such religious imagery, and in a way that indicates the book is not wholly “beyond the good-evil” distinction, but, as with all moral opposition, Nietzsche wishes to complicate their relationship. He writes: “Theologically speaking – and listen carefully because I do not speak like a theologian very often – it was God himself who assumed the form of a serpent and lay under the tree of knowledge at the end of his day’s work: this is how he recuperated from being God . . . He had made everything too nice . . . the devil is just God’s leisure every seventh day” (EH “Books” BGE:). “das Ideal des u¨bermu¨thigsten lebendigsten und weltbejahndsten Menschen, der sich nicht nur mit dem, was war und ist, abgefunden und vertragen gelernt hat, sondern es, so wie es war und ist, wieder haben will, in alle Ewigkeit hinaus.” “und nicht nur zu einem Schauspiele, sondern im Grunde zu Dem, der gerade dies Schauspiel nöthig hat – und nöthig macht: weil er immer wieder sich nöthig hat – und nöthig macht Wie? Und dies wäre nicht – circulus vitiosus deus?”

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This is the reanimation of the religion of gratitude for existence that Nietzsche had extolled in the Greeks, here affirmed, apparently in his own name. This curious logic though – he affirms everything to himself, because he needs himself and makes himself necessary, is far from clear. The eternal return image is circular itself. If everything that is happening now has happened before and will happen again in just this way, then whether I now appear to affirm this repetition or not is irrelevant; it has already happened or not, already will happen or not. But in something like his own religiosity, Nietzsche is clearly affirming the possible “performance” of the affirmation; he must make himself necessary, affirm (or even “perform the affirmation”) of what will happen anyway because in doing so he manages to affirm himself to himself, express to himself a gratitude for existence that would not be his if the doctrine were just a sideways-on expression of a metaphysical claim. Its performative aspect is everything. The great mystery of course is how to come to be in a position where one wants to make such an affirmation, even if primarily performative. It appears that one must already be in such a state of reconciliation to be able to affirm it. The affirming, it would appear, must affirm something taken to be affirmable. It cannot be made affirmable by affirming it, or what is affirmed and what is not would be wholly arbitrary. Nietzsche chooses not to work any of this out here and is happy enough to leave us with this image of gratitude, and its suggestion of God as a causa sui, as an image of our own self-affirmation (as if we affirm the affirmability), and so a vicious circle. It is as typical of anything else in his writing of what sort of philosophy the philosopher of the future will express. (That is, this reading may not be correct, but a good hermeneutical principle should be: go no further in Beyond Good and Evil until this formulation is understood or least probed with some seriousness.) He goes on, making several individual points. There is nothing in modern Christianity adequate for understanding the grandeur of the Hebrew bible; putting it together in one book with the New Testament is a “sin against the spirit” that literary Europe has on its conscience (BGE ). Modern philosophy is anti-Christian but not anti-religious. Likewise, Nietzsche notes that, in the modern world, the religious instinct (der religiöse Instinkt) is growing but it rejects any theistic gratification (BGE ). (These last two claims are not much explained.) But there are two general characterizations that raise the deepest question. First, Nietzsche insists that the reason religion is so interesting for the philosopher, presumably the philosopher of the future, lies in its central paradox, self-sacrifice, or the saint – especially the phenomenon of

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momentary conversion. How could a base soul, in one instant of transformation, become and live out life as redeemed, saved, virtuous, and so on. Second, he has a number of things to say about in what way and why religion has not been well understood, and, in laying this out, he also notes several positive features of religion and the religious life, even while he concludes “The Religious Essence” part on a thunderously polemical note. The paradox of the saint or radical conversion (phenomena of interest, he notes, because they manifest a power, ultimately the will to power, “a strength and pleasure in domination” that gave the powerful of the world “a new fear” [BGE ]) is addressed in a way consistent with what he had said was one of, if not the, main feature of the philosopher of the future – his avoiding any commitment to strictly bipolar dualisms, and his tolerance both for gradations and even the mutual dependence of what appear to be pairs of opposites. That is, such phenomena look paradoxical because psychology up to now “had put itself under the dominance of morality, because it actually believed in opposing moral values, and saw, read, and interpreted these opposites into texts and into facts.” The psychological logic Nietzsche is referring to here, where something that appears to be the opposite of a given virtue, or state of mind, or principle is actually in the service of, inseparable from, its supposed opposite, is familiar in many contexts in Nietzsche and is one of his most important proto-Freudian contributions. Pity for others is actually a way of asserting superiority and exercising dominance over others, not the selfless concern it appears to be; humility is actually the expression of great pride; other-regarding virtues in the morality tradition are really self-regarding; and so forth. In this case, self-sacrifice, or any form of self-denial, is actually that “strength and pleasure in domination” noted earlier, and so what appears to be a paradoxical switch from self-satisfaction to self-denial is actually a more subtle form of self-satisfaction. In the period of morality, the paradoxical pleasure in sacrificing the strongest human instincts to their god can be understood by seeing the “joy of this particular festival” that “shines in the cruel eyes of the ascetic” (BGE ). (This aphorism concludes with the most puzzling paradox of all in “the great ladder of religious cruelty”: “to sacrifice God for nothingness – that paradoxical mystery of the final cruelty has been reserved for the race that is now approaching; by now we 



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“weil sie sich unter die Herrschaft der Moral gestellt hatte, weil sie an die moralischen WerthGegensätze selbst glaubte, und diese Gegensätze in den Text und Thatbestand hineinsah, hineinlas, hineindeutete.” “diese Festfreude glänzt im grausamen Blicke des Asketen, des begeisterten “Wider-Natu¨rlichen.”

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all know something about this.” That is, Nietzsche seems to promise that we can understand this paradox in the same way as that of the saint, and that would mean that “God” and “nothingness” are only apparent opposites, are actually not opposed, and so the “sacrifice” is something other than a sacrifice, although he simply leaves us hanging with that last ironic phrase, as if we all now understand how that could be. And leaving us hanging like this, often with a question or a strange address to the reader, is as effective a way of slowing our reading down as any other.) Finally, it is in his comments about misunderstanding religion, and in his attempts to correct that misunderstanding and reveal the positive aspects of religion, that we can see most clearly what he had meant in BGE  about the “delicate matters [zarter Art]” that would invite misinterpretation, that require some sort of mask. Some of those positive aspects deal with religion’s usefulness, especially its political usefulness, primarily for the philosopher, who, we are told, will make use of religion for “breeding and education work [Zuchtungs-und Erziehungswerke]” (BGE ). But, this, as the lawyers say, “assumes facts not in evidence”; that any philosophers anywhere or at any time were ever in any position to function like the philosopher kings of Plato’s Republic, to which this is obviously a reference, or that any could ever plausibly be in any imaginable future. Plato’s philosopher-kings may have had to know “the marriage number,” exactly the right time to “breed” new citizens, but this just builds implausibility on outlandish implausibility, something not denied by Socrates. Nietzsche’s irony is perhaps suggested by the conditional of sorts that begins the aphorism: “The philosopher as we understand him [and the implication of his emphasis seems to be only as we understand him], we free spirits - as the man with the most overall comprehensive responsibility, whose conscience bears the weight of the overall development of humanity.” But a philosopher is not a literal or political ruler, and there is no suggestion about philosopher kings in Nietzsche. So, understood in this way, the philosopher could only be a teacher of some sort, not a literal “breeder.” And education is mostly the emphasis for the 

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“Fu¨r das Nichts Gott opfern – dieses paradoxe Mysterium der letzten Grausamkeit blieb dem Geschlechte, welches jetzt eben herauf kommt, aufgespart: wir Alle kennen schon etwas davon.” This way of formulating the issue should bear on the meaning of the famous claim that “God is dead” made by der tolle Mensch in GS; that is, that God’s death is really our sacrifice of him for the sake of the “the nothing.” The literary dimensions of the latter announcement are as important as the so-called doctrine about the death of God. See Pippin . “Der Philosoph, wie wir ihn verstehen, wir freien Geister – , als der Mensch der umfänglichsten Verantwortlichkeit, der das Gewissen fu¨r die Gesammt-Entwicklung des Menschen hat.”

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rest of the aphorism, suggesting that the breeding in question is not literal, but generative in a more pedagogical sense (and in that sense a kind of rule). And religion’s positive role in BGE  is couched in these terms, as ennobling, elevating, reconciling, sanctifying, and justifying. In this sense asceticism and Puritanism are said to be “almost indispensable means” of such ennobling, and he writes that “there is nothing more venerable [ehrwu¨rdig]” about Christianity than its ability to situate “even the lowliest” in a “higher order of things.” However, yet another means of confounding the reader involves somehow combining such laudation with their contraries and asking the reader to work to make the pairing intelligible. For, in the closing aphorism of the third part, BGE , Nietzsche writes or rather suggests that all of these benefits from religion, even the actual historical religions named, Puritanism, Christianity, Buddhism, cannot justify ascribing such benefits to religion, even though Nietzsche just did ascribe them, all primarily because all religions have always insisted on being sovereign, rejected any rule by philosophy. So, in speaking of the “invaluable service” religions have provided, while he will say “who is so richly endowed with gratitude as not to grow poor in the face of everything that, for instance, the ‘spiritual men’ of Christianity have done for Europe so far,” he also closes the part on religion with his most polemical accusations yet. Christianity is responsible for the inversion of values (elevating the low and reducing the high), the deterioration of the human race, inverting love of the earth into hatred of the earth; it has been dominated by the “will to turn humanity into a sublime monstrosity [Missgeburt],” finally creating “a stunted, almost ridiculous type [eine verkleinerte, fast lächerliche Art], a herd animal . . . sickly . . . mediocre . . . the European of today.” Of course, it is logically possible that religion could simply be understood to be both, both pedagogically valuable and yet also responsible for the “deterioration of the human race.” But it is baffling to think through concretely how this could be anything other than a mere logical possibility, and such a possibility faces an even more difficult complication. In BGE , as noted, Nietzsche has switched gears and now claims that all of these positive features are possible only if religion does not claim to be “sovereign [souverän],” and accepts its secondary role in “breeding and education,” does not insist, apparently, on setting itself the goals of education. But, as  

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“wer ist reich genug an Dankbarkeit, um nicht vor alle dem arm zu werden, was zum Beispiel die „geistlichen Menschen” des Christenthums bisher fu¨r Europa gethan haben!” “an der Verschlechterung der europäischen Rasse.”

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we saw, he has insisted that all religions that have ever existed have been sovereign, and, rather than elevate, have done nothing of what he just praised religions for doing, and instead have kept humans on a lower level. It is after this claim (about universal historical “sovereignty”) that the polemic heats up and is unremittingly hostile. There is no way to make the passages as written consistent, and it would be fatuous and sophomoric to note that sometimes Nietzsche was just inconsistent or he didn’t care about consistency. The suspicion grows that one of those approaches is a mask, a grimace or disguise. And, at first glance, it is the polemic that appears to be what the preface called “monstrous and terrifying” disguises. In general, then, it is his insistence on the “delicacy” of his account of religion, an account I think he considers an “act of love and generosity,” a genuine attempt to understand religion from both the inside, as the “religious men [homines religiosi]” experience themselves, and from outside, in terms of its effects, that makes his writing so “vulnerable” to the “masks” of misinterpretation growing inevitably around it. Consider just how “delicate” the account is, if we read slowly. For we noticed that the “condition” of sorts that qualifies his praise of religion’s usefulness is that the philosopher will make use of religion, but the philosopher “as we understand him, we free spirits.” Why introduce that characterization? Well, in aphorism BGE , Nietzsche returns to the issue and says, For free spirits, for the “pious men of knowledge” – the pia fraus [pious fraud] offends taste (offends their “piety”) more than the impia fraus [impious fraud]. This explains their profound failure to understand the church, which is typical of “free spirits” – as their un-freedom.

We have already seen that in the “Free Spirits” part, Nietzsche appears to distinguish between the free spirit as he, or “we,” understand him, and the Freidenker, as that type is usually understood. (This is in BGE , which concludes with a staggering, tour de force, thirty-line sentence describing in rich, dense, figurative language what sort of free spirit he means.) That appears to be in force in this extraordinarily complicated aphorism. Let us assume that Nietzsche means the conventional free spirits, the ones he wished to distinguish himself (and the free spirit element of the  

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The only thing more fatuous would be the claim that the text, predictably, unavoidably, like all texts, deconstructs itself. “Dem freien Geiste, dem „Frommen der Erkenntniss – geht die pia fraus noch mehr wider den Geschmack (wider seine ‘Frömmigkeit’) als die impia fraus. Daher sein tiefer Unverstand gegen die Kirche, wie er zum Typus „freier Geist gehört, – als seine Unfreiheit.”

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 . 

philosophers of the future) from in BGE . His mentioning their “piety” certainly suggests that. This is further indicated by the limitation of the free spirits – that they fail to understand the church because of their “unfreedom.” These free spirits are offended by “pious frauds,” supposedly something like religious hypocrites, much more than they are by secular, impious frauds, run-of-the-mill hypocrites perhaps. The clear implication is: this is a limitation. The faint suggestion, and it is quite faint, is that these critics of religion do not appreciate how necessary religion, with all its selfdeceit and fraudulence, is, perhaps how important a certain sort of fraudulence is in human life. (And not just for the sake of order or docility, but for the ennobling function stressed in the first half of BGE .) This would further support the claim that the polemical excesses in BGE  are a performance of sorts and, in that sense a mask, an enactment of a crude rejection of the significance of religion that could perhaps have as its goal such a thorough alienation of the conventionally religious that they will dismiss the Nietzschean critique, and so their religion can continue to play whatever positive role Nietzsche really wants it to play. I do not mean that Nietzsche does not believe that religion in general, and Christianity in particular, have been harmful, but one way of making the inconsistency of BGE  comprehensible is to see the heated rhetoric of the last half as a “Fratze,” a grimace, a mask, which has as its end preserving the possibility of the beneficial effects of religion. (None of the “positive” characterizations would look positive to a believer. They have nothing to do with redemption, forgiveness, salvation, etc., but on the value of religion in a collective Bildung.) The last thing Nietzsche wants, under this reading, is for everyone to be convinced by his polemic and give up religion. Finally, that this is the right way to read these passages is further suggested by a long aphorism, BGE , in which he both notes and clearly laments what he claims is the true cause of the decline of religiosity. And has anyone noticed that, consequently, it is the modern, noisy, timeconsuming, self-satisfied, stupidly proud industriousness which, more than anything else, gives people an education and preparation in “un-belief”?

All of these features of modern life are objects of sarcasm throughout the passage, which could have been written about the indifference and lassitude of “German Protestants” by a German Kierkegaard. And again Nietzsche’s account of the state of religiosity and the lamentable character 

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“Und dass folglich die moderne, lärmende, Zeit-auskaufende, auf sich stolze, dumm-stolze Arbeitsamkeit, mehr als alles Übrige, gerade zum ‘Unglauben’ erzieht und vorbereitet?”

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of that state is addressed much more by this sarcasm, irony, and staged indignation, rather than by any empirical or directly psychological account. The one type who is possibly able to approach religion with the necessary “reverential seriousness [ehrfurchtsvollen Ernste],” the scholar, is mocked for his air of “superior, almost gracious amusement [zu einer u¨berlegenen, beinahe gu¨ltigen Heiterkeit],” and again, typically, as we approach the end of the paragraph, the rhetoric heats up dramatically, and Nietzsche mocks the presumed superiority of the nonreligious as unbearably pretentious, calling such a scholar a “presumptuous little dwarf and rabble-man, a brisk and busy brain and handiworker of ‘ideas’, of ‘modern ideas’.” Where does all of this leave the reader? Perhaps on the verge of understanding something of Nietzsche’s own religiosity, a reverential orientation in life that, typically, cannot be captured in a discursive account, but only in an image like the affirmation of the eternal return or in an aphorism like BGE , which itself can also stand as a fine example of Nietzschean hermeneutics: Jesus said to his Jews: “The law was for servants, – love God as I do, as his son! Why should we care about morals, we sons of God?”

 

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“er, der kleine anmaassliche Zwerg und Pöbelmann, der fleissig-flinke Kopf- und Handarbeiter der ‘Ideen’, der ‘modernen Ideen’!” “Jesus sagte zu seinen Juden: „das Gesetz war fu¨r Knechte, – liebt Gott, wie ich ihn liebe, als sein Sohn! Was geht uns Söhne Gottes die Moral an!”

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 

The Method of Philosophy

 

Nietzsche’s Affective Perspectivism as a Philosophical Methodology Mark Alfano

Nietzsche’s perspectivism is a philosophical methodology for achieving various epistemic goods. Furthermore, perspectives as he conceives them relate primarily to agents’ motivational and evaluative sets. In order to shed light on this methodology, I approach it from two angles. First, I employ the digital humanities methodology pioneered recently in my recent and ongoing research (Alfano a, a, b, ) to further elucidate the concept of perspectivism. Second, I explore some of the rhetorical tropes that Nietzsche uses to reorient his audience’s perspective. These include engaging the audience’s emotions, apostrophic address to the reader, and what I’ve elsewhere called ‘Nietzschean summoning.’ Each of these methods tugs at the affects and values of the audience, positioning them to notice, find salient, and be disposed to act in relation to certain (aspects of ) things while ignoring, finding less salient, and being disposed to neglect (aspects of ) other things. This suggests that, for Nietzsche, perspectivism may have less to do with cognition than the painterly metaphor of a visual perspective suggests. Instead, I’ll argue that, for Nietzsche, perspectivism enables one to paint a polychromatic portrait of the full range of evaluative properties in the world and oneself. Here is the plan for this chapter. In Section ., I review the literature on perspectivism. Next, in Section . I explore all of Nietzsche’s engagement with the notion of perspective using a comprehensive digital humanities methodology. In Section . I explore the rhetorical tropes Nietzsche uses to orient or reorient his audience’s affective or emotional perspective. Finally, in Section . I employ close-reading to articulate a new account of Nietzsche’s philosophical methodology.

. Literature Review It’s uncontroversial to say that, for Nietzsche, an agent’s perspective makes a difference to what they know, that certain perspectives are 

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better – at least for some purposes – than others, and that cycling through multiple perspectives rather than getting stuck in a single perspective is valuable (Anderson ). Further questions immediately arise, however. What constitutes a perspective? The painterly metaphor suggests that a perspective is a perceptual position from which a thing is viewed or engaged. Nietzsche sometimes leans on this visual metaphor. For instance, in BGE  he questions whether traditional oppositions that have earned the metaphysicians’ seal of approval might not only be foreground appraisals. Perhaps they are merely provisional perspectives, perhaps they are not even viewed head-on; perhaps they are even viewed from below, like a frog-perspective, to borrow an expression that painters will recognize.

Note, however, that, even when using the painterly metaphor contrasting the frog-perspective with the bird’s-eye view, Nietzsche associates perspectives with appraisals. This suggests that the kinds of perspectives he has in mind involve emotional or value-based attitudes rather than or in addition to perceptions. Given his consistent association of height metaphors with the upward-looking emotions of admiration and resentment and the downward-looking emotions of contempt and disgust (Alfano a), the implication here seems to be that a philosopher who inhabited the frog-perspective would peer up at those above him. Depending on whether his upward-directed emotion was admiration or resentment, he would then be attuned to either the nobility or the lack of desert in the person to whom he attends. By contrast, a philosopher who inhabited the bird’seye view would look down (and perhaps also down his nose) at those beneath him, filled with pride, contempt, and perhaps an uneasy sense of pity. Beyond the perceptual and emotional interpretations of perspectivism, commentators have argued for metaphysical, semantic, and epistemic interpretations. Metaphysical interpretations of perspectivism are the most extreme, holding that truth itself is relative to someone’s perspective. For example, Danto argues that Nietzsche accepts an interest-relative account of truth according to which “p is true and q is false if p works and q does

 

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The following translations are used: A (); BGE (); BT (); EH (); GM (); GS (); HH (); TI (). The painterly metaphor also crops up, and should be given a similar interpretation, in GS  and GS .

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not” (: ). While disagreeing about what exactly constitutes a perspective, Nehamas () and Schacht () also hold that truth is relative to perspective. These interpretations don’t help us to make sense of many of Nietzsche’s pronouncements about perspectives and perspectivism, nor do they explain how perspectivism constitutes a philosophical methodology. By contrast, Janaway () offers a semantic interpretation of perspectivism. In his view, Nietzsche aims to induce affects and evaluations in his audience, thereby shaping their perspectives. Depending on one’s perspective, one will lend different meanings to concepts such as agency, motivation, and morality. If this is right, then one must embody the right evaluative or emotional set in order to possess adequate philosophical concepts. Doing philosophy well – perhaps doing it at all – would then depend on inhabiting the right perspectives. A different semantic interpretation is offered by Katsafanas (: ), who argues that two agents approaching the same phenomenon will have different experiences to the extent that their conceptual sets differ. If this is right, and if the concepts someone possesses are contingent and subject to change, then different people at the same time, as well as the same person at different times, will have different experiences of the same object. The most popular interpretations of perspectivism are epistemic. The basic idea in each of these interpretations is that taking different and multiple perspectives on something is important or even essential to acquiring knowledge about it. For example, Clark () argues that Nietzsche’s perspectivism amounts to a sort of anti-foundationalism about justification. Leiter () argues that one’s interests partly determine which inquiries one engages in and how the success of those inquiries. As Gemes () points out, though, this idea could be given a superficial gloss: it’s not very controversial to say that people know more about (because they investigate further into) the things they care about than they know about the things they don’t care about. A much stronger gloss would say that a person’s interests, affects, or values are somehow (partly) constitutive of their knowledge or other epistemic states. Establishing this conclusion, though, takes more argument than Leiter () offers. In a later paper, Leiter () close-reads GS  and GM III: in order to argue that certain features of the world become possible objects of cognition only via emotional or affective engagement. While this argument still does not establish that emotions or affects are partly constitutive of knowledge, it does – if sound – show that they are necessary for knowledge in some cases.

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Other researchers offer alternative epistemic interpretations of perspectivism. Jensen (: ) argues that perspectivism is the doctrine that objectivity is a matter of “intersubjective agreement about judgments from within a specific type” of person. On this view, a type of person is characterized by the set of values and affects that members of the type tend to embody, and “the distortive character of the affective component of judgments is neutralized among those judges who share a similar set of affects.” In a later book, Jensen (: ) argues that, at least in HL, Nietzsche’s perspectivism is grounded in a kind of epistemic justice, which is delivered by a historian with “qualities of character that would enable him to stand above that which he judges. Those qualities include courage, honesty, resolution, and self-control.” By contrast, Berry (: ) argues that perspectivism does not so much help one to acquire knowledge as to avoid error. On this view, taking multiple perspectives on the same thing leads, rightly and to some extent systematically, to suspension of judgment. Nietzsche’s epistemology is not easily shoehorned into contemporary taxonomies. Whereas epistemology of the last half-century has tended to focus on the question under what conditions a subject knows a proposition, Nietzsche’s epistemology is dynamic, focusing on the activity of inquiry and epistemic virtues such as curiosity, intellectual courage, and honesty with oneself (Alfano a). The success of such inquiries depends, I argue, on the cognitive agent’s ability to cycle through a variety of emotional perspectives in order to detect and appreciate the complex evaluative structure of the object of inquiry (Alfano a, b, a, b, ). In addition, virtues are drives that calibrate with both the rest of the agent’s psychological set and the evaluations of the agent’s community. Since drives always aim at overcoming some resistance, the ones that motivate inquiry aim at overcoming epistemic resistance. Such resistance is offered both by the fundamental difficulty of answering certain complex questions and by human squeamishness in the face of terrible truths about our own lives and minds. In the context of philosophical practice, this means that approaching certain philosophical questions requires the adoption of a variety of evaluative perspectives. Along similar lines, Gemes () argues that Nietzsche’s perspectivism is best understood in the context of his drive psychology. On this view, each drive has its own perspective on the world and seeks expression of that perspective. Since expressing one drive may be inconsistent with simultaneously 

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For contemporary arguments in the same vein, see Alfano (b) and Smith ().

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expressing another drive, the agent must engage in a balancing act, allowing as many drives as possible to be expressed without one’s expression undermining the expression of the others. In this chapter, I offer a new interpretation of perspectivism as a philosophical methodology. As will become clear, my interpretation hews primarily to an epistemic line, although I also have sympathy for some aspects of the semantic interpretation.

. A Digital Humanities Approach Like many of Nietzsche’s striking words and phrases, ‘perspectivism’ (‘Perspektivismus’) has received a great deal of attention in the secondary literature. However, Nietzsche uses the term only once in his published and authorized manuscripts (GS ). In the relevant part of GS , Nietzsche introduces the “herd perspective,” which is defined by the needs and interests of the herd. He then says: This is what I consider to be true phenomenalism and perspectivism: that due to the nature of animal consciousness, the world of which we can become conscious is merely a surface- and sign-world, a world turned into generalities and thereby debased to its lowest common denominator, – that everything which enters consciousness thereby becomes shallow, thin, relatively stupid, general, a sign, a herd-mark; that all becoming conscious involves a vast and thorough corruption, falsification, superficialization, and generalization.

According to GS , then, each perspective makes certain things salient, makes others disappear, and biases or distorts things to a certain extent. While tantalizing, this single passage and the three fragments from  to  radically underdetermine what Nietzsche could have meant by ‘perspectivism.’ However, if we expand our focus to all uses of ‘Perspective,’ ‘Perspektive,’ and their cognates, we find thirty-nine passages in his published and authorized works. This is still not enough to determine a unique bestreading, but it’s much better than the more common practice of building a whole theory based solely on GS . In this section, I employ my digital humanities method to advance the discussion. The guiding insight behind this methodology is that the



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Berry (: ) also remarks on the relative paucity of passages about perspectivism.

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meaning of a term is adumbrated in the context of its use. I therefore canvass all of Nietzsche’s published and authorized texts for uses of ‘Perspektive,’ ‘Perspective,’ and their cognates, then annotate each of these passages for the presence or absence of each of the other main concepts in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Analyzing the resulting annotated data set reveals the strongest inferential and associative connections between perspectivism and the other concepts that make up Nietzsche’s philosophical methodology (Figure ). A few remarks about Figure  are in order. First, the strongest connection of perspective is to life, followed by various moral-psychological concepts such as value, instinct, fear, and emotion. This supports Gemes’s () contention that perspectivism needs to be understood in psychobiological terms. Second, while the strongest connection is to life (twentyfour co-occurrences), there are other strong connections: value (nineteen co-occurrences), instinct (eleven co-occurrences), fear (ten co-occurrences), and emotion (ten co-occurences). Third, considering the whole semantic network, when Nietzsche talks about perspectives, he refers both generically to value, virtue, and emotion, and to a wide variety of discrete values, virtues (honesty, curiosity, integrity, nobility, chastity, justice), and emotions (contempt, disgust, doubt, fear, guilt, anger, resentment, shame, surprise, admiration, sadness, joy). This establishes that Nietzsche associates perspectives with affects, emotions, values, and the virtues that govern them, but it doesn’t make clear what the association is. In the next two sections, I close-read relevant passages to elaborate and elucidate these connections. Section . focuses



 



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Thus, this method complements approaches that attempt to elucidate the meaning of a term by tracing it back historically to the texts the author was reading and thinking about. In the case of Nietzsche and ‘perspective,’ we have good reason to think that he was influenced by Teichmu¨ller’s Real and Apparent World. Riccardi () attributes a relational ontology to Nietzsche on the basis of this influence. Nietzsche switches from the Latinate to the Germanic spelling in the mid-s. The list of concepts was built up in three ways. First, I consulted my own previous work and ongoing research for keywords and central constructs. Second, I consulted the secondary literature (via searching on www.philpapers.org) for further keywords and central constructs. Finally, I shared the merged lists from steps one and two with several dozen experts in Nietzsche scholarship and moral psychology, whom I asked for additional constructs. Helpful suggestions were offered by Brian Leiter, Paul Katsafanas, Heather Battaly, Hanno Sauer, Jessica Berry, Andrew Higgins, Bradford Cokelet, Jesse Graham, and Neil Sinhababu. In this chapter, I do not engage with Nietzsche’s unauthorized manuscripts, his philosophical fragments, or is letters. It is of course reasonable to consult these sources for clarification, but much mischief has been done by relying on these rather than the published and authorized manuscripts.

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integrity joy WtP

surprise resentment

cruelty

solitude

vice

honesty

guilt

PoD

sadness laughter

conscience virtue

exemplar

revenge

fear

tragedy

nobility curiosity

courage

affect

doubt life

herd

comedy emotion

instinct

health

justice perspective

value responsibility

forgetting shame

disgust contempt

base humor

admiration

type

obligation

drive

chastity

trust anger

rank

Figure  The semantic network of ‘perspective’ in Nietzsche’s corpus. This network represents, using the ForceAtlas layout (Bastian, Heymann, & Jacomy ), the co-occurrence patterns of perspective and other central concepts in Nietzsche’s writings. Node size indicates weighted degree; the larger the node, the more frequently the associated term occurs with other mapped terms. Width of connection between nodes indicates weight; the thicker the edge connecting a pair of terms, the more frequently they co-occur. To make the figure more visually legible, thin edges with low weight have been filtered out. Node shape indicates modularity class, meaning that terms indicated by the same shape tend to co-occur with each other and not with nodes of a different shape. PoD, pathos of distances; WtP, will to power

on passages in which Nietzsche makes efforts to affect the perspective of his audience by modulating their affects, emotions, and virtues. Section . shifts from Nietzsche’s metaphilosophical method to his metaphilosophical aims, which I argue are epistemic.

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. Exploring Nietzsche’s Methodology through His Rhetoric What kinds of speech acts are common to and distinctive of philosophical discourse? A common contemporary answer to this question is that philosophers make assertions and arguments, draw conclusions, ask questions, and propose counter-examples. In so doing, they express mental states such as knowledge, belief, error, doubt, and skepticism. They do not express non-epistemic emotions by, for example, inducing disgust or contempt in their audience, issuing commands, or attempting seductions. I here explore this under-theorized aspect of Nietzsche’s metaphilosophy. He does engage in assertion, inference, questioning, and counter-exampling, but he also characterizes his own writings as a “schooling in contempt” (HH I P:). He tells his readers – sometimes explicitly, especially in his prefaces – what to do. He invites his audience to embody character traits that he regards as noble. Thus, he exemplifies a broader conception of philosophical methodology and discourse than the dominant contemporary paradigm takes for granted. In this section, I explore the three main ways in which Nietzsche supplements the methodological menu: engaging the audience’s emotions, apostrophic address to the reader, and what I’ve elsewhere called ‘Nietzschean summoning’ (Alfano ). The basic idea behind summoning is that, sometimes, ascriptions of psychological states and dispositions function as self-fulfilling prophecies. Someone embodies a virtue, vice, or attitude, but only because they’ve been labeled by someone else as embodying it (and accepted the label) or declared themselves to fit the description (and received uptake from their audience). In simple cases, this is done explicitly: “You are T.” “I am T.” Sometimes, however, it is less clear who is the target of the attribution. This is especially likely when the trait term is a coinage, such as a new eponymous virtue term. It’s also especially likely when the mode of reference is a plural pronoun (in Nietzsche’s case, often the first-person plural). When this happens and a trait is praised as a virtue, the audience is being invited to think of themselves as embodying the trait and feel pride (and a range of other emotions) about their virtue. In existing discussions of these kinds of feedback loops (e.g., Hacking ), the reactions of the targets of labeling are foregrounded. Moreover, when the targets of labeling realize that they are targets, their reactions tend to be negative; they either deny the applicability of the label or modify their behavior in an attempt to squirm out of its extension. Nietzsche realized that when the extension of a term is unclear, people sometimes modify their behavior in order to squirm into its extension.

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Hence, by praising a kind of person where it’s unclear who belongs to that kind, one can induce kind-relevant behavior and dispositions in one’s audience: praising people of type T summons Ts. Let’s review some examples of this phenomenon. First, in GS , Nietzsche argues that only by viewing ourselves as transfigured and perfected characters on a stage “can we get over certain lowly details in ourselves. Without this art we would be nothing but foreground, and would live entirely under the spell of that perspective which makes the nearest and most vulgar appear tremendously big and as reality itself.” In order to engage the feedback loops, a degree of provisional self-ignorance and self-deception is required, which modulates one’s affective and emotional attitude toward oneself. Next, in GS , Nietzsche argues that man “endowed himself with fictitious attributes” and “invented ever new tables of goods and for a time took them to be eternal and unconditioned – so that now this, now that human drive and condition occupied first place and was ennobled as a result.” While he labels these endowments and inventions “errors,” he also goes on to suggest that discounting them would amount to discounting “humanity, humaneness, and ‘human dignity’.” On a purely cynical reading of this passage, Nietzsche is just saying that there is no such thing as the virtue of humaneness. However, my contention is that he is instead pointing to a case of successful summoning. By praising our humaneness, we’ve made (some of ) ourselves humane: namely, those individuals who found the label attractive and close enough to their own drives that they came to express their own drives as the virtue of humaneness. As before, summoning engages the affects, emotions, and drives of its audience; it works through their evaluative and emotional perspectives. Next, in GS , Nietzsche contrasts the contemplative type with both the “so-called man of action” and the mere spectator. The contemplative type, he urges, possesses a creative power: It is we, the thinking-sensing ones, who really and continually make something that is not yet there: the whole perpetually growing world of valuations, colours, weights, perspectives, scales, affirmations, and negations. This poem that we have invented is constantly internalized, drilled, translated into flesh and reality . . . Whatever has value in the present world has it not in itself, according to its nature – nature is always value-less – but has rather been given, granted value, and we were the givers and granters.

As we will see, Nietzsche’s use of the first-person plural is a telltale sign that he is engaged in summoning. In this passage, Nietzsche claims that

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philosophers engage in summoning. By valuing, affirming, and negating, they “make something that is not yet there,” which is then “internalized, drilled, translated into flesh and reality.” At a rhetorical level, though, he is also inviting his readers to join him in being philosophers, to respond with a “yes, that’s me” when he says “we.” This is part of what it means to do philosophy – at least as Nietzsche conceives of philosophy. Next, consider GS , which bears the first-person plural title, “We who are homeless.” This passage begins with an example of summoning: “Among Europeans today there is no lack of those who have a right to call themselves homeless in a distinctive and honourable sense: it is to them in particular that I commend my secret wisdom and gaya scienza.” One can readily imagine a German reader in  puzzling over this sentence, thinking, “I’m European. Am I homeless in this honourable sense that would entitle me to secret wisdom and gay science?” Nietzsche goes on: “For their lot is hard; their hope uncertain; it is a feat to invent a form of comfort for them – but to what avail! We children of the future – how could we be at home in this today!” As before, Nietzsche switches from the third-person to the first-person plural in an ecstatic reverie of praise. The  German reader might well respond, “‘Children of the future’? That sounds like me! Tell me more!” Nietzsche delivers by praising the virtue of solitude: “We are unfavourably disposed towards all ideals that make one feel at home in this fragile, broken time of transition.” He then goes on to praise the courage of this homeless type (“we are delighted by all who love, as we do, danger, war, and adventure”), along with their curiosity (“we are too uninhibited, too malicious, too spoiled, also too well-informed, too ‘well-traveled’”). Nietzsche continues this incantation over the remaining sections of the book. In GS , he celebrates “We who are generous and rich in spirit.” In GS , he glories in his type’s pathos of distance (“how much fine joy, how much patience, how much graciousness even do we owe precisely to our contempt! Moreover, it makes us ‘God’s elect’: refined contempt is our taste and privilege, our art, our virtue”), and courage (“We fearless ones, however, we more spiritual men of this age, we know our advantage well enough to live without fear of this age precisely because we are more spiritual”). In GS , he celebrates the curiosity and solitude of his type (“In order to see our European morality for once as it looks from a distance, and to measure it up against other past or future moralities, one has to proceed like a wanderer who wants to know how high the towers in a town are: he leaves the town”), as well as its pathos of distance (“one has to rise, climb, or fly”) and courage (“That one wants to go

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precisely out there, up there, may be a slight rashness, a peculiar and unreasonable ‘you must’ – for we seekers of knowledge also have our idiosyncrasies”). In GS  he flatters his readers into thinking of themselves as a select, esoteric audience: One does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood. It is by no means necessarily an objection to a book when anyone finds it incomprehensible: perhaps that was part of the author’s intention – he didn’t want to be understood by just ‘anybody.’

Nobler spirits, he goes on to say, only “open the ears of those whose ears are related to ours.” In the next section, GS , Nietzsche praises his own eponymous type (“We who are new, nameless, hard to understand”) for its courage (“tougher, bolder”), curiosity (“whose soul thirsts to experience the whole range of previous values and aspirations, to sail around all the coasts of this ‘inland sea’ of ideals, anyone who wants to know from the adventures of his own experience how it feels to be the discoverer or conqueror of an ideal”), pathos of distance (“a spirit which has gone so far that the highest thing which the common people quite understandably accepts as its measure of value would signify danger, decay, debasement”), and sense of humor (our spirit “places itself next to all earthly seriousness heretofore, all forms of solemnity in gesture, word, tone, look, morality, and task as if it were their most incarnate and involuntary parody”). In this extended reverie (GS –), Nietzsche both tells us and shows us what it means to do philosophy in the way that he understands it. Philosophy is a matter of embodying a range of affective and evaluative perspectives that express the agent’s drives and virtues. It is also a matter of inducing similar affective and evaluative perspectives in (some of ) one’s audience, thereby summoning or seducing them to virtue as well. Moreover, the virtues that Nietzsche most celebrates – at least in his own type – are not the standards from Plato and Aristotle (wisdom, temperance, martial courage, justice), but include traits such as curiosity, pathos of distance, having a sense of humor, and (intellectual) courage. If we turn now to Beyond Good and Evil, we find another clear example of Nietzschean summoning in sections  through . Here, Nietzsche says: A new species of philosophers is coming up: I venture to baptize them with a name that is not free of danger. As I unriddle them, insofar as they allow themselves to be unriddled – for it belongs to their nature to want to remain riddles at some point – these philosophers of the future may have a right – it 

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  might also be a wrong – to be called attempters [Versucher]. This name itself is in the end a mere attempt [Versuch] and, if you will, a temptation [Versuchung]. (BGE )

Who are these new philosophers, these attempters? Nietzsche could, of course, just be making a prediction. I contend that, on the contrary, he is trying to summon the attempters from his readership. By praising them, he is (as he himself admits) attempting to tempt us to think of ourselves as the new philosophers, and thus to become the new philosophers. One reason to think that this is what’s going on is his bewildering use of pronouns and other markers of person (first, second, and third) in BGE . Nietzsche transitions from talking about the new philosophers in the third person (“they . . . will be [auch sie . . . werden] free, very free spirits”) to talking about them in the first-person plural (“that is the type of man we are, we free spirits [wir freien Geister]!”) to breathless apostrophic address (“you new philosophers [ihr neuen Philosophen]”). In this passage, Nietzsche invites his audience to think of themselves as new philosophers. Later, in BGE , a passage that repeatedly addresses its readers as “free spirits,” Nietzsche makes the same invitational use of the first-person plural: “We who have a different faith [from the modern democratic movement] where do we need to reach with our hopes? – Towards new philosophers.” What are these new philosophers like, what virtues do they embody? They have a special “conscience” informed by their dangerous curiosity. Once again, then, Nietzsche reveals both his conception of what philosophy is and how it should be practiced (at least by those who aim to philosophize in the same way that Nietzsche himself does). To be a philosopher of this sort is to embody a range of affective and evaluative perspectives that express an idiosyncratic list of drives and virtues. And, at least as practiced by Nietzsche, it is to find ways to summon and seduce one’s audience to do likewise. In The Antichrist, Nietzsche uses a similar approach. For instance, in A , he boasts, “We are Hyperboreans, – we are well aware how far off the beaten track we live.” He then characterizes these Hyperboreans in terms of their distinctive virtues, especially curiosity and courage. Later, in A , he says, “Nobody is free to become Christian . . . you have to be sick enough for it . . . We who are different, who have the courage for health and also for contempt, imagine how much we can contemn a religion that teaches a misunderstanding of the body!” Here again Nietzsche celebrates the courage and pathos of distance of his type, which he associates with the instincts and other drives distinctive of that type. Taken together, these passages demonstrate Nietzsche’s ongoing efforts to orient and reorient the perspective of his audience by engaging their

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emotions, addressing them apostrophically, and summoning a range of virtues in them. My contention is that these passages show us both what Nietzsche takes philosophizing to be and how he thinks it should be practiced. If this is right, then Nietzsche’s perspectivism is a psychological method for inducing affects, emotions, and evaluations. In the remainder of this chapter, I address the aim and purpose of this technique.

. Perspectivism’s Aim In this section, I argue that Nietzsche’s use of emotions, apostrophic address, and summoning serves an epistemic purpose, in that he thinks that certain evaluative and aretaic properties are difficult or even impossible to detect and appreciate without emotional engagement of the right sort. .. Once More, with Feeling The semantic analysis in Section . suggested that, for Nietzsche, perspectives are deeply enmeshed with affects, emotions, values, and virtues. Let’s review some of the passages that make this clear. First, in HH , Nietzsche argues that, because his perspective shows him undesirable cultural prospects, he might be able to steer the culture in a way that avoids those prospects. Next, in D , he compares ancient Greek with contemporary European perspectives (of feeling [des Gefu¨hles]) on male and female beauty. Later in the same book, in a section titled “Distant perspectives,” Nietzsche stages a dialogue in which one character asks, “But why this solitude?” The other character answers, “I am not at odds with anyone. But when I am alone I seem to see my friends in a clearer and fairer light than when I am with them . . . It seems I need a distant perspective if I am to think well of things.” If we move next to The Gay Science, we find Nietzsche arguing that “members of the knightly caste became accustomed to treating each other with exquisite courtesy” because they were “spurred by the good feeling of this perspective,” referring to the pathos of distance, which presents nearequals as affordances for overcoming while presenting those beneath one as contemptible. Later in the same work, in a passage cited already, Nietzsche claims, “It is we, the thinking-sensing ones [as opposed to the men of action], who really and continually make something that is not yet there: the whole perpetually growing world of valuations, colours, weights, perspectives, scales, affirmations, and negations” (GS ). Turning next to Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche argues that we can never give a rational ground for our synthetic a priori judgments, but that

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we hold onto them nevertheless because they belong to “the perspectival optics of life” (BGE ). Then, in BGE , he characterizes the shift from basing evaluations of actions on their consequences to basing evaluations on origins (motives) as a “reversal of perspective.” A couple of sections later, he declares that “life could not exist except on the basis of perspectival valuations and appearances” (BGE ). And, in BGE  he says that, after escaping from the state of nature, when “the structure of society seems on the whole to be established and secured against external dangers, it is this fear of the neighbor that again creates new perspectives of moral valuation” (BGE ). In this way, society shifts from valuing courage and cunning, which are useful during periods of insecurity and intergroup conflict, to condemning them as dangerous to internal cohesion. In the third essay of the Genealogy, Nietzsche makes several remarks about perspectives. He argues that “man’s ‘sinfulness’ is not a fact, but merely the interpretation of a fact, namely of physiological depression – the latter viewed in a religio-moral perspective that is no longer binding on us” (GM III:). In the next section, he again refers to the priestly religiomoral perspective. And, in GM III:, he contends that the ascetic ideal placed “all suffering under the perspective of guilt.” Finally, in TI “Skirmishes” , Nietzsche scolds his audience, saying “you misunderstand great human beings if you look at them from the pathetic perspective of public utility.” What all these passages have in common is the claim or presupposition that a perspective is – perhaps among other things – emotional and evaluative. The perspective someone inhabits leads them to see some things as good, right, noble, admirable, desirable, or enviable, while also leading them to see other things as bad, wrong, base, contemptible, disgusting, aversive, or pitiable. One’s perspective reveals and emphasizes (sometimes overemphasizes) some of the evaluative properties of the things in one’s ambit. The aim of philosophy as Nietzsche practices it is to induce the right perspectives: by engaging one’s audience’s emotions through apostrophic address and summoning, one reorients their perspectives. Where once they felt guilt or shame, now they feel pride; where once they felt admiration, now they feel contempt. ..

Dogmatism versus Multiple Perspectives

But the world is a complex place. Even admirable people have their contemptible foibles. Even pitiable people sometimes accomplish impressive feats. Inhabiting only one perspective is liable to make such

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complexity difficult or impossible to appreciate. This why Nietzsche opposes dogmatism, understood as commitment to a single perspective, to his own methodology. We see this opposition in multiple passages. For example, in BT “Attempt” , Nietzsche says that, behind the Christian dogmatic “way of thinking and evaluating” that recognizes only moral values he “always felt its hostility to life, a furious, vengeful enmity towards life itself; for all life rests on semblance, art, deception, prismatic effects, the necessity of perspectivism and error.” Next, in GS  Nietzsche contrasts the single evaluative perspective of monotheism, which makes adherents narrow-minded and dogmatic, with the multiple evaluative perspectives afforded by polytheism: “In polytheism the free-spiritedness and many-spiritedness of humanity received preliminary form – the power to create for ourselves our own new eyes and ever again new eyes that are ever more our own – so that for humans alone among the animals there are no eternal horizons and perspectives.” In GS , he accuses Schopenhauer of “remaining and staying stuck in precisely those Christian and ascetic moral perspectives in which one had renounced faith along with the faith in God.” Next, in GS , Nietzsche heaps scorn and disgust on the “Spencerian perspective,” which – if adopted as the “ultimate perspective” of humanity – would lead to the last man, who is “deserving of contempt, of annihilation!” In the very next section, Nietzsche declares that “today we are at least far away from the ridiculous immodesty of decreeing from our angle that perspectives are permitted only from this angle.” Next, in the preface to Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche contrasts Platonic and Christian dogmatism with his own philosophical identity as a good European and free spirit. On the one hand, “talking about [pure] spirit and the Good like Plato did meant standing truth on its head and disowning even perspectivism, which is the fundamental condition of all life.” On the other hand, free spirits of Nietzsche’s sort are willing to try out new perspectives – indeed, even to seek out new perspectives for their own sake. Finally, in A , he argues that Christianity embodies a “fundamental will to use only those ideas, symbols, and attitudes that have been proven by the practice of the priests, the instinctual rejection of any other practice, any other perspective on what is valuable or useful.” In these passages, Nietzsche reserves special scorn for perspectives that are liable to lead those who inhabit them to false and distorted evaluations. At the same time, though, he objects to getting stuck in any single perspective – even, presumably, a minimally distorting one. We can make sense of this if we understand perspectives as always presenting a partial

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view of evaluative properties and as prone to overemphasizing some evaluative properties at the expense of others. Since perspective-free inquiry is impossible (GM III:), Nietzsche recommends combating these unavoidable distortions by taking up different perspectives over time. If this is right, then the aim of perspectivism as a methodology is epistemic. It helps us see and appreciate facts and properties that we otherwise wouldn’t. .. Active Perspectivism as Getting Control of One’s Pro and Con But it’s not so easy. You can’t simply adopt an affective perspective. You can’t simply decide to feel contempt, anger, disgust, sadness, fear, joy, or surprise at something. Emotions are not voluntary in that way. Instead, they need to be induced and cultivated in more distal and indirect ways. This leads me to Nietzsche’s repeated injunctions to get control over one’s emotions. Nietzsche seems to have first articulated the method of getting control over one’s pro and con in , when he published Beyond Good and Evil and republished Human, All Too Human with new prefaces both for the main body of the book and for Assorted Opinions and Maxim. In HH I P:, we read: You shall get control over your For and Against and learn to display first one and then the other in accordance with your higher goal. You shall learn to grasp the sense of perspective in every value judgment – the displacement, distortion and merely apparent teleology of horizons and whatever else pertains to perspectivism; also the quantum of stupidity that resides in antitheses of values and the whole intellectual loss which every For, every Against costs us. You shall learn to grasp the necessary injustice in every For and Against, injustice as inseparable from life, life itself as conditioned by the sense of perspective and its injustice.

In this neglected passage, Nietzsche covers many of the themes we’ve seen. He argues that evaluative perspectives are unavoidable, and that each one brings with it “displacement, distortion, and merely apparent teleology.” He responds to these distortions neither by trying to eliminate perspective altogether nor by seeking a perspective evacuated of value and emotion, but by getting control one’s emotions and learning “to display first one and then the other.” 

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Later, in HH II P:, Nietzsche claims that: There is a will to the tragic and to pessimism that is as much a sign of severity and of strength of intellect (taste, feeling, conscience). With this will in one’s heart one has no fear of the fearful and questionable that characterizes all existence; one even seeks it out. Behind such a will there stands courage, pride, the longing for a great enemy. – This has been my pessimistic perspective from the beginning – a novel perspective, is it not? a perspective that even today is still novel and strange? To this very moment I continue to adhere to it and, if you will believe me, just as much for myself as, occasionally at least, against myself.

Once again, Nietzsche emphasizes the benefits of alternating between for and against. According to this passage, the ability to take up alternating evaluative perspectives in this way signals “strength of intellect,” which lends one intellectual courage in the face of existential questions. Alternating one’s emotional perspective is presented here as having an epistemic payoff, as making possible inquiries that would otherwise be too daunting. In other words, the aim of the philosophical method of perspectivism is to advance knowledge, understanding, and other epistemic values. Published in the same year as HH II P:, BGE  offers the following metaphor: “The devil has the broadest perspective on God, which is why he keeps so far away from God: – the devil, that is, as the oldest friend of knowledge.” Once again, we see a reversal in evaluative perspectives (from the God’s-eye view to the devil’s-eye view) in the service of knowledge. The implication seems to be that inhabiting an evil perspective enables one to understand and appreciate things that a purely good or divine perspective would mask or hide. Only someone who is willing and able to cast an evil eye on moral values is well-positioned to see the harm that morality sometimes engenders. Nietzsche makes the same point while calling for an essay prize in GM I:: “The question: what is the value of this or that table of values and ‘morals’? should be viewed from the most diverse perspectives; for the problem ‘value for what?’ cannot be examined too subtly.” An essay prize in philosophy is the sort of thing typically associated with the aim or goal of philosophy. Thus, in this passage, Nietzsche shows us what he values in philosophical practice. Turn now to perhaps the most discussed passage in Nietzsche’s corpus on perspectivism, GM III:. Nietzsche pauses his critique of the ascetic

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ideal and the priests’ revaluation of values to make a methodological observation and argument: precisely because we seek knowledge, let us not be ungrateful to such resolute reversals of accustomed perspectives and valuations [i.e., the priests’ revaluation] with which the spirit has, with apparent mischievousness and futility, raged against itself for so long: to see differently in this way for once, to want to see differently, is no small discipline and preparation of the intellect for its future ‘objectivity’ – the latter understood not as ‘contemplation without interest’ (which is a nonsensical absurdity), but as the ability to control one’s Pro and Con and to dispose of them, so that one knows how to employ a variety of perspectives and affective interpretations in the service of knowledge. Henceforth, my dear philosophers, let us be on guard against the dangerous old conceptual fiction that posited a ‘pure, willless, painless, timeless knowing subject’; let us guard against the snares of such contradictory concepts as ‘pure reason,’ ‘absolute spirituality,’ ‘knowledge in itself’: these always demand that we should think of an eye that is completely unthinkable, an eye turned in no particular direction, in which the active and interpreting forces, through which alone seeing becomes seeing something, are supposed to be lacking; these always demand of the eye an absurdity and a nonsense. There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective ‘knowing’; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our ‘concept’ of this thing, our ‘objectivity,’ be.

Most of the points we’ve seen are reiterated here. First, Nietzsche argues that shifting perspectives should be appreciated by a philosophical “we” with distinctively epistemic motivations. Second, in explaining what he means by “resolute reversals of accustomed perspectives,” he equates them with “valuations.” Third, he talks of disciplining oneself to be able to shift emotional perspectives so that one has the “ability to control one’s Pro and Con” in such a way that one can cycle through multiple different perspectives “in the service of knowledge.” Nietzsche here contrasts his methodology with any approach that aims to achieve “contemplation without interest” by a “pure, will-less, painless, timeless knowing subject,” as in the Kantian framework. This temporally dilated, emotionally complex process is what Nietzsche takes philosophy to be, and its aims are distinctively epistemic. Finally, in EH “Wise” , Nietzsche brags: To be able to look out from the optic of sickness toward healthier concepts and values, and again the other way around, to look down from the fullness and self-assurance of the rich life into the secret work of the instinct of decadence [i.e., with contempt, embodying the pathos of distance] – that was my longest training, my genuine experience, if I became the master of anything, it was this. I have a hand for switching perspectives.

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For the last time, we see Nietzsche touting the epistemic advantages that accrue to a philosopher who is capable of switching evaluative perspectives, which, he contends, can only be managed by someone who has embarked on the “longest training.” What concrete steps this training involves, Nietzsche does not divulge in detail. However, contemporary research on strategic, long-term, and communalized inquiry that harnesses confirmation bias and motivated reasoning points in promising directions (Alfano b). 

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D  does offer a taxonomy of methods, but these are presented only in thumbnail sketch.

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Nietzsche’s Philosophical Naturalism Tsarina Doyle

This chapter examines the character of Nietzsche’s philosophical naturalism and argues that it is informed by a methodological commitment to offer a comprehensive, non-reductivist, and non-eliminativist perspective of how the human being and its values fit into nature. The overarching aim of philosophy, according to Nietzsche, should be to determine values (BGE , ) and the path to achieving this aim is paved by employing a distinctive methodology. This methodology involves adopting a broad or “multifarious” (BGE ) perspective from a “height,” which considers the evaluative human being’s immersion in the natural world but avoids the eliminativist and reductionist practices that Nietzsche associates with the natural sciences (BGE , ). Nietzsche’s naturalism is therefore of the non-scientistic variety that precludes identifying the natural with the empirical descriptions of the sciences alone. The non-reductive character of Nietzsche’s naturalism has not gone undocumented in secondary discussions. Of particular note in this regard is the recent non-reductive interpretation put forward by Maudemarie Clark and David Dudrick. However, although Clark and Dudrick offer an account that is sensitive to Nietzsche’s view that the evaluative activities of human beings are irreducible to scientific descriptions, they ultimately commit Nietzsche to an intractable dualism that is incommensurate with his translation of the human being back into nature (BGE ). Their argument is that Nietzsche’s non-reductive naturalism allows that science grants knowledge of the natural world but denies that “everything can be explained scientifically” (Clark & Dudrick : ). What cannot be explained scientifically is our distinctively human sphere of normativity, which they identify with our capacity for giving reasons and justifications in support of what we “ought” to do or what we should value. The dualism 

The following translations are used: A (); BGE (); EH (); GM (); GS (); HH (); SE (); TI (); WP (); Z ().

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evident in Clark and Dudrick’s argument arises from their tendency to demarcate the sphere of value from their account of the natural sciences where the latter is modeled on the Enlightenment’s conception of evaluatively neutral inquiry into causes that operate mechanically in terms of regularity and succession of essentially powerless events (Clark & Dudrick : , : ). Although Clark and Dudrick claim that Nietzsche offers a causal account of how our normative reason-giving capacities have come about, it remains the case that values and their justification, according to their interpretation, are metaphysically distinct and different in kind from the causal fabric of nature (Clark & Dudrick : ). Consequently, their non-reductivism threatens Nietzsche’s claim to offer a naturalistic account of value by aligning the natural with the causal and by viewing the normative as operating autonomously from rather than engaging with the causal sphere. The dualism of Clark and Dudrick’s view, however, is not restricted to Nietzsche interpretations. It also permeates contemporary debates about the relation between the natural and the normative. For example, John McDowell aims to reconcile naturalism and normativity with his view that the domain of the normative is sui generis and autonomous from the domain of scientific description. But this view succumbs to a somewhat similar dualism as that of Clark and Dudrick. The approaches of McDowell and other left-wing Sellarsians avoid the reductionism of Sellars’s own ontological prioritization of the scientific over the manifest image only by viewing the scientifically described world of “bald” naturalism (McDowell : xvii) in terms of what Sellars himself would describe as an “alien appendage” to the human world (Sellars : ). Clark and Dudrick describe the distinction between causes and reasons that they attribute to Nietzsche as Sellarsian (Clark & Dudrick : ) but it is ultimately, despite their protestations to the contrary (Clark & Dudrick : ), of the non-reductive but dualist variety advocated by left-wing Sellarsians such as McDowell. In what follows, I offer an account of the relation between the natural and the normative that sees Nietzsche offering a potential response to the problems encountered by interpretations of this relation within Nietzsche scholarship as well as contemporary discussions of the issue. Setting aside the interminable textual debates that usually accompany discussion of the issue, this chapter utilizes the conceptual and metaphysical resources of Nietzsche’s much maligned will-to-power thesis. I argue that this thesis embodies the aim and the methodology that Nietzsche attributes to philosophy and that it provides an alternative and nondualist account of how our values fit into nature. The usual – negative – view of the will to

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power, with its attendant concerns about panpsychism and a supposedly illegitimate re-enchantment of nature, focuses on its lack of respectability according to the scientistic standards of the Enlightenment. By contrast, I propose to focus, more positively, on the ability of Nietzsche’s will-topower thesis to contribute fruitfully to the problem of how to reconcile the natural and the normative. A more positive consideration of the will-topower thesis gives us reason to reconsider the character of Nietzsche’s naturalism such that, while it is irreducible to the perspective of the natural sciences, it is nonetheless continuous with them in the specific sense that Nietzsche argues for the metaphysical continuity of the sciences with each other and with the human evaluative point of view. The upshot of this argument is that values and the causal fabric of the natural world differ in metaphysical degree rather than kind. Our values are not simply brought about through external causal mechanisms, but are themselves causes or degrees of power of psychic drives that are metaphysically continuous with the causal capacities of nature. Thus, the role of philosophy as the creator of values, according to Nietzsche, is not to leave untouched the scientific image of the world inherited from the Enlightenment, but rather, it is to reverse the “hierarchical shift” (BGE ) between science and philosophy by broadening what we mean by naturalism to include the human evaluative point of view. Naturalism, according to Nietzsche, entails understanding both the world and human values in causally essentialist terms, as will to power. Nietzsche’s naturalism is, accordingly, metaphysical in the sense that it tells us something about the inner or intelligible – causal – character of the natural world (BGE ). Contrary to the nonessentialist and causally inert account of the natural world proffered by the mechanical sciences of the Enlightenment (GS , ; BGE ; GM I:), Nietzsche appeals to metaphysically real causal powers in nature. The argument of this chapter is executed, first, by examining how the will to power, as a naturalist metaphysical thesis, fulfills Nietzsche’s methodological criteria for offering a comprehensive account of how the human being non-eliminatively fits into nature. I then turn to examine his naturalist account of value and I demonstrate how Nietzsche understands value-norms, on the model of the will to power, to be irreducible to, but metaphysically continuous with, the causal fabric of reality. Finally, I argue that the challenge that Nietzsche’s arguments pose to the Enlightenment and the fact-value distinction to which it gives rise is not just of historical importance, but rather is of considerable contemporary interest. I conclude that, although his arguments are not beyond criticism, Nietzsche’s view that values must engage the world rather than being dualistically apart

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from it, manages to trump some contemporary accounts of the relation between the natural and the normative.

. The Will-to-Power Thesis Nietzsche engages with the natural sciences throughout his entire career and undergoes a period of considering natural science as a more objective form of inquiry than evaluative discourse, for example, in Human, All Too Human. But for the most part he combines his interest in natural science with circumspection as to its scope. In particular, he rejects the Lockean idea that the philosopher should be a handmaiden to the natural scientist. He abandons what he describes as an “unseemly and hierarchical shift between science and philosophy” that reduces philosophy to a mere “theory of cognition” (BGE ) and that offers a reductive, “bungling” account of how the human being fits into nature (BGE ). Although Nietzsche has a lot of respect for science, once it has abandoned its mistaken self-image as a privileged form of inquiry, he nonetheless differentiates his own philosophical task from that of empirical science. Nietzsche’s own task, which he describes as an experimental and critical science is informed by “the conscious use of a unified method” (BGE ). This method involves aesthetic-cum-philosophical demands for a parsimony and simplicity of explanatory principles (BGE  and ) that are meant to provide an explanation of how things hang together in a broad or general sense. Although the aforementioned methodological aim permeates all of his philosophical writings, the appeal to a broader, more comprehensive perspective and the implications of such an appeal are particularly evident in Beyond Good and Evil. In this text, he warns against the dangers of adopting “nook” perspectives (BGE ), arguing that the genuine philosopher must “be able to look with many kinds of eyes and consciences from the heights into every distance, from the depths into every wide expanse” as a “precondition” for the determination of naturalistic values (BGE ). Although it is not explicitly stated in all the texts where he is committed to philosophical naturalism or the seeking out of a comprehensive perspective on things, Nietzsche’s commitment to naturalistic  

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He denies that science is extra-evaluative (GM III  and ), rejects its descriptive empiricism (BGE , , ), and its claim to objectivity (GS ; A  and ). Nietzsche writes of offering a “picture of life as a whole” (SE ), proposes that “artistic energies and the practical wisdom of life . . . join with scientific thinking to form a higher organic system” (GS ), and appeals to the notion of a “uniform science” (A ).

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metaphysics follows from these efforts. But this is made explicit in Beyond Good and Evil when he brings together his commitment to a unifying comprehensive perspective and the determination of value. Referring to what he considers to be the genuine philosopher, he writes that “[t]heir ‘knowing’ is creating, their creating is law-giving, their will to truth is – will to power” (BGE ). Nietzsche’s appeal to the will to power in Beyond Good and Evil follows from his quest to offer a unifying perspective on things as a whole. Its comprehensive scope and naturalistic standing is evident in the work that it does in providing an interpretive explanation of both human and nonhuman natural phenomena as well as in his view that it pertains to the common, essential, nature of those natural phenomena. Nietzsche highlights the interpretive status of the will to power (BGE ), but, unlike the physicist’s appeal to necessary laws of nature, which he describes as bad interpretive practice on account of its narrow perspective, the will to power is explanatory (BGE ) precisely because it satisfies the philological demands of reading well, that is, of looking before and aft, and considering multiple perspectives in the pursuit of knowledge of a text (D P:). This good philological and nonfalsifying (A ) interpretive practice is evident in Nietzsche’s description of the will to power as the “essence” of the world in the context of a discussion of morality (BGE ) and the manner in which he regards the thesis as central to his task of translating the human being back into nature (BGE ). The will to power offers a “uniform” (A ) perspective on things and establishes the continuity of the self with the causal fabric of the world, specifically by drawing on Boscovich’s force physics in addition to nineteenth-century non-Darwinian biological theories. In relation to the former, Nietzsche praises Boscovich for having offered a more refined account of causal connection than that supplied by mechanical atomism when he refused to take the senses at face value and understood causal relations as operating at a distance rather than by contact (BGE ). Still, his suggestion that the concept of force must be completed (WP /KSA : []) indicates that he thinks that Boscovich’s approach is limited by the tendency of physicists, generally, to focus on the calculability of existence (WP /KSA : []; WP /KSA :[]; GS ) to the detriment of capturing its essential causal character (BGE ). Instead, informed by his methodological commitment to adopting a comprehensive perspective, Nietzsche interprets force as will to power by ascribing an inner will to it (WP /KSA : []), which he takes to be inherently causal (BGE ). The proposal of an inherently causal will is supported, in his view, by non-Darwinian

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evolutionary theory (GS ), such as Roux’s law of assimilation and Rolph’s principle of insatiability. It is also colored by Nietzsche’s methodological quest to explain biology and physics according to one and the same metaphysical principle (BGE ). In addition to being supported and made intelligible by Boscovichean physics and non-Darwinian evolutionary views, Nietzsche’s appeal to the will to power as the inherent causal efficacy of force is also formulated in the context of an argument from analogy with human willing (BGE ). Nietzsche’s argumentative strategy here is informed by his view that, when philosophy is no longer understood as the handmaiden of the natural scientist (BGE ), it engages in investigative “experiments” that must, however, be constrained by evidential support (BGE ). On the basis of this argumentative strategy, he describes “effective energy” in terms of the will to power, which, in turn, is described as “[t]he world as it is seen from the inside, the world defined and described by its ‘intelligible character’” (BGE ). Nietzsche’s appeal to an argument from analogy indicates that the will to power is not just a thesis about the metaphysical continuity of the physical and biological sciences, but is also intended to establish the metaphysical continuity of the human being with the natural world. Nietzsche sets about establishing this continuity by appealing to the argument from analogy with human willing as a provisional investigative starting point. From here he proposes that the physical concept of force operates according to an inherent, causally efficacious, will and he extends his rejection of atomism in the physical sciences to his account of the human self. This proposal and extension is made possible by accepting the causal efficacy of human willing while at the same time denying that it is a simplistic affair. That is, although the will is causal, its causal efficacy is dispositional in the sense that it does not necessitate its effect. According to Nietzsche, human willing involves a hierarchical relation between drives. Since the drive that commands the effect is not identical to the drive that executes the command, the executing drive may fail to act as required by the commanding drive (BGE ). The argument that human willing is thus complicated follows from Nietzsche’s view that the self is not a substance, but rather a hierarchically structured bundle of competitive drives and affects (BGE ). Although Nietzsche understands the operation of physical force analogously but not identically to human willing, he holds that physical forces share the same causal and dispositional  

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See Moore (: –) for further discussion. He denies that man is the “measure of all things” (BGE ).

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character (BGE ). Because the will to power accounts for human willing, in addition to filling an explanatory lacuna in the physical concept of force itself that is consonant with the evidence of the biological sciences, Nietzsche concludes that both self and world can be understood as will to power and, accordingly, in constitutively causally powerful and metaphysically continuous terms.

. A Naturalistic Account of Values The self, for Nietzsche, understood on the model of the will to power, is an evaluative self. He argues that our values are expressed in the activity of the dominant drive of the self and that the normativity of those values is determined by causally complex power relations among the drives. Nietzsche writes that “[i]t is our needs that interpret the world; our drives and their For and Against. Every drive is a kind of lust to rule; each has its perspective that it would like to compel all the other drives to accept as a norm” (WP /KSA :[]). Although individual drives may on occasion act errantly and out of sync with other drives, the behavior of the errant drive does not detract from Nietzsche’s identification of norms with causal power. This is because the normativity of dominant drives, as opposed to the causal power of their errant subordinate counterparts, resides in their causal ability to unify the multiplicity of the drives that constitute the self so that they may consistently, although not infallibly, act in concert. Nietzsche distinguishes between different hierarchical power relations that constitute the self, arguing that, in cases that he describes as the “bad conscience,” the dominant drive coerces the drives under its rule to express themselves inwardly (GM II:) and in reaction to the natural world. The value perspective of such an inwardly directed self is still normative by virtue of being the perspective of the dominant drive. But the power of such a self as a whole is weaker than one that can facilitate the outward manifestation of the drives under the evaluative command of the 



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I agree with Paul Loeb that Nietzsche gives independent arguments, in passages other than BGE , for the will to power as an account of reality, that stem from Nietzsche’s efforts to dehumanize nature and naturalize the human being (GS ; Loeb : ). Still, the argument from analogy in BGE  is significant in establishing the continuity of human value with powerful reality. However, Nietzsche is not providing an argument from the inside that is juxtaposed to an argument from the outside here. Rather than anthropomorphizing nature, Nietzsche’s arguments for the will to power make that worry redundant by proposing the metaphysical continuity of human with nonhuman nature. The sovereign individual succumbs to “misdeeds” and “accidents” (GM II:; GM III:), which do not detract from the long-term execution of their will.

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dominant drive. According to Nietzsche, although all evaluating animals seek “favorable conditions” to manifest their particular degree of power optimally (GM III:), the nobles of the future that have extricated themselves from the ascetic ideal “redeem” reality by being immersed in it (GM II:) and by delineating reality as it is (EH “Destiny” ). By contrast, the ascetic person is constitutionally weak (GM I:), reactive, and anti-nature (GM III:; TI “Morality” , , ). Although admitting of degrees of power, the self of both reactive and active types, along with their respective value-norms, are to be understood as metaphysically continuous with the causal-powerful character of nonhuman reality. Value-norms and the causal fabric of the world are not – dualistically – different in kind. The manner in which Nietzsche understands human values to be continuous with the causal fabric of reality is evident from his rejection of Kant’s appeal to a nonnaturalistic grounding of morality (BGE ; GM III:; GS ). According to Kant, the naturalistic world is subject to deterministic causal laws, which render our actions, as natural beings, unfree. As moral beings, however, we have the capacity to act freely, independently of the determinism of natural causes. But, according to Nietzsche, Kant’s account of freedom and morality is a disingenuous attempt to impose nonnatural Christian principles of universality and sameness on individuals who are, in Nietzsche’s view, fundamentally diverse (BGE ). There is a Kantian flavor to contemporary accounts of the autonomy of the sphere of normativity from naturalistic causes, such as McDowell’s in a non-Nietzsche context, or, in a specifically Nietzsche setting, Clark and Dudrick’s differentiation in terms of kind of the sphere of norms from the scientific description of causes. This gives us reason enough to surmise that Nietzsche would be unhappy with such interpretations of his philosophical endeavors in relation to value. He would consider them as attributing to him a dualistic account of the relation of the evaluating human being to the natural world (GM III:; GS ). For Nietzsche, a more honest and consistently naturalistic account of value involves giving a causal account of value and such a causal account involves understanding values as will to power. Understood as will to power, values are capacities of particular physio-psychological types and the ‘powerful levers’ of, contrary to Kant, fated, human action (GS ). Since the drives are themselves evaluative points of view (WP /KSA :  []), values are not caused by the drives, as suggested by some (Leiter : ), but are rather at one and the same time causal capacities of the drives and expressions of those capacities. On the basis of his view that force and its expression are metaphysically indistinct (GM I:), Nietzsche runs

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together value as the causal capacity of a drive and evaluation as its expression in the activity of the drive. Deriving their normative status from being capacities of the dominant drive of the self, values are the force through which we intend the world and are expressed in our action in it. Nietzsche describes evaluative capacities in terms of weakness or strength, masterfulness or slavishness, thus indicating that a naturalistic account of value, modeled on the will to power, rules out Kantian-cum-Christian appeals to universality and sameness of values and evaluative types (GS ). Nietzsche’s account of value as will to power is made particularly evident in the following passage from The Anti-Christ: What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man. What is bad? – All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? – The feeling that power increases – that a resistance is overcome. Not contentment, but more power; not peace at all, but war, not virtue but proficiency (virtue in the Renaissance style, virtù, virtue free of moralic acid). (A )

The identification that Nietzsche makes here between value and the will to power draws on the Renaissance notion of virtue as a natural capacity, ability, or power and reflects his view that the translation of the human being back into nature entails understanding value in terms of the will to power (BGE ) or “active energies [wirkenden Kräfte]” (BGE ). For Nietzsche, that is, values are identified with and are expressions of what we have the capacity or power to do by virtue of our immersion in and metaphysical continuity with the causal powers of nature. These capacities, which are experienced by us affectively as feelings of power, or the lack thereof, are dispositional in character since their power is not always manifested or manifested optimally. Unlike contemporary accounts of dispositions as essentially passive where activation comes about through a triggering stimulus, Nietzsche understands dispositions as causally powerful and essentially active. According to Nietzsche, drives and forces in the world are always active and are only perceived otherwise to the extent that 



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Value is not, then, just the aim of the drive’s valuing activity, as John Richardson argues (Richardson : , ), but is the causal force informing that activity and from which it is metaphysically indistinct (GM I: ). On conditional analyses, see Martin () and Molnar ().

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their actions are hindered by the countervailing activity of other drives or forces (GM I:). However, his description of the activity of drives and forces in terms of willing (GM I:), his account of willing as will to power (BGE ), and his acknowledgment that drives and forces encounter obstacles to that will (GM III:) indicates that the activity of drives and forces is compatible with their being dispositional on the basis that they are active by virtue of continually striving to manifest their power although they may not manifest it or may not manifest it in full on all occasions. Drives and physical forces are dispositional by virtue of fitting the modality of dispositions, which entails that their causal influence is neither necessary nor contingent. In other words, as we have already witnessed in Nietzsche’s account of the causality of the will (BGE ), dispositions tend to certain types of activity that reflect their essential natures. They are therefore not contingent. But the manifestation of this activity is not necessary either, since preventive conditions in the form of countervailing activity of other drives and forces may prevent it. For Nietzsche, the causal power of drives and physical forces are dispositional capacities that are causally active to varying degrees. Nietzsche identifies the powerful activity of the drives with the creation of values (BGE ) and he argues that values are created, not ex nihilo, but rather by the philosopher “knowing” that values are will to power (BGE ) or powerful capacities of the drives (A ) and that their creation involves facilitating their optimal expression. Since drives and forces are intentionally directed to manifesting their powerful natures to varying degrees such that the manifestation of this power is both the aim and the proper intentional object of a drive’s activity, values are created by virtue of achieving the manifestation of a drive’s powerful capacities through interacting with the world. As is evident from Nietzsche’s appeal to the possibility of future nobles, the intentional object of a drive’s activity need not be currently existent. Since the intentional object of the drive’s activity may be nonexistent, the manner of the drive’s interaction with the world is creatively productive. Central to this creative interaction is the manner in which the world resists the powerful evaluative activity of the drives. Aligning values with “power itself in man,” Nietzsche describes our value-norms as distinctively human capacities that are intentionally directed to manifesting themselves through the overcoming of resistance (A ). Although values acquire their normative status through the 

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For discussion of dispositional modality, see Anjum, Anders Noer Lie, and Mumford (: –).

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overcoming of psychological resistance from other drives that make up the self, these warring drives nonetheless form a hierarchically structured unit that aims to express itself in the world, albeit through the evaluative perspective of the dominant drive, by overcoming external forms of resistance to this possible expression. Consequently, rather than being merely subjective or even intersubjective creations that are cut off from the world, our affective value feelings respond to, and are constrained by, external resistances exerted by the powerful character of reality to the dominant drive’s intentional efforts (WP /KSA :[]). Moreover, the exertion of constraint by the world and the overcoming, or not, of those resistances is a way for the value-legislating philosopher (BGE ) to distinguish between better and worse value-norms, or values that are commensurate, or not, with the world. However, values that are commensurate with the “outside world” (GM I:) are not ones that correspond to the world by representing it from an external vantage point. Rather, values that are commensurate with the world are ones whose realization is afforded by the powerful, dispositional, character of the world. For example, Nietzsche makes it clear that Christian priestly values run counter to the character of the natural world and require the support of “another” nonnatural sphere. In the period of modernity in which he writes, noble values are hindered from fully expressing themselves by recalcitrant and unnatural societal constraints informed by the Christian priestly worldview and its principles of sameness and equality. Nevertheless, Nietzsche points to the possibility of a future that is more amenable to the realization of a hierarchically structured and, in his view, pluralist, society modeled on naturalistic principles of the will to power (BGE  and ). Although the Christian priestly worldview is itself a manifestation of the will to power, its degree of power is weak and reactive to the character of the natural world (GM I:). By contrast, noble values are characterized by a greater degree of power and manifest their natures outwardly rather than through an unnatural turning inward and ascetic retreat from the world (GM I:; GM II:). The noble person’s manner of overcoming resistance from the world involves cooperating with what the dispositional fabric of reality affords rather than imposing their evaluative point of view on and in reaction to the world. Despite his description of the exercise of power in terms of violation (GM II:), destruction (GM II:), and aggression (GM II:), Nietzsche allows that power need not involve tyranny (BGE ). He also allows that overcoming resistance, at least some of the time, entails the employment of hierarchy and competition to facilitate the expression rather than extirpation of the powerful

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natures of the subordinate constituent drives that make up the self (TI “Morality” ), for example, or the causal character of both the self and the world in their powerful interactions. According to Nietzsche, overcoming resistance may entail cooperation (WP /KSA :[]) among competing powers in their efforts to manifest their natures optimally. This conception of power is evident in Nietzsche’s description of the relation of noble values to the world in the second essay of the Genealogy. Here he describes the world as “accommodating” and “full of love” for noble values (GM II:), indicating, however, that since the world does not accommodate slave values, all values are subject to constraint by the world. Furthermore, the manner in which value-norms, both better and worse ones, are subject to constraint by the world, whether positively or negatively, provides the basis for our formulation of judgments supported by reasons. Although normativity, for Nietzsche, is not constituted by the giving of consciously articulated reasons, but rather by power relations between the drives, he nonetheless emphasizes the importance of giving reasons and explicitly justifying our values (GS , ). He takes our willingness to provide such justifications as a way of demarcating what he describes as higher from lower types of human beings and indeed as a way of distinguishing between human and nonhuman animals (GS , , ). However, although our capacity to formulate judgments and justify those judgments demarcate us from the rest of nature, our reason-giving abilities should not be understood to operate autonomously from the causal fabric of the world. This is because, rather than being differentiated in kind from causal nature, value-norms, in Nietzsche’s view, are natural capacities or causes. And these inform our ability to give reasons and justify our evaluative perspective by virtue of their powerful engagement with the world rather than by virtue of their metaphysical distinctness from it. That Nietzsche thinks that our reason-giving abilities are metaphysically continuous with nature is evident in his view that these abilities are grounded in the causally complex interrelations of more basic but evaluative dispositional-causal drives along with their particular degree of acting in the world. Although the drives are not reasons (GS ), they provide a dispositional base for the generation of reasons by acting in and negotiating the world according to their particular measure of power. Despite their close connection and a tendency on Nietzsche’s part to refer to drives and 

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Clark and Dudrick identify power relations between the drives with normative reasons, arguing that the will to power applies at the level of psychology and normativity and not scientific causality (Clark & Dudrick : –).

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affects interchangeably, they can nonetheless be differentiated. Nietzsche does this by highlighting the fact that the affects act as occurrent phenomenal indicators of a drive’s success in acting in the world through feelings of power or lack thereof (A ). Moreover, the affects are not merely subjective and opposed to reason, but rather contain a “quantum of reason” (WP /KSA :[]; GS ). In Nietzsche’s view, the affects color the world (GM I:) in terms of its affording opportunities or obstacles to the satisfaction of a drive’s aim (GM I:, ). Our value-norms are in this way supported by reasons, be they good or bad ones, in light of the world’s amenability or negative resistance to the drive’s actions (WP /KSA :[]). Determining whether the affects denote better or worse reasons is explicitly made possible by ranking value perspectives (GM III:; GS , ) and requires linguistic and conceptual awareness manifested in a social context (GS ). But, these linguistic and conceptual abilities are nonetheless ultimately grounded physiologically and unconsciously in the drives (BGE ). This is a view that Nietzsche holds throughout his career (see TL). Our capacity to formulate value judgments is rooted in the drives, although conscious judgments themselves simplify, in the sense of generalize over, the particularity of the drives (GS ). Nevertheless, according to Nietzsche, normativity and the discernment of better and worse value-norms entails relations of “power” and “difference” (GM III:) both at the level of the nonconscious operation of the drives and at the level of the explicit, conscious, articulation of reasons. Nietzsche’s view that the normativity and the ranking of our valuenorms involves power relations that reflect the powerful constitution of reality serves as a warning against taking our capacity to formulate evaluative judgments, whether they be better or worse, to be metaphysically discontinuous with the causal fabric of nonhuman nature. For Nietzsche, values and the manner of their justification are not different in kind from the causal processes of nature, but rather metaphysically continuous with them. According to Nietzsche, physical force and values share a metaphysical nature or essence, which he understands in distinctively causal terms as will to power. Accordingly, Nietzsche’s philosophical naturalism, from which he derives his naturalistic account of value, is not metaphysically neutral. Instead, it challenges the Enlightenment view of nature that 

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In GS , Nietzsche refers to unconscious thinking, indicating, as in BGE , that concepts are not the marker of consciousness. Although he links linguistic competency with consciousness in GS , our ability to use language seems to be a second form of thinking that he describes as ‘acoustic signs’ of concepts in BGE . Still, he clearly thinks that language and conceptual thought are metaphysically continuous by virtue of being grounded in the drives (BGE ).

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separates values from inert value-free matter and views values as operating parallel to, rather than as metaphysically continuous with, nature. Nietzsche’s departure from the terms and conditions of the Enlightenment is not, as is often considered to be the case, a slur on his philosophical respectability, but rather serves to mark him out as important, not just in historical, but also in contemporary terms.

. Beyond Dualism The significance of Nietzsche’s argument regarding the metaphysical continuity of our value-norms with the causal fabric of reality reaches beyond the boundaries of historical scholarship. This is a fact recognized by Joseph Rouse in his response to his own diagnosis of a deficiency in contemporary efforts, such as those of the left-wing Sellarsians, Robert Brandom and John Haugeland, to reconcile naturalism and normativity (Rouse : –, , , –). The latter contemporary thinkers appeal, like Nietzsche, to the constraining influence of the world on our normative practices by way of arguing that meaning and action are accountable to something outside the agent’s control. But Rouse contends that they go awry by construing the world as something external to our normative practices by virtue of their tendency to understand the world and naturalism, more generally, in narrowly scientistic and normatively inert terms (Rouse : ). As a result, Rouse accuses these contemporary responses of dualism. He includes McDowell in this diagnosis on the grounds that McDowell understands the space of normative reason-giving as operating parallel to and autonomously from the space of scientific description (Rouse : ). Clark and Dudrick interpret Nietzsche as committed to something like McDowell’s view to the extent that they construe causes and reasons as metaphysically different in kind. However, Rouse argues that the dualism of contemporary accounts of the natural and the normative can be overcome by expanding what we mean by naturalism to include the human evaluative point of view. Clark and Dudrick’s dualistic interpretation notwithstanding, Rouse sees Nietzsche as a fellow traveler in this reconciliatory project. While Rouse’s argument is not a carbon copy of Nietzsche’s, as I have presented it, the overlaps between their respective positions are nonetheless instructive in drawing out the contemporary significance of Nietzsche’s nondualist approach to the relation between the natural and the normative. What Rouse and Nietzsche agree on is that 

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See Clark and Dudrick (: ) and Leiter (: ).

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normativity cannot be reduced to intersubjective agreement. Rather, valuenorms, for both of them, must engage the world even if this engagement threatens the dominant Enlightenment view of nature as normatively inert and adequately captured by value-free scientific description (Rouse : ). Rouse argues for his nondualist position by appealing to, what he describes as, the intra-action of an organism with its environment, a position he self-consciously describes as a development of Nietzsche’s naturalism (Rouse : –, –). Rouse describes the relationship between an organism and its environment as one of intra- rather than inter-action in order to draw our attention to his argument that our evaluative perspectives and the world are not separate and dualistic relata, but rather reciprocally dependent. According to Rouse, since we are “not subjects confronting external objects but organisms living in active interchange with an environment” (Rouse : ), our evaluative perspectives must not be understood as subjective perspectives taken on the world from a vantage point beyond the world. Appealing to Karen Barad’s account of “intra-active becoming” (Barad : , n), he argues that our evaluative perspectives are embodied intra-actions with the world through which the environment is configured as meaningful for us (Rouse : –). While Nietzsche, like Rouse, considers our evaluative perspectives as immersed in rather than dualistically apart from the world, his argument has a more psychological and causally essentialist character. Drawing on an essentialist typology of persons that distinguishes between different evaluative types as either essentially strong or weak (GM I:–), Nietzsche identifies values with dispositional properties of psychological drives that express themselves through intentional action in the world. It is on account of this action in and metaphysical continuity with the causaldispositional fabric of the world as will to power that evaluative perspectives are not dualistically cut off from the world. Rather, strong and weak evaluative types act in the same world despite engaging it differently and according to their particular measure of power. The weak or slave evaluative type experiences the world as resistant to its efforts, while the strong



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Elsewhere, I have interpreted Nietzsche’s essentialism as entailing an appeal to properties that are both intrinsic and relational. Although he sometimes puts forward a metaphysics that is entirely relational, this view succumbs to an infinite regress of existential dependency (Poellner : ) that, I argue, can be avoided by appealing to intrinsic natures that are also relational (Doyle : ch. , : ch. ).

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or noble type, when freed from the clutches of bad conscience and the ascetic ideal (GM II:), experiences the world as more hospitable to its particular degree of action in it. According to Nietzsche, the self is individuated as a hierarchical bundle of drive-fueled activity (BGE , ) that encounters “external” resistance from other such bundle selves and forces in the world (WP /KSA :[]). As a result, power, in Nietzsche’s view, must be understood agentially, as reflecting an agent’s capacity for and degree of action in the world, rather than as a property of discrete metaphysical substances (GM I:). Specifically, self and world interact through the agent self’s value-informed and powerful efforts to overcome resistance to its action in the world. Despite Rouse’s worry about the possible dualist connotations of the term inter-action, it in fact describes Nietzsche’s view that evaluative types are characterized by their particular capacity for and degree of powerful action in the world while at the same time being constrained by the world from within their active immersion in it. Still, there are significant commonalities between Nietzsche’s and Rouse’s respective arguments that illuminate the contemporary significance of Nietzsche’s will-to-power approach to questions of naturalism and normativity. In particular, the power metaphysics informing Nietzsche’s distinction between better and worse value-norms intersects instructively with Rouse’s notion of powerful intra-action, where power is measured by the degree to which an agent’s goal is successfully realized. Success, as Rouse uses the term, denotes achieving an alignment of the agent’s goals with the actions of others and with what the agent’s environment affords (Rouse : ). Rouse’s alignment of power with the realization of an agent’s goal under these circumstances is somewhat similar to Nietzsche’s characterization of higher evaluative types in terms of their ability to overcome resistance from the world by virtue of the complementarity between their value-norms and the causal capacities of the world. Christian priestly values do not complement the natural character of the world, but rather appeal to supernatural abilities and a supernatural world in which these abilities might be realized as an act of ressentiment toward nature and noble values (GM I:). For this reason, they fall short of being strongly powerful and successful in Nietzsche’s view. Even if noble agents are hindered from acting to their full capacity by recalcitrant social circumstances, the values that are expressed in their actions are nonetheless more powerful than those of their Christian priestly counterparts. Also, if awakened from their current subjugation to the morality of equality and sameness espoused by the Christian value system

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and its more secular variants, they will be more powerful and successful still. An agent’s power in this sense entails its ability to express its nature outwardly and actively in cooperation with what the world affords. Despite the obstacles experienced by the nobles in modernity, they accept their own fated natures and the hierarchical but non-tyrannical structure of their drives, they lack ressentiment toward their Christian priestly counterparts (BGE ) and they accept the motto that what’s good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander (BGE ). They are thus marked out as strongly powerful where their power entails an acknowledgment of the multiplicity of nature and evaluative types understood as will to power. Nietzsche describes both better and worse value-norms in terms of degrees of power. A worse value-norm is powerful because it is a capacity of the dominant drive of the evaluating self and expressed in the reactive activity of that drive, even though better value-norms are more powerful by virtue of their ability to complement the dispositional capacities of reality (EH “Destiny” ). Rouse’s account of power-inflected value-norms sheds light on how the ultimate power of a value-norm is for Nietzsche inextricably connected to the evaluating agent’s ability to successfully act in the world and to bring its powerful efforts to fruition. Since all value-norms, for Nietzsche, are powers in the sense that they denote who we are and our agential capacity for interactive engagement with the world, the distinction between better and worse value-norms avoids the dualism that plagues contemporary debates as diagnosed by Rouse. This avoidance is made possible by the fact that his characterization of better value-norms in terms of an agent’s ability to overcome external resistance is made on the basis that the internal and external are not dualistically separate, but rather metaphysically unified as will to power. Moreover, since value-norms are capacities expressed in an agent’s action in the world, the evaluative agent’s engagement with the world must always already be normative and the differentiation of better from worse value-norms must take place from within that normatively structured engagement. Additionally, as the causal fabric of reality either affords, or not, the optimal realization of those value-norms, reality itself is not normatively inert or dualistically apart from our normative engagement with it. By challenging the Enlightenment juxtaposition of value-free matter to the “subjective” character of our values, Nietzsche manages to avoid subjectivism in relation to value contrary to some dominant recent interpretations (Reginster ; Thomas ). According to Nietzsche, an agent’s values, as powerful capacities of the drives and expressed in powerful action in the world, are not dualistically cut off from the world,

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but are instead reciprocally informed by the capacity of the world to accommodate their realization to varying degrees. Nevertheless, the dissimilarity between Rouse’s non-essentialism and Nietzsche’s essentialism is not insignificant and reveals weaknesses in Nietzsche’s position. The first is that Nietzsche’s essentialism is drawn from a historically specific view of science, that is, Boscovichean physics and non-Darwinian models of evolutionary biology, together with an argument in support of their metaphysical unity. But more than this, and perhaps more importantly, at least in practical terms, Nietzsche’s essentialism encounters a problem with the resolution of evaluative disputes. Although he allows that there are better and worse value-norms, those value-norms are capacities of physio-psychological types, which are expressed in actions that engage the world in different ways. Although there is only one world (WP /KSA :[]; GS ; EH P:), which constrains our value-norms in the sense of determining their rank as better or worse, it remains the case that value-norms, for Nietzsche, are plural because they are subject to psychological difference. And, because they are subject to such difference, it becomes difficult to resolve conflict between value-norms. Although some value-norms are supported by better reasons than others by virtue of their capacities to complement the natural capacities of nature, it remains the case that convincing those who espouse different values of the inferiority of their perspective is a challenging task. Contrary to Rouse’s view that pluralistic values reflect a politics of diversity rather than a politics of difference by virtue of those plural values engaging a common world, Nietzsche offers us a politics of difference. Nietzsche has the conceptual resources to facilitate communication between different evaluating types in the form of consciousness and language as well as the commonality or sameness that these competencies afford. But he shows little interest in availing himself of their assistance, probably on the ground that the focus on sameness makes the communication of difference difficult. Even if such communication were possible, it remains the case that overcoming evaluative dispute requires, for Nietzsche, not just a capacity on both sides of the dispute to communicate their different perspectives and the reasons that inform them. It also requires a willingness and sufficient strength on the part of the party whose perspective is supported by weaker reasons to reconfigure the evaluative perspective of their dominant drive in light of the reasons offered up by the opponent. However, such a reconfiguration is made a challenging undertaking by Nietzsche’s fatalism and his comments regarding the epiphenomenality of conscious thought (WP /KSA :[]). Nevertheless, Nietzsche does not view

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these challenges as unduly concerning and he is happy to confine his addresses to the nobles of the present and the potential nobles of the future – that is, those who share his values – and to avert his gaze from those with whom he disagrees (Z:IV “Of the Higher Man” ). To the extent that Nietzsche is interested in intersubjective agreement or alignment of our values with those of others, this interest extends only to agreement among noble types (BGE ). However, Nietzsche’s disinterest in engaging with those with whom he disagrees is hardly an indication of the superior power of his noble values and surely points to a deficiency in his argument that needs to be examined further. Whether the deficiency should be addressed by adopting a non-essentialist position and by relinquishing Nietzsche’s view about the metaphysical unity of the sciences cannot be answered here. However, one thing is clear from the point at which Rouse and Nietzsche intersect. This is that our values and their justification cannot be merely intersubjectively justified, but must, instead, engage the world. Values, as we learn from both authors, cannot and should not be dualistically cut off from the world. Nietzsche’s methodological quest for a unifying, comprehensive perspective that seeks a broader account of the human being’s place in nature than that afforded by the reductive perspective of the natural sciences alone should therefore continue to engage us.

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 

Nietzsche’s Moral Methodology Paul Katsafanas

Nietzsche is widely reputed to have a novel approach to moral philosophy. Georg Simmel called him the “Copernicus of philosophical ethics,” presumably intending to convey by this that Nietzsche recentered the perspective from which philosophical ethics is conducted (Simmel : ). And Nietzsche himself agreed: “I hope people forgive me the discovery that all moral philosophy so far has been boring” (BGE ), he writes, and presents himself as offering a new approach. His “project is to traverse with quite novel questions, and as though with new eyes, the enormous, distant, and so well-hidden land of morality – of morality that has actually existed, actually been lived; and does this not mean virtually to discover this land for the first time [GM P:]?” The project of philosophical ethics must be rethought: it must be conducted in a different way, employ different methods, and pursue different aims. I’ll attempt to set out this Nietzschean moral methodology. Nietzsche calls for a rejection of previous approaches and promises a new approach. But what, exactly, are these new approaches that Nietzsche takes to moral philosophy? How does he think that philosophical ethics should proceed? And how does his approach differ from the tradition? Is Simmel right that he inaugurates a Copernican shift in philosophical ethics? Or is Nietzsche’s impact more modest, consisting merely of one more entry into the standard philosophical debates? I’ll attempt to answer these questions here. Section . and . review some standard assumptions about the way in which philosophical ethics should proceed. I argue that Nietzsche rejects many of these assumptions. Given his rejection of orthodox philosophical ethics, some readers conclude that Nietzsche is a moral skeptic who holds that no justification of normative claims is possible. Section . argues that this reading is untenable. The remaining sections review the way in which 

The following translations are used: A (); BGE (); CW (); EH (); GM (); HH (); TI (); Z ().



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 

Nietzsche’s philosophical ethics actually proceeds. I argue that Nietzsche defends the following idea: although there is no uniquely justified set of normative claims, we can engage in rational, comparative assessments of competing normative claims. In particular, I argue that Nietzsche articulates various rationally defensible constraints on acceptable normative claims. An acceptable set of normative claims must not presuppose false claims about human agency (see Section .); it must not issue prescriptions that ultimately undermine human flourishing (see Section .); it must secure some set of higher values (see Section .); and it must avoid promoting certain forms of moral pathology (see Section .). We can use these constraints to engage in comparative assessments of moralities (or, more generally, sets of normative claims).

.

Ethical Foundations

Philosophical ethics is typically understood as the attempt to provide a rationally defensible answer to the question of how we should live. Rather than taking for granted our intuitions about moral cases, the culturally dominant ways of classifying and categorizing rights and wrongs, our thoughts about which kinds of lives are better than others, and so forth, philosophical ethics asks what might justify these normative claims and concerns. How might such a justification of normative claims proceed? Many philosophers have sought to justify ethical claims by providing some sort of foundation from which they can be derived. Consider several possibilities. Aristotle thinks he can start with a conception of the human function and derive from it an account of the good life. Hume thinks that he can start with a rationally defensible account of human nature and derive from it an account of the moral sentiments. Kant thinks he can justify certain claims about rationality and freedom in an a priori fashion and derive, from them, the Categorical Imperative. Bentham and Mill think that they can start with a rationally defensible account of our basic motivations and derive from it the principle of utility. And so on. In each case, the philosopher attempts to establish one or more foundational claims in a rationally justifiable, theoryindependent manner, and then proceeds to show how substantive moral content can be derived from the foundational principle(s). It’s important that the justification for the foundational claim is in each case taken to be theory-independent. Suppose, for example, that Kant could only establish our commitment to the Categorical Imperative if we assumed, at the outset, that his substantive ethical claims were true.

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This would be of little interest. It would not give a skeptic any reason to accept the theory. If, on the other hand, Kant could start with very minimal and uncontroversial claims about agency or rationality, and show that our acceptance of these claims commits us to accepting the Categorical Imperative, then his account would be important and interesting. Let’s now consider Nietzsche’s reaction to these approaches. He has several objections. First, and most obviously, Nietzsche thinks that each of the philosophical theories mentioned fails on its own terms. Kant makes mistaken presuppositions about agency; his account of the Categorical Imperative doesn’t follow from his account of agency; and, even if it did, it wouldn’t generate any content. Sentimentalists make false presuppositions about the human passions. Utilitarians rely on false presuppositions about our relationship to pleasure and pain, and, aside from that, illegitimately assume that concerns about these states should be weighted equally across persons. Or so, at any rate, Nietzsche argues. Many of his arguments for these points are subtle and interesting, but I’ll pass over them here. While the individual critiques are interesting, their structure is perfectly familiar: like many other philosophers, Nietzsche simply critiques the presuppositions and the internal logic of these theories and finds it wanting. In short: he thinks that there have been no successful ethical theories so far. Of course, the fact that there have been no successful ethical theories so far does not establish that there couldn’t be one in the future. But Nietzsche has a more powerful objection: he rejects the idea that there could be any such thing as a theory-independent foundation for normative claims. For he claims that there are no uninterpreted givens from which we can construct theory-independent, presuppositionless philosophical or scientific accounts. He claims that there are no “immediate certainties” and mocks the idea that knowledge can get “hold of its object purely and nakedly” (BGE ). Even our most basic relationship to the world, via sense perception, is mediated by value judgments: There is no doubt that all sense perceptions are wholly permeated with valuejudgments [gänzlich durchsetzt sind mit Wethurtheilen]. (KSA :[])

We cannot, he suggests, get past this to some perspective-free way of accessing the world. Again, he writes:



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See Katsafanas () for discussion of these points.

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

  Strictly speaking, there is no “presuppositionless” knowledge, the thought of such a thing is unthinkable, paralogical: a philosophy, a “faith” always has to be there first, for knowledge to win from it a direction, a meaning, a limit, a method, a right to exist. (Whoever understands it the other way round and, for example, tries to place philosophy “on a strictly scientific foundation,” must first stand on its head not just philosophy, but also truth itself ). (GM III:)

In rejecting the very possibility of presuppositionless knowledge, Nietzsche is claiming that every justification will be internal to a certain set of assumptions. What looks like theory-independent justification will, in fact, rely on certain background assumptions, which are themselves in need of justification. Consider an example: Kant thinks he can specify a conception of free, rational agency and use it to derive his Categorical Imperative. Nietzsche’s point is that this specification of free, rational agency is already theoryladen: it assumes a sharp distinction between active reason and passive sensation; it identifies the agent with a characterless and (Nietzsche thinks) causally undetermined capacity for choice; it treats punctual moments of choice as determining the character of the agent’s actions; it assumes that we can identify a unique maxim or intention for each action; and so on. We needn’t accept these claims (see Katsafanas  and  for the details). So we have two problems: there have been no successful defenses of foundational claims thus far; and we have good reason for believing that there can be no theory-independent foundational claims in the first place. Let’s turn to a third problem: Nietzsche thinks that when we consider the conservatism of these theories, it casts serious doubt on their credentials. Ethical theorists typically try to justify a set of moral claims that approximates their current moral code. Kant, for example, thinks that something like the whole of late eighteenth-century Prussian morality can be derived from his allegedly a priori account of the Categorical Imperative; Aristotle thinks that his articulation of human flourishing is in broad conformity with the endoxa; and so on. 

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Not every moral philosopher is this conservative. Bentham, for example, thinks that his utilitarian theory shows that many of the moral beliefs of his day are mistaken (thus, he argues for the decriminalization of homosexuality, universal suffrage, and so on). Hume thinks his theory undermines the “monkish virtues.” So some moral philosophers believe that their moral theories issue in a certain number of revisionary claims. Notice, though, that the revisions don’t go very far: we don’t find these philosophers critiquing central Enlightenment values such as dignity, equality, freedom, and beneficence. This marks one dramatic difference between the traditional ethical theorists and Nietzsche, who questions these central values.

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Why is this conservativism suspicious? Nietzsche thinks it points to the way in which unwarranted assumptions enter these allegedly impartial theories. He claims that “all our philosophers demanded something far more exalted, presumptuous, and solemn” than a critical examination of moral codes: “they wanted to supply a rational foundation for morality – and every philosopher so far has believed that he has provided such a foundation” (BGE ). But this “makes one laugh,” because close examination reveals that these philosophers simply take morality “as ‘given’.” In particular, What the philosophers called “a rational foundation for morality” and tried to supply was, seen in the right light, merely a scholarly variation of the common faith in the prevalent morality; a new means of expression for this faith; and thus just another fact within a particular morality; indeed, in the last analysis a kind of denial that this morality might ever be considered problematic – certainly the very opposite of an examination, analysis, questioning, and vivisection of this very faith. (BGE )

Attempts to provide a rational foundation for morality end up taking for granted central elements of the philosopher’s current moral code. It’s not hard to spot these unwarranted presuppositions in any given ethical theory. For example, consider Kant’s incredible claim that we can get the content of Prussian morality out of an entirely formal conception of rationality. It’s obvious to anyone who reads his attempts, in The Metaphysics of Morals, to force the Categorical Imperative into yielding prohibitions on suicide, masturbation, and homosexuality that he needs to appeal to background moral assumptions, ideas of natural functions, and so on, none of which are supposed to be legitimate sources of normative authority within his framework.

. Ethics without Foundations: Coherentism and Reflective Equilibrium We’ve reviewed Nietzsche’s critique of attempts to provide theoryindependent foundations for ethical theories. However, in recent philosophical work, it’s common to back off from these grand attempts to provide theory-independent foundations. Instead, a number of ethical theorists rely on the claim that we can generate an acceptable moral theory by bringing our normative judgments into reflective equilibrium. So, we begin with various intuitions about what’s right and wrong, where these concern both particular cases and general principles. We locate various conflicts and tensions between these judgments and attempt to eliminate them.

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Although explicit discussions of reflective equilibrium obviously postdate Nietzsche, he does have criticisms of the assumptions that animate the quest for reflective equilibrium. First, notice that reflective equilibrium may not take us to a unique set of normative claims. Suppose we have two groups: one starts with something like our own moral code and tries to work it into reflective equilibrium; another starts with moral judgments that don’t contain any aspirations to equality and tries to bring that into reflective equilibrium. They won’t end up in the same place. If this is right – if we can have multiple, mutually incompatible yet internally consistent sets of normative commitments – then we face a problem: we won’t be able to rank or compare these normative commitments unless we have some criterion other than mere coherence. This brings us to a second point. Notice that we can construct internally consistent sets of claims, all of which are false. We can construct internally consistent sets of principles that are wholly imaginary and make no contact with reality. Think, for example, of literature about fantastical realms: the way in which magic operates in the Harry Potter books may be internally consistent, but it doesn’t correspond to anything actual. Or, to use a more controversial example: the theological claims articulated by Aquinas may be internally consistent, but they refer to an imaginary entity. So a system of claims can be internally consistent, but float free of any contact with reality. And the project of seeking reflective equilibrium about ethical claims can be interpreted in this way. So this is the alternative model: we could see the moral convictions shaping reflective equilibrium as giving us insight into some moral reality. Suppose, for example, that we somehow know that inflicting needless suffering is wrong, that people ought to have equal moral status, and so on. We could then condemn certain internally consistent moral codes for failing to respect these claims. In the limiting case, we might get only one moral code that is in reflective equilibrium and respects these judgments; more plausibly, we’d get several. The free-floating version of reflective equilibrium is going to be unappealing to many philosophers: after all, many moral philosophers take themselves to be engaged in something more than pure invention. These philosophers think that they are not merely articulating coherent, internally consistent sets of claims; in addition, they typically assume that these claims are making contact with the structure of ethical reality. The alternative model attempts to anchor the coherent set of ethical claims in some kind of moral reality. Can it succeed? Nietzsche has several objections. First, as I discussed in the previous section, Nietzsche rejects

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the idea that there have been any successful justifications of the anchoring claims. Moreover, he rejects the idea that there could be any such anchorings: there is no theory-independent proposition that could provide a check on these theories. He aspires to show that even seemingly innocuous claims such as “suffering is bad” or “equality is good” have many presuppositions and may, in fact, be false. Second, both versions of the approach grant initial credibility to a range of moral convictions, but it’s not clear why this is supposed to be warranted. To see this, notice that some of Rawls’ particular examples of “considered judgments” are staggeringly naive from a Nietzschean perspective: It seems to be one of the fixed points of our considered judgments that no one deserves his place in the distribution of native endowments, any more than one deserves one’s initial starting place in society. (Rawls : )

These are exactly the sorts of starting point that are culturally and historically relative. This allegedly settled conviction arose fairly recently, historically speaking. It was not present in antiquity, as Nietzsche’s discussions in GM I illustrate. Of course, this is not a decisive objection. It’s possible to argue that these changes are the result of moral progress. True, past ages would have come up with different sets of moral convictions. However, optimistic philosophers think this is a sign of progress: our moral convictions are in better shape than the earlier ones. But Nietzsche is skeptical: he thinks we can give debunking explanations of many of these moral convictions. On the Genealogy of Morals is but one example. Part of what the Genealogy tries to demonstrate is that transitions in moral convictions cannot be explained as mere refinements of earlier values, but must instead be seen as discontinuous breaks and leaps; moreover, the Genealogy tries to show that these discontinuities are better explained by psychological and social factors than by epistemic considerations (see Katsafanas : –). If this is right, appeals to moral progress will look unwarranted. So we have two problems: reflective equilibrium doesn’t yield a unique set of normative claims; and, if it isn’t somehow anchored, it could be a process of pure invention. But there’s also a third, deeper problem. Nietzsche 

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On suffering, see HH ; BGE , , , , ; GM P:, III:; Z:I “Prologue” ; and EH “Destiny” . On equality, see TI “Skirmishes” ; BGE , –; and KSA :[], : [].

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emphasizes the way in which various moral codes are massively contradictory, internally inconsistent, and so forth. Nietzsche thinks that attention to our actual moral code reveals that it is rife with contradictions, tensions, incompatible claims, and so forth. It is a motley arising from diverse sources, with no common core (see especially the Genealogy). The very aspiration to bring a moral code into consistency assumes that consistency is valuable or desirable. But why is this supposed to be the case? It’s not obvious that internal inconsistencies are particularly troubling to Nietzsche. Consider his encomiums to attic culture in The Birth of Tragedy: there, one thing that he emphasizes is the productive tensions that are encouraged by competing and ultimately irreconcilable ideals. This is a claim that, in one form or another, is ubiquitous in Nietzsche’s texts: conflict and internal tensions as such are not problematic; they are problematic only when they can’t be managed. In short: some internal inconsistencies are problematic, but it’s not clear that Nietzsche thinks that all are. So we’d need some reason for aspiring to reflective equilibrium. Absent a justification for this aspiration, the project of securing reflective equilibrium is unmotivated.

.

Skepticism and Pure Subjectivism

To review: particular moral judgments would have to be justified either via appeal to theory-independent considerations or via reflective equilibrium. But Nietzsche denies that any moral judgments can be justified in a theory-independent fashion: there are no a priori moral truths, there’s no way of limning moral reality (no “telephone to the beyond” [GM III:]), in fact there is no moral reality to limn. So the aspiration for theoryindependent moral grounds is rejected. Appeals to reflective equilibrium do no better: they fail to yield a unique moral code, they uncritically take certain moral judgments for granted, and they rely on faith in the value of normative coherence. If Nietzsche rejects all of the previous philosophical attempts to justify moral claims, what remains for him? Many commentators think that Nietzsche endorses a skeptical stance according to which any attempt to offer theory-independent rational considerations in favor of normative claims is doomed. To mention a few examples, Jessica Berry (), Robert Pippin (), and Bernard Williams () argue that Nietzsche 

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See also Loeb () for a helpful overview of the way in which Nietzsche rejects standard methodological assumptions not just in moral philosophy, but in philosophy more generally.

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aims to debunk various attempts at moral theorizing without putting anything substantive in their place. I’ve argued against the skeptical readings elsewhere (Katsafanas ). Here I will simply point out that philosophical ethics does not have to be all or nothing. There is a middle ground. Suppose that, although we lack any way of justifying a unique moral code, we do have a way of specifying constraints on acceptable moral codes. In light of these constraints, some moral codes can be ruled out, some can be ranked superior to others, and so on. This, I suggest, is what Nietzsche does. Rather than trying to move from rationally unimpeachable, theory-independent premises to a uniquely justified moral code, Nietzsche wants to use rationally unimpeachable principles to critique contingent normative commitments. This will result in some moral codes – including, importantly, the JudeoChristian moral code – coming out as unsatisfactory. I take it that this is part of what Nietzsche has in mind when, in BGE , he mentions an alternative to the attempt to find rational foundations for moral codes: Just because our moral philosophers knew the facts of morality only very approximately in arbitrary extracts or in accidental epitomes – for example, as the morality of their environment, their class, their church, the spirit of their time, their climate and part of the world – just because they were poorly informed and not even very curious about different peoples, times, and past ages – they never laid eyes on the real problems of morality; for these emerge only when we compare many moralities. (BGE , emphasis added)

We don’t need to find moral foundations or derive morality from rationally unimpeachable premises; we can, nonetheless, comparatively assess many moralities. Let’s look at how Nietzsche does this.

. Constraints on the Presuppositions of Moral Theory Let me start with the most obvious point. Nietzsche thinks that ethical theories and moral codes are criticizable if they rely on demonstrably false factual claims. Consider Aristotle’s moral theory: arguably, it relies on an outmoded natural teleology that implies that human beings have a function. Or, take Kant: he is committed to the idea that we can individuate actions in terms of the maxims upon which they are performed, so that each action has one corresponding maxim. But Nietzsche thinks that psychological considerations show us that this is misguided: there is not a uniquely correct way of individuating actions, nor is there a uniquely

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correct way of identifying the maxims for actions. Each action is produced by a plurality of interacting motivational forces; the attempt to isolate some unique maxim for a human action is analogous to the attempt to isolate a unique cause for a historical event such as World War II or the Great Depression. Any attempt to isolate one cause, or even some small set of causes, is bound to leave out a great deal of complexity, emphasizing certain factors at the expense of others. Insofar as ethical theories require or presuppose these kinds of indefensible claims about human beings, they are unacceptable. Thus, we frequently find Nietzsche voicing objections of the following form: Plato, Kant, Mill, or some other philosopher has a defective or erroneous account of agency; recognizing this fact undermines the philosopher’s ethical theory. I’ve discussed these constraints at length elsewhere (see Katsafanas , ), so I won’t belabor them here.

. Appeals to Flourishing Especially in his later works, Nietzsche’s most common form of objection to a moral theory is that it undermines life, power, flourishing, or health (for example, this is a dominant theme in the Genealogy and the Antichrist). This is a familiar philosophical move. Ethical theories are often taken to be recipes for the good or flourishing life. Showing that an ethical theory fails to achieve that goal – or, worse still, showing that it actively impedes or undermines that goal – is a good way of critiquing the theory. This project can be conceived in two ways. First, we could accept some moral code’s specification of flourishing and show that its substantive prescriptions actually undermine that goal: following the code’s prescriptions makes it less likely that one will flourish. This would be an internal critique; it would simply show that the ethical theory impedes its own aims. Some of Nietzsche’s criticisms take this form. However, he also critiques theories and codes in a second way: for failing to realize the putatively correct form of flourishing (see Katsafanas  for discussion). This second conception is much more controversial, because there can be substantive disagreements about what constitutes the good life. Suppose  

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For a few examples, see BGE ; GM I:, II:; and TI “Four Errors.” Actually, things are a bit more complex, because theistic ethical theories often deny this point. In GM III, for example, Nietzsche points out that Judeo-Christian moral codes subordinate human flourishing to devotion to God. Devotion to God is the primary requirement; insofar as fulfilling this requirement conflicts with human flourishing, flourishing is to be repudiated. See Katsafanas () for discussion.

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I assert that the flourishing life is the one devoted wholly to alleviating the sufferings of sentient creatures. This is a widely accepted and intuitively appealing conception of the good life: versions of it are present in Schopenhauer, Buddhism, recent animal rights movements, and so on. But Nietzsche thinks this conception is misguided. So, if Nietzsche wants to critique various ethical theories for reducing flourishing, he needs to make two things clear: () which conception of flourishing he is employing, and () why we should accept this conception of flourishing. Elsewhere, I’ve argued that Nietzsche understands flourishing in terms of will to power: to simplify a bit, an individual flourishes, or is healthy, to the extent that she maximally actualizes her capacity for will to power. Why should we accept this conception of flourishing? Nietzsche’s answer, as I read him, is simple: every individual already does aim at power (often in a conflicted, bungled, or suppressed fashion), and this aim is both pervasive and ineradicable; any attempt to give it up will be self-defeating. So, when Nietzsche claims that some set of moral claims undermines the correct notion of flourishing, he can be understood as mounting a deeper form of internal critique: he is appealing to something that the proponents of the moral code already have reason to accept, although they may not themselves see this (see Katsafanas  for the details). Suppose we accept this claim. Applying these points to sets of normative claims, we would say that normative claims are objectionable when their general acceptance tends to undermine will to power. Thus, we can assess moralities as a whole, or particular normative claims within a given morality, in terms of their effects on power. Again, this is a bit of a simplification: a morality or normative claim that undermines power in one type of person might promote it in another; a moral code that undermines power in one cultural context might promote it in another; and so on (see Katsafanas  for discussion). Moreover, there is scholarly dispute over whether Nietzsche is interested in assessing the effects of normative claims merely on some individuals, all individuals, or on culture more generally. Some hold that he is only interested in great individuals; others, that he is only interested in culture; others, that he cares about both. Alhough I won’t defend this point here, I think the last option is the correct one. 

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This simplifies a bit because health can be understood as a tendency toward growth in power. I elide these complications as they won’t be relevant for our purposes. See Dunkle () for a helpful analysis of Nietzsche’s conception of health.

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For our purposes, the important point is simply this: we can use will to power as a constraint on acceptable normative claims. If we have a normative claim whose general acceptance impedes power, this gives us a prima facie reason for rejecting or modifying the claim. If we have two sets of normative claims – say, ancient morality and modern morality – and one of them impedes power to a lesser extent than the other, then we have reason to prefer the former to the latter. Or, operating within a morality: if we can see ways in which modification or abandonment of some particular aspect of our moral code would generate fewer conflicts with will to power, we’d have prima facie reason to modify or abandon the problematic values. (Nietzsche’s critiques of democratic movements, aspirations for equality, valuations of compassion, and so on have this form.) Let’s pause for a moment to consider a potential worry. I pointed out that Nietzsche is skeptical of the search for moral foundations. Doesn’t will to power, as I’ve described it, count as a moral foundation? After all, it is an appeal to an aspect of human nature and it is taken to ground certain normative or evaluative principles. Doesn’t Nietzsche then become a sentimentalist with a new account of the sentiments, or an Aristotelian with a new account of human nature? The answer is: yes and no. Yes, Nietzsche does share with the Aristotelians and the sentimentalists the aspiration to let an account of human nature inform his ethical theorizing. In this respect, he shares with them a form of naturalism in ethics. However, he rejects all of the particular claims that Aristotle relies upon: that there is a human function, that we get a unique specification of the good life out of the account of human nature, and so on. Moreover, he sees the sentimentalists as relying on moralized conceptions of the sentiments; as ignoring the historicity and malleability of the affects; and as failing to see the profound and ubiquitous influences that the unconscious has on our conscious life and our behavior more generally. In all of these ways, he departs from the sentimentalists and the Aristotelians.





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In addition, Nietzsche sometimes employs life affirmation as a standard of assessment. Suppose one moral code generally inclines individuals to condemn life, whereas another moral code generally inclines individuals to affirm life. To use Nietzschean examples: Schopenhauer’s moral code, or Judeo-Christian morality, or Buddhism, will supposedly lead to life-negation; ancient morality, as well as the values that Nietzsche propounds, will supposedly lead to life-affirmation. Insofar as we have reason to prefer life-affirmation to life-negation, we’ll have a reason to prefer codes that promote life-affirmation to codes that promote life-negation. (But why might we have reason to prefer life-affirmation to life-negation? That’s a complicated question that I cannot address here – see Katsafanas []). I discuss this in more detail in Katsafanas  and .

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So, too, Nietzsche’s account of will to power does not operate in anything like the way that the sentimentalist and Aristotelian foundations operate. The sentimentalists and Aristotelians think that they can provide moral foundations from which we can derive substantive conclusions about the good life. As I’ve explained, nothing of substance is derivable from the claim that we will power. Rather than serving as a foundation from which we extract substantive content, the will to power operates as a constraint on evaluative commitments that arise from contingent sources. In short: will to power doesn’t generate a unique set of normative claims and doesn’t justify our own moral commitments (in fact, in requires us to give up core commitments of our current moral code).

. Higher Values So far, we’ve uncovered two ways of comparatively assessing moral theories: we can assess the factual presuppositions of theories and we can examine their effects on flourishing. While the details of these Nietzschean critiques are distinctive, their general structure is not; other philosophers conduct analogous critiques. Let’s now move on to some more novel and distinctively Nietzschean forms of critique. The first is this: Nietzsche sometimes critiques moral values and ethical theories for fostering nihilism. He distinguishes several variants of nihilism, but the one that I’ll focus on here is nihilism as loss of higher values. He writes, “What does nihilism mean? – that the highest values devalue themselves [dass die obersten Werthe sich entwerthen]” (KSA :[]/ WLN ). To understand this claim, we need to know what “higher values” are supposed to be. Elsewhere (Katsafanas ), I’ve argued that Nietzschean “higher values” are a subset of final values (things valued for their own sake) with the following features: () Higher values are overriding and incontestable: if a higher value conflicts with some other value, the other value must be set aside. () Higher values are associated with a characteristic set of affects: such as hatred, love, veneration, and contempt (KSA :[], :[]). () Higher values typically entail subjective meaningfulness. With regard to (), I can regard something as meaningful without viewing it as instantiating a higher value (a past experience can be seen as meaningful or important because of what it enables or produces; a stone picked up on a beach can be subjectively meaningful because of what it evokes;

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and so on). However, treating something as a higher value typically leads one to see it as having an existential significance. If some value is perceived as overriding all others, if it invokes reverence and dread, if it seems entirely incomparable to other values, then we might express this point by saying that the value matters in a way that other values don’t. Religious and core moral values are paradigmatic higher values. Thus: “moral values have hitherto been the highest values” (KSA :[]), and Nietzsche claims that religions have “cultivated in the masses” the sense that they are not to touch everything; that there are holy experiences before which they have to take off their shoes and keep away their unclean hands – this is almost their greatest advance toward humanity. Conversely, perhaps there is nothing about so-called educated people and believers in ‘modern ideas’ that is as nauseous as their lack of modesty and the comfortable insolence of their eyes and hands with which they touch, lick, and finger everything. (BGE ; cf. GM I:)

To see why higher values are important, suppose we lack them. Suppose we value various things, but these valuations are all fungible; we can trade one against another. There is no value that resists all trade-offs, all exchanges. Utilitarianism would be one example of an ethical theory that embodies this view. What might be problematic about a view of this form? In eroding all hierarchies, it initially seems to be good common sense. And Nietzsche can’t object to it, as traditional ethicists could, by claiming that it ignores independent truths about what’s of value. But suppose, instead, that this erosion of all hierarchies generates a form of pathology. Nietzsche has a name for that pathology: being a last man. The last men are described as follows: The earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small. His race is as ineradicable as the flea-beetle; the last man lives longest. “We have invented happiness,” say the last men, and they blink. They have left the regions where it was hard to live, for one needs warmth . . . Becoming sick and harboring suspicion are sinful to them: one proceeds carefully . . . One still works, for work is a form of entertainment. But one is careful lest the entertainment be too harrowing. One no longer becomes poor or rich: both require too much exertion. Who still wants to rule? Who obey? Both require too much exertion. No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels differently goes into a madhouse “Formerly all the world was mad,” say the most refined, and they blink . . . One still quarrels, but one is soon reconciled – else it might spoil the digestion. One has one’s little pleasure

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for the day and one’s little pleasure for the night: but one has a regard for health. “We have invented happiness,” say the last men, and they blink. (Z: I “Prologue” )

There are several important features here. First, the last men have an abundance of values: they value comfort, warmth, happiness, mild work, freedom from quarrels, and so on. Second, the last men lack higher values. There is nothing that they treat as warranting sacrifice, deep commitment, and strong passions such as reverence and dread. Indeed, they don’t even understand how one could have such values: “formerly all the world was mad.” In particular, the world was mad because people displayed strong, lasting commitments to hierarchically structured values; the world did not see all values as fungible. Third, the last men are presented as insipid and trivial. The last men avoid any difficult endeavors, any struggle, any strong exertion. Elsewhere, I’ve argued that these features are connected (Katsafanas ). Suppose you have many values but think that all values are fungible. No values present themselves as demanding, as not to be compromised; all can be exchanged or abandoned. Then it would be odd to remain committed to goals requiring strenuous exertion or difficult struggles. After all, if goal A is easily achieved and goal B requires difficulty and struggle, and if A and B are tradeable, it makes sense to choose the more easily attained goal. Why struggle to attain something difficult when something equally valuable is readily attainable? Some individuals will be inclined toward the more difficult endeavors: some will climb mountains while others watch TV. But, when asked why they do so, why they pursue these challenges, they’ll have little to say: they can appeal only to brute preferences. What they cannot do is claim that the difficult activity is more valuable or more worthwhile than the easy activity. So, in the aggregate, there will be a cultural tendency to abandon the difficult endeavors and to default toward more easily attainable goals. Suppose this is right: suppose that the lack of hierarchically structured values leads a culture toward trivial, insipid goals rather than difficult ones. In order for this to qualify as a problem, we need to have some reason for thinking that this sort of culture is criticizable. And there are two possibilities. One is aesthetic: the last men just look aesthetically unappealing. They lack passion, they live their lives in pursuit of trivial goals, and so on. Certainly there is an element of this in Nietzsche: his descriptions of the last men and related individuals emphasize their bovine mediocrity, the colorless and lifeless existence that they lead, and so on.

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Another appeals to philosophical psychology. Suppose we have some motivational tendency that is frustrated or unfulfilled when we avoid difficult endeavors. If we embrace a set of normative claims that presents all difficult endeavors as ultimately unjustifiable, then this motivational tendency will be frustrated, for its pursuit will look senseless. Nietzsche does think we have such a tendency. He argues that we have an ineradicable motivational tendency that he names will to power. Although there are controversies about the details, it’s now widely agreed that will to power is, at least in part, a tendency to seek challenges, obstacles, or resistances (Katsafanas ; Reginster ). Nietzsche argues that this tendency is both ineradicable and pervasive. Again, the details are controversial, but I’ve argued that Nietzsche thinks this tendency is present in all action: it describes the form that drive-motivated actions take. But the details don’t matter; let’s just grant Nietzsche the claim that there’s a pervasive and ineradicable tendency to seek challenges in order to overcome them. The last men don’t do this, so they’ll experience frustration of this tendency. Consider now how this tendency interacts with higher values. Moralities that incorporate higher values will deem certain struggles and difficulties meaningful, for some values will be uncompromisable. This will give us at least some venues in which to express power in a way that is subjectively meaningful. However, a morality that treats all values as fungible gives us no lasting reason to pursue difficult ends. Thus, in order to avoid frustration of our deepest motivational tendency, we’ll need some set of higher values. If this is right, then we have a constraint on acceptable moralities: they must countenance some set of higher values. Moral codes that lack higher values are inferior to those that possess them.

.

Moral Pathologies

I’ve just shown how lack of higher values generates a pathology: it encourages individuals and cultures to frustrate their deepest aim. But this isn’t the only pathology that normative commitments can induce. Consider three more: decadence, hypertrophy, and mendacity. Nietzsche offers a straightforward definition of (one type of ) decadence: “what one ought to shun is found attractive” (CW ). A decadent person 

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(or culture) will be attracted to things that reduce flourishing and averse to things that promote flourishing. Now, this definition of decadence can be understood substantively or formally. Substantively, we could specify what flourishing actually is and show that a particular morality inclines individuals toward things that undermine flourishing and away from things that promote flourishing. Formally, we’d leave open what qualifies as flourishing, and we’d simply say that whatever the morality identifies with flourishing is actually undermined, rather than promoted, by the morality. Nietzsche employs both understandings of decadence. Sometimes, he’ll call a morality, individual, or culture decadent when it undermines will to power. Thus, a large part of the Genealogy is devoted to showing that Judeo-Christian morality systematically undermines power by associating things that actually enhance power with things that reduce flourishing, and things that actually reduce power with things that enhance flourishing (see Owen  and Katsafanas ). At other times, he’ll lean on the formal definition. Thus, even if we accepted (say) an account that treated avoidance of suffering as a flourishing life, Nietzsche will try to show that the particular valuations (compassion, etc.) actually magnify suffering. Insofar as a morality promotes decadence, we have reason to avoid it or modify it. Second, consider hypertrophy or what’s more commonly called scrupulosity. Today, scrupulosity is understood as a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder focused upon moral or religious principles. This can take different forms, but typical traits include obsessive concerns with whether an action meets a particular principle; extraordinary doubts about whether one has fallen short of a principle; and what Summers and Sinnott-Armstrong () describe as a thought-action fusion, in which merely thinking about potential violations of a principle is experienced as just as aversive as actually violating it. Now, scrupulosity is typically understood as arising in the same way as other obsessive-compulsive disorders: they’re forms of individual pathology. However, Nietzsche’s texts suggest that there are cultural manifestations of scrupulosity. In particular, consider Nietzsche’s discussion of the ever-heightening concerns with guilt in the Genealogy. We can reconstruct Nietzsche’s view as follows: let’s stipulate that the term “bad conscience” refers to a kind of free-floating anxiety (GM II:–). One cause of anxiety is the suppression of drives (GM II:). The Judeo-Christian moral interpretation teaches us that this anxiety is general term of disapprobation; at other times, he uses it to refer to decline of any type (e.g., A ); at others, he uses it to pick out a particular kind of psychic disharmony (e.g., TI “Socrates” ).

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actually a result of guilt, and that guilt results from the failure to suppress certain drives (GM II:–). This interpretation disposes us to attempt to repress additional drives or additional manifestations of drives. When those additional drives are suppressed, though, more anxiety arises (GM II:, III:, III:). So there’s ever-increasing anxiety as ever more drives are repressed. Thus, although repression is presented as a cure for anxiety, each successful instance of repression actually generates more anxiety. So each successful instance of repression creates the need for even more repression. This is why Nietzsche writes that the person who interprets bad conscience as guilt resulting from sin, “when he stills the pain of the wound he at the same time infects the wound” (GM III:). A bit later, he says that by reinterpreting the bad conscience as guilt, The old depression, heaviness, and weariness were indeed overcome through this system of procedures . . . one no longer protested against pain, one thirsted for pain; “more pain! more pain!” the desire of his disciples and initiates has cried for centuries. Every painful orgy of feeling, everything that shattered, bowled over, crushed, enraptured, transported. (GM III:)

In its most extreme forms, this attitude can even be directed at thought. Merely thinking about certain kinds of activities (which would be the expression of natural instincts) is taken to be a defect, and those thoughts are repressed. Guilt spreads. This is just one example. The general point is that certain values magnify or reinforce the very traits that they deem immoral. Values that promote these kinds of pathologies are to be avoided. Finally, consider a third moral pathology: mendacity. In the Genealogy, Nietzsche argues that the priests who engage in revaluation are necessarily selfdeceived. The priests bear a form of psychic tension, for they continue to desire that which they reflectively condemn: power, health, dominance, and strength (GM I:). Accordingly, the priest is self-deceived: he cannot, in full consciousness, acknowledge his own desires and the role that they play in his psychic economy, for to acknowledge them would be to disrupt their functioning (GM I:, I:). Thus, “the human being of ressentiment is neither sincere, nor naïve, nor honest and frank with himself” (GM I:). By way of illustration, Nietzsche quotes passages from Aquinas and Tertullian in GM I:. These passages speak of the good taking delight in witnessing God’s torturing and tormenting of the nobles. This obvious revenge fantasy conceals a hidden desire for power and dominance (or so Nietzsche suggests). Insofar as a normative commitment promotes or even requires this kind of mendacity, Nietzsche suggests that we have reason to reject or modify it.

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But why? As I read him, Nietzsche doesn’t claim that mendacity or selfdeception as such is problematic; rather, it is problematic only insofar as and to the extent that it undermines will to power.

. Summary Nietzsche does not think we can defend any set of normative claims as uniquely justified, as the unique product of rational reflection. But this does not entail that assessments of normative commitments are nothing more than expressions of personal preference. What we can do, in order to assess competing normative claims and theories, is examine their conformity with a set of constraints. I’ve mentioned the following constraints: the theory must not be dependent on false presuppositions about human agency; it must not instantiate norms that conflict with flourishing; it must provide us with some higher values; it must not foster moral pathologies such as decadence, hypertrophy, and mendacity. We can see these as constraints on acceptable normative commitments. JudeoChristian morality fails all of them: Nietzsche argues that it depends on false assumptions about freedom of will; that it instantiates norms that conflict with flourishing; that it used to provide higher values, but that its valuation of truth has rendered these higher valuations untenable; and that it fosters various pathologies. This, Nietzsche thinks, gives us reason to look for a new set of values, a new morality that could avoid these problems while providing us with ideals toward which we might strive. And he urges us – or some very small subset of us at any rate – to promote the emergence of these new values. In closing, let’s return to our original question: Does Nietzsche have a distinctive approach to moral philosophy? Does he deserve Simmel’s title of the Copernicus of philosophical ethics? I think the answer is mixed. We’ve seen, in the first two sections, that Nietzsche does reject standard approaches to philosophical ethics. And we’ve seen, in Sections . and . that some of his concerns are quite novel: he wants to assess moral theories with regard to whether they can sustain higher values and the extent to which they generate pathologies. Other concerns, though, are more traditional: whether the theory makes false presuppositions (see Section .) and whether it conflicts with flourishing (see Section .). But, even in pursuing these traditional approaches, Nietzsche diverges from the mainstream. For example, I’ve pointed out that his account of flourishing is based in his will-to-power theory, which is in turn based on his drive psychology.

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So the normative claims that Nietzsche endorses will be quite different than those endorsed by traditional theorists. Moreover, notice that engaging in this Nietzschean type of philosophical ethics requires that we assess whole sets of normative commitments and the way in which they interact with cultures, individuals, and societies. These critiques don’t concern particular individuals, but types and tendencies fostered within a society; the critiques tend to trace developments over long stretches of time, rather than momentary problems; and some of the things critiqued are not problematic in their individuality, but only when seen as fostering certain pathologies. As a result, many of these problems won’t be visible until the morality is lived. This is why Nietzsche’s critiques of normative commitments and ethical theories tend to employ genealogies and histories: the sorts of problems that he is interested in show up over long stretches of time, and may not be detectable merely by considering the propositions endorsed by the morality. Rather than asking whether a claim such as “promises must be kept” is justifiable, we can ask how such a claim functions within a particular morality. What does it promote? How is it lived? Those are the questions that will bring into view the pathologies, conflicts, and tensions within the code. 

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For extremely helpful comments on this paper, thanks to Paul Loeb, Matt Meyer, Justin Remhof, and the participants in the  Nietzsche Rome Workshop.

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 

The Aims of Philosophy

 

Nietzsche’s Aesthetic Conception of Philosophy A (Post-Kantian) Interpretation of The Gay Science § João Constâncio Nietzsche is constantly engaged in metaphilosophical reflections. The question of what philosophy is – and what philosophy should be – has, for him, the status of a major philosophical question, as is the case, too, with all other great philosophers. And, like Plato or Kant or Hegel, Nietzsche gives answers to that question that are often tremendously perplexing for the common reader. In this chapter I shall limit myself as much as possible to the analysis of one single text, namely GS , which is a text in which Nietzsche suggests that doing philosophy is a matter of exercising one’s “taste” – fundamentally a matter of “good taste,” so to speak. What could be more perplexing for the common reader, but also for many Nietzsche scholars, than such a definition of philosophy? An important part of my argument will be based on the claim that Kant’s aesthetics in the third Critique, particularly Kant’s conception of a “reflective taste [Reflexions-Geschmack]” (CJ §), should play an important role in our interpretation of Nietzsche’s conception of taste, and hence also of his aesthetic conception of philosophy in such texts as GS . That is not to say that Nietzsche knows that his conception of taste is indebted to Kant’s, or that it is fundamentally akin to Kant’s in at least certain crucial respects. We are not concerned here so much with questions regarding Kant’s direct influence on Nietzsche as rather with questions regarding philosophical affinities and continuities within a given tradition of thought. My general approach to the interpretation of Nietzsche’s writings is to investigate such affinities and continuities, especially in cases in which Nietzsche seems not to be aware of them. I believe it can be shown that in many respects Nietzsche is much closer to Kant than it is usually assumed,  

CJ is the abbreviation for Kant’s Critique of Judgment. All translations are from Kant (). In this respect, the present chapter explores the themes introduced in Branco and Constâncio (). Unfortunately, Maria João Mayer Branco couldn’t work with me as a coauthor on the present chapter. However, I am highly indebted to her for our years-long collaboration, and especially for all her work on the relationship between Nietzsche and Kantian aesthetics.



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and the main reason for this is that his understanding of philosophy and what counts as philosophical problems was essentially shaped at a very early stage by his readings of Lange and Schopenhauer, both of whom have Kant’s critique of metaphysics as their philosophical starting point. With respect to Schopenhauer, I have argued elsewhere that he never really ceased to be Nietzsche’s “master” and “educator.” It is well known that Nietzsche criticized Schopenhauer’s metaphysics even before writing The Birth of Tragedy, but the main themes, concepts, and problems of his philosophy remained Schopenhauerian to the end. And what I take to be this fundamental indebtedness to Schopenhauer (and indirectly to Kant) is also at the root of another controversial aspect of my approach to the interpretation of Nietzsche’s thought. I think there is much more unity in the whole of Nietzsche’s thought than most scholars of today allow for, and we should believe him when he writes that what changed from The Birth of Tragedy to the next phase of his writings was that he abandoned the Kantian and Schopenhauerian vocabulary (their “formulas,” as he puts it), but not the views – and above all not the new valuations – that he was already trying to express in The Birth of Tragedy (BT “Attempt” ). We shall see how all of these aspects of my approach to the interpretation of Nietzsche play a role in my analysis of GS . But let us plunge immediately into this analysis. I have divided it in six sections, which correspond to what seem to me to be the key moments of the aphorism, the first one of which is its title.

. “Science” as Prejudice The title of GS  is: “‘Science’ as Prejudice.” This is one of many texts in which Nietzsche’s metaphilosophical reflections oppose philosophy to “science.” When he makes this opposition, he usually uses the term “science [Wissenschaft]” to designate all of the academic disciplines, and he has in view the “science” in which he became a professor – that is, ancient philology – no less than, say, physics or mathematics. And because he has the academia in view, the opposition is often between philosophers and “scholars [Gelehrte],” those who do “science” at the universities. This will be the case in GS , too. Those who do philosophy will be contrasted with the “scholars” who cannot see further than the horizons delimited by the questions at stake in the academic disciplines that make 

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The following translations of Nietzsche’s works are used: BGE (); BT (); GM (); GS (); RWB (); Z ().

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their professions. But why is “science” in quotation marks in the title of GS ? One reason may be that Nietzsche wants to indicate that science does not have to be what it is in academia – and, especially, that there can be a “gay” or “cheerful [fröhlich]” science, which, in the end, is nothing else than philosophy as Nietzsche understands it. Perhaps, the opposition he wants to draw is between philosophy as a “cheerful science” (“my secret wisdom and gaya scienza,” GS ) and the “science” of the scholars. But another reason for the quotation marks may be that, in this particular text, Nietzsche seems to narrow down the meaning of the word “science,” and use it in the sense of “science as understood by the positivists.” He does not use the word “positivism” or “positivists” here (as he uses, for example, in similar passages in Beyond Good and Evil). But what he clearly has in mind is “science” as understood by a particular type of person to whom he refers in the aphorism as “Mr. Mechanic [den Herrn Mechanikern, in the plural in the original German text]” (GS ). As we shall see in what follows, this “Mr. Mechanic” is one who (a) sees the world as a “mechanistic world” (GS ) – that is, as a world of matter existing in time and space and ruled exclusively by causality and the other Newtonian-Kantian categories or principles – and (b) one who presupposes that all questions that can be asked – as well as all answers that can be given to the questions human beings ask, that is, everything that human beings can understand – must be framed in terms of those categories, especially causality (i.e., mechanic relationships of cause and effect). That is his “prejudice” – that is “‘Science’ as Prejudice,” or positivism.

. The “Problem of Values” This is how Nietzsche begins the aphorism: It follows from the laws that govern rankordering [Rangordnung] that scholars, insofar as they belong to the intellectual middle class, are not even allowed to catch sight of the truly great problems and question marks; moreover, their courage and eyes simply don’t reach that far – and above all, the need that makes them scholars, their inner expectations and wish that things might be such and such, their fear and hope, too soon find rest and satisfaction. (GS )

The difference between philosophy and science is that only the former is able to “catch sight of the truly great problems and question marks.” There 

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See, in particular, BGE , where Nietzsche writes about the “‘Wirklichkeits-Philosophen’ oder ‘Positivisten’.”

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are several passages in Nietzsche’s writings that make relatively clear what he means by this. The “truly great problems” are those that “require great love [die grossen Probleme verlangen alle die grosse Liebe]” (GS ), presumably because they require great care for the question of what matters in general, what is and isn’t of value – or, in the formula Nietzsche uses in the Genealogy, “the problem of value” (GM I:). As Werner Stegmaier rightly notes in his excellent commentary to book five of The Gay Science, this passage of the Genealogy (the last sentence of the famous footnote that ends the first essay in GM I:) is very closely associated with our GS  not only because both texts imply that what is at stake in philosophy is “the problem of value,” but also because both suggest that, although in the age of positivism philosophy tends to be subordinated to the sciences, things should be the other way around. Inverting this subordination – this “rankordering” – is crucial for philosophy to succeed in determining the “rank order” of values in general. In the Genealogy, Nietzsche writes: “All sciences must, from now on, prepare the way for the future work of the philosopher: this work being understood to mean that the philosopher has to solve the problem of values and that he has to determine the rank order of values” (GM I:). As is well known, in the Genealogy the “problem of values” is fundamentally the problem of moral values – the problem regarding “the value of those values” (GM P:). But this problem, as the Genealogy makes quite clear, and book five of The Gay Science underscores, is ultimately the problem that, in late modernity – in the age of the “death of God” – no true heir of European culture and the philosophical tradition (no “good European”) can ignore or evade: “the problem of the value of existence,” which Schopenhauer was the first to raise by asking, “in a terrifying way,” “Does existence have a meaning at all?” (GS ). In other words, for Nietzsche all the “truly great problems and questions marks,” the problems that “require great love,” the problems regarding “the value of our values” seem to converge onto the problem of nihilism. The ultimate question is not only what should matter, but what can matter – or, whether anything can matter (and if so what and how and in which “order of rank”), particularly in the age of the death of God. If this is so, then the first idea of GS  is that “scholars” belong to “the intellectual middle class” because the problems and question marks at stake in their sciences are too small or limited to raise not only the problem of the value of moral values, but also the problem of the “value of existence,” the problem of nihilism. But, on the other hand, that accords with 

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“the laws that govern rankordering [Rangordnung]” – for these laws determine that the sciences should not be ends in themselves, even less a purpose to be served by philosophy. Instead, the sciences should exist to serve philosophy – that is, they should indeed raise and answer questions that are of limited range, but which are useful for philosophy. This is an idea repeated many times in Beyond Good and Evil (BGE , , , , also  and ). Scholars – particularly if understood as “critics” – are mere “tools of philosophers,” although in our age the positivists have inverted this natural order of rank and conceive of philosophy as a critical effort that serves the sciences (see, in particular, BGE ).

. The “Spencerian Perspective” and Its Values Nietzsche’s next step in GS  is to attack Herbert Spencer as a perfect example of the scholar and man of science, basically the positivist, who tries to philosophize but is too confined to the limited horizons of the problems at stake in his particular discipline to be able to question his values and raise “the problem of values”: What makes, for instance, the pedantic Englishman Herbert Spencer rave in his own way and makes him draw a line of hope, a horizon which defines what is desirable; that definitive reconciliation of “egoism and altruism” about which he spins fables – this almost nauseates the likes of us [das macht Unsereinem beinahe Ekel]: a human race that adopts as its ultimate perspective such a Spencerian perspective would strike us as deserving of contempt, of annihilation! But that he had to view as his highest hope what to others counts and should count only as a disgusting possibility is a question mark that Spencer would have been unable to foresee. (GS )

In his letters, Nietzsche refers to Herbert Spencer has a “highly erudite” man from whom he was able to learn much about the theory of evolution. This is, of course, a compliment, but it also means that Spencer epitomizes the scholarly type, and has, hence, the typical limitations of the scholar. But what disgusts or nauseates Nietzsche so much in Spencer’s writings? Obviously, the doctrine that evolution will eventually lead to a “definitive reconciliation of ‘egoism and altruism’” (i.e., that competitive egoism will ultimately benefit everyone by creating a society in which each person will have her self-regarding impulses satisfied while also deriving pleasure, as well as objective benefits, from cooperating with others; Spencer believes that evolution will lead to a future society of satisfied egoists in which no 

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one will either need or want to be helped by others to the point of causing their self-sacrifice, and so altruistic actions will continue to exist for the sake of society but will eventually lose their self-sacrificing tendency and become simply pleasurable – people will just derive pleasure from helping and cooperating with others, and therefore the satisfaction of their otherregarding impulses will, at the same time, satisfy their egoism). And why should this doctrine be so revolting for Nietzsche? Its bourgeois optimism is certainly one reason. And it is not hard to guess that this bourgeois optimism is particularly revolting for Nietzsche because it can be seen as an almost extreme example of the kind of metaphysical teleology that, in Nietzsche’s view, arises solely from human self-deception, and which has become wholly discredited in the age of the death of God. Moreover, it is an epistemological, no less than a metaphysical, optimism, as it assumes that science is able to know where the world at large is heading to – able to predict its telos, its final destination and purpose. Since The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche never ceased to express his contempt for this kind of optimism, which he believed resulted from Socrates’ and Plato’s invention of the ideal of the “theoretical man” (see, in particular, BT –). Optimism, for Nietzsche, goes hand in hand with faith in science – a faith that consists in believing that scientific progress is always good because the discovery of the truth is always good, but also in believing in the possibility of discovering the whole truth about everything and eliminating all mystery from the world. The world of a man of science like Spencer is a world from which the “riddle of the world,” as Schopenhauer termed it, is absent. We shall see in a moment how the theme of the mysterious character of the world is so crucially important in GS . But first let us note that Nietzsche’s nausea in GS  is perhaps best understood if one connects this text with Nietzsche’s early views about tragedy. According to the early Nietzsche, there is “an eternal struggle between the theoretical and the tragic views of the world” (BT ), and that is why ancient tragedy died out in Greek culture: it was “thrown off course by the dialectical drive towards knowledge and the optimism of science” (BT ). Spencer has a theoretical view of the world, and hence no tragic view of the world, or, in other words, Spencer’s theoretical optimism entails, for Nietzsche, a lack of sense for the tragic. This is, perhaps, what nauseates Nietzsche the most. The picture of humanity losing its sense of tragedy – which is ultimately the sense of “its own imminent shipwreck as a whole” – is, for Nietzsche, “the saddest picture imaginable” (RWB ). And this certainly goes to the 

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heart of Spencer’s optimism – and Nietzsche’s “nausea” (Ekel). In imagining a “definitive reconciliation of ‘egoism and altruism’,” Spencer imagines, and desires, that humanity achieve one day a final state of absolute peace and happiness. But imagining and desiring such a state – and going so far as to ground its possibility in science – is basically an instance of the most serious kind of denial and self-deception. The basic features of the world, its mysteriousness and its tragic nature, are eliminated from one’s view, and that happens in an age in which our metaphysical delusions have already been exposed and shattered. Yes, Spencer reacts to the death of God not by confronting himself with the “infinite nothing” and “empty space” (GS ) that is left after that death, but rather by creating a new teleological fantasy. (Note that he cannot be said to “affirm life,” for he simply evades the very thought of “life,” such that, instead of facing life as it is, he “spins fables” about the future of humanity. His effort to reconcile altruism and egoism is part of this attitude. The death of God does not prompt him to question his values (the value of his values). Instead, he forges an artificial compatibilism between altruism and egoism, so as to reiterate, in a new form, the predominant values of his social milieu). So, “a human race that adopts as its ultimate perspective such a Spencerian perspective would strike us as deserving of contempt, of annihilation!,” Nietzsche exclaims (GS ). Spencer functions in the aphorism as a representative of “the last human being” (Z:I “Prologue” ). The “last human being” will come to being if the time comes “when human beings no longer launch the arrow of their longing beyond the human, and the string of their bow will have forgotten how to whir” (Z:I “Prologue” ). Spencer conjures up in Nietzsche’s mind the picture of such a time, indeed “the saddest picture imaginable” (RWB ), the picture of a future humanity living happily, materially satisfied, and in peace, but deprived of the sense of tragedy, and hence of “the magnificent tension of the spirit” that has created in us a noble longing for questioning and self-overcoming (BGE P). As Nietzsche himself notes, Spencer was certainly “unable to foresee” this reaction to his writings. How could he have ever foreseen that his “highest hope” would stir nausea in some of his readers, or even in a single one? And we, Nietzsche’s readers also tend to be quite surprised by the violence of Nietzsche’s nausea, and especially by the fact that his rejection of Spencer is based on nausea – as if his nausea, or any other affect or passion, could be an argument against the thoughts of a philosopher. However, this is precisely the point: a philosopher is a philosopher and

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not a scholar because he deals with “the problem of values,” but dealing with the problem of values requires that one activate one’s affects and make judgments that spring from one’s affects. As we shall see, in GS  Nietzsche makes it quite explicit that, for him, activating one’s affects and making affective judgments is nothing else than exercising one’s taste. A philosopher is a philosopher and not a scholar because he makes evaluative judgments that question his values (and our values) in a fundamental way, but such evaluative judgments cannot have a better designation than aesthetic judgments, or judgments of taste. As announced at the beginning, I believe that “taste,” here, should be understood as a quasi-Kantian reflective taste. But let us continue with the analysis of the text before trying to make that point.

. Valuations as Normative Categorizations This is how the text continues after the attack on Spencer: So, too, it is with the faith with which so many materialistic natural scientists rest content: the faith in a world that is supposed to have its equivalent and measure in human thought, in human valuations – a “world of truth” that can be grasped entirely with the help of our four-cornered little human reason. (GS )

A full inquiry into what is implied in this passage would force us to exploit the immense complexities of Nietzsche’s views on Kant’s first Critique, as well as his relationship with neo-Kantianism. But the main point that he wants to make here seems to me quite easy to fathom out: it’s the old Langean point that the “materialistic natural scientists” – again, the positivists who believe that, since everything is matter in space and time, mechanical relationships of cause and effect explain everything there is to explain in the universe – reify the categories that Kant has shown to be nothing more than the conceptual dimension of our cognitive apparatus (our “human organization,” in Lange’s favorite expression). In Kant’s view – and Lange’s – “the understanding does not draw its laws from nature, it prescribes them to nature” (Prol §, ), a crucial thesis of the Critique of Pure Reason and the Prolegomena that Nietzsche quotes approvingly in Human, All Too Human (HH ). The principle of causality, for example, is merely a law that our understanding prescribes to nature, not a 

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law that our understanding draws from nature, and, if this is so, then the world of the “materialistic natural scientists” is just a world for us, not a world that exists “in itself.” They can be said to reify causality and the other categories of the mechanic (or Newtonian) view of the world, for they take those categories to be the basic features of reality in itself – as if the world in itself had “its equivalent and measure in human thought” (GS ). In other words, they take the laws of our understanding to be absolute truths, and thus fail to see, first, that the results of the sciences are only relative truths – that is, truths that are relative to our “human organization,” relative to the laws of our understanding – and, second, they fail to see that the mechanical sciences are so successful because the basic laws of mechanics are prescribed in advance to nature by our understanding. This is what it means that the “materialistic natural scientists” have (a wrong) faith “in a ‘world of truth’ that can be grasped entirely with the help of our four-cornered little human reason” (GS ). Note that Nietzsche formulated this view quite explicitly in the lectures that he gave at Basel on pre-Platonic philosophy throughout the s (more precisely, from  to  up until ). Materialism is “absurd,” he writes, if it fails to see that “everything objective is in many ways conditioned by the subject of knowledge.” But if materialism does not eliminate the role of the subject of knowledge, it can be a “salutary” hypothesis that allows for the “relative truth” to be sought in science. With materialism so understood, “all the results of science retain their truth for us, although not an absolute truth” (KGW II/: p. , my translation). But what has all this to do with Spencer and, especially, with Nietzsche’s conception of philosophy? The key, I think, is in one single word, which makes this passage characteristic of the mature Nietzsche: Werthbegriffe, “valuations,” “concepts of value.” In believing that the laws of our understanding mirror the laws of reality itself, the positivists fail to appreciate that, as Kant taught us, laws are “rules” or, in present-day vocabulary, norms, and therefore valuations. Causality is one such norm: in saying that “everything that happens has its cause,” the principle of causality lays out the norm that “you ought to judge on the assumption that everything that happens has its cause.” Science is “fraught with ought,” as Sellars would say. It is not by chance that Nietzsche uses here the formula “world of truth,” for one of the main ideas of his mature thought is that science rests on one basic normative faith: the “metaphysical faith” in the unconditional value of the truth: “even we knowers of today, we godless metaphysicians, still take our fire, too, from the flame lit by the thousand-year old faith, the

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Christian faith which was also Plato’s faith, that God is truth; that truth is divine” (GS ; see GM III:). And so we see the connection between this section of GS  and what Nietzsche had just said about Spencer. Ultimately, what he finds nauseating in Spencer is his positivism – because positivism is incompatible with a tragic view of the world, but also because it is an unwarranted, unreflective, therefore unphilosophical reification of a given set of valuations. The task of a philosopher is to question his valuations and raise “the problem of values.” But Spencer is, in the end, just a man of science and not a philosopher. He takes for granted the epistemic norms that define the basic nature and horizon of the mechanistic world, as well as the concept of truth that accords with those norms. Instead, he should – and every genuine philosopher should – be able to enlarge his way of thinking and find new affective perspectives that might allow him to see the limitations of the worldview of the “materialistic natural scientists.” Most likely, many Nietzsche scholars will consider this interpretation of GS  to be too Kantian and too idealistic. But recall, for example, how in the Nachlass Nietzsche concedes that he has his own “type of idealism” insofar as he believes that every sensation contains a certain valuation (Werthschätzung), and every valuation fantasises and invents (phantasirt und erfindet, see KSA :[]: “Meine Art von ‘Idealismus’” ). Recall also how the early Nietzsche connected his recovery of the Greek tragic view of the world with the end of metaphysics and the “despair of the truth” that he believed to be a direct consequence of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (see, in particular, BT  and SE ). Later, his expositions of the death of God and modern nihilism will often abstain from establishing a connection with the Kantian revolution in philosophy. But it is hard to believe that he ever forgot “the extraordinary courage and wisdom of Kant and Schopenhauer” (BT ) – the extraordinary courage and wisdom involved in their “idealistic” critique of metaphysical truth.

. Taste Let us go back to the text. Now Nietzsche explicitly introduces the term “taste” (Geschmack), as well as the very important notion of the polysemic, ambiguous character of existence. What? Do we really want to demote existence in this way to an exercise in arithmetic and an indoor diversion for mathematicians? Above all, one shouldn’t want to strip it of its ambiguous [vieldeutig] character: that,

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gentlemen, is what good taste demands – above all, the taste of reverence for everything that lies beyond your horizon! That the only rightful interpretation of the world should be one to which you have a right; one by which one can do research and go on scientifically in your sense of the term (you really mean mechanistically?) – one that permits counting, calculating, weighing, seeing, grasping, and nothing else – that is a crudity and naïveté, assuming it is not a mental illness, an idiocy. (GS )

This passage is likely to be perplexing to most philosophers of today, but also to many Nietzsche scholars. The notion that existence has an “ambiguous character” is far from being obvious, and, although it is often expressed and put to use in Nietzsche’s writings – particularly in The Gay Science – it is rarely mentioned in the Nietzsche studies of today. In fact, The Gay Science practically commences with this idea: in aphorism , Nietzsche describes his experience of being alive (his philosophical life) as a “trembling with the craving and rapture of questioning [Fragen],” and he states that what is there to question, the object, as it were, of his Fragen, is “the whole marvelous uncertainty and ambiguity [Vieldeutigkeit] of existence” (GS ). In aphorism , he deals explicitly with what he calls “the perspectival character of existence [der perspektivische Charakter des Daseins],” and he explains it by writing that “today we are at least far away from the ridiculous immodesty of decreeing from our angle that perspectives are permitted only from this angle. Rather, the world has once again become infinite to us: insofar as we cannot reject the possibility that it includes infinite interpretations” (GS ). In aphorism , he again writes about the “questionable” or “interrogative character of things [der Fragezeichen-Charakter der Dinge]” – or, translated slightly differently, he writes that “things” have “the character of question marks” (FragezeichenCharakter, GS ). Things are question marks; the world admits of infinite interpretations; existence (or the world) is only given within a potentially infinite multiplicity of perspectives; existence is polysemic; existence has many meanings and is ambiguous by nature. What does Nietzsche want to say by this, and why does it say it in GS ? The categories of the mechanistic worldview “demote existence ... to an exercise in arithmetic and an indoor diversion for mathematicians”: existence becomes mathematizable, and thus reducible to an unambiguous, easy-to-understand system of causal relations. Even things such as love, hate, friendship, or democracy come under that perspective. As we shall see in a moment, Nietzsche’s example – given at the end of the aphorism – is neither love, nor hate, nor friendship, nor democracy, but music, “a piece of music [eine Musik]” (GS ). His idea is, of course, that the

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mechanistic perspective of the “materialistic natural scientists” turns all of these things, even a piece of music, into something quantifiable – into something that “permits counting, calculating, weighing, seeing, grasping, and nothing else” (GS ). This deprives them of their mystery, their questionable, interrogative character. They cease to be “question marks,” and become understandable. The problem, however, is that, in this process, they only become “understandable” in terms of the crude simplifications involved in the physical-mathematical categories; they can now be “grasped entirely,” but only “with the help of our four-cornered little human reason” (GS ) – that is, because our reason has prescribed in advance the laws according to which we “understand” them. Naturally, one can argue that, if one wants to understand them in some way, and if the only way to understand them is by using simplifying categories, then one should want to use these categories. Those things will become at least somewhat understandable, which might be good enough. For Nietzsche, however, wanting to simplify things in order to understand them from the perspective of our “four-cornered little human reason” is in bad taste. One should want things to remain questionable, to remain “question marks,” to remain open to “infinite interpretations”: “one shouldn’t want [my emphasis] to strip existence of its ambiguous character: that, gentlemen, is what good taste demands” (GS ). Now the question is, first, why Nietzsche uses the word “taste” here – and in which precise sense – and then what does he mean by “good taste” and its “demands.” Let us start by going back to the attack on Spencer. There, Nietzsche does his best to make clear that he is writing with his guts, as if he were the mere mouthpiece of his own nausea. This can be seen as a performative example of what it means for a philosopher to philosophize by exercising his taste, or by satisfying the “demands” of “good taste.” But then “taste” seems to be no more than a gut feeling. Thus, in his commentary, Stegmaier writes that in the aphorism Nietzsche renounces “any claim to objectivity”: he is simply impelled by nausea to oppose his “reflective morality” to Spencer’s “unreflective morality” (Stegmaier : –). And, according to Stegmaier, that is so because what Nietzsche tries to do in the aphorism is not to replace one truth-claim with another. He is not trying to “refute” Spencer (and “Mr. Mechanic”), so as to show that the latter’s “world of truth” is a lie and should give way to another version of the truth about the world. Nietzsche is, instead, expressing his decision (Entscheidung) to reject Spencer’s interpretation of the world and to live in accordance with a different (but not necessarily “truer”) interpretation of the world (Stegmaier

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: , my translations). However, the fact that, as Stegmaier himself underlines, Nietzsche’s morality (or his “table of goods,” if we prefer to avoid the term “morality”) can be said to be “reflective,” whereas Spencer’s can be said to be “unreflective,” is perhaps already a first sign that Nietzsche’s judgments of taste in the aphorism involve much more than just a gut feeling, or that his “decision” in favor of a certain interpretation of the world is grounded in much more than just an irrational discharge of nausea. Indeed, what I tried to spell out in my analysis of the attack on Spencer were the reasons that Nietzsche may have had for rejecting the “Spencerian perspective.” On the one hand, it should be emphasized that such reasons are far from belonging to an abstract, purely rational “space of reasons.” They result from Nietzsche’s personal experience of life, from his sensations, his desires, his feelings, his perspectival, affective thoughts – they belong to the “body,” they are “aesthetic.” Moreover, it should be clear that, given their affective nature, or their rootedness in the body, they are anything but scientific truths. They are not “knowledge,” and Stegmaier is right in pointing out that that they do not make truth-claims in the same way as scientific judgments do. But, on the other hand, Nietzsche’s reasons for rejecting the “Spencerian perspective” are too complicated to be just a matter of feeling. They involve many concepts, such as “optimism,” “sense for the tragic,” “the ideal of the theoretical human being,” “nihilism,” “the last human being,” and so on. And these concepts are Nietzsche’s concepts: they, too, have arisen from his personal experience of life, from his sensations, his desires, his feelings – they are his thoughts about life, the reflective expression of the way in which he has been affected by life. They seem to inhabit a space that is not the pure “space of reasons,” but is also not a pure space of feelings. What kind of space is this? In Kant’s philosophy, it is the (intermediate) space of reflection, and indeed of reflective taste (CJ §). One way of trying to make sense of these notions of a space of reflection and a reflective taste might consist in establishing, pace Stegmaier, that it is and is not true that Nietzsche renounces “any claim to objectivity” in his attack on Spencer and in the aphorism as a whole. Perhaps, that could be simply true if we had to use “objectivity” in its usual meaning. Nietzsche’s value-judgments do not claim to constrain every human subject to take them for “objectively valid,” or “objectively true.” But the usual meaning of “objectivity” is not the only possible one and, as is well known, in the Genealogy Nietzsche presents his own, alternative concept of “objectivity” (GM III:). There, he denies that “objectivity” in the usual sense really exists, at least with respect to evaluative judgments: no judgment about

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what is good, or bad, or evil, or beautiful, or ridiculous is ever “objectively valid.” That is because all we can say about values will always be at least influenced, if not simply determined, by our affects. But our affective experience can be more complex or more simple, richer or poorer, and for this reason not everything we can say about values is equally perceptive or insightful. This is what Christopher Janaway rightly calls the “affective plurality claim” involved in Nietzsche’s perspectivism. Nietzsche’s perspectivism includes the view that enriching our affective experience by engaging in a plurality of affective perspectives about one same thing, or subject-matter, or value, or value-constellation, makes one’s overall perspective more insightful. In this particular sense – and using quotation marks – we can speak of “objectivity” and of more or less “objective” valuejudgments. If we renounce our (always futile) attempts to suppress all subjective “interest” – that is, all “affects” and their “perspectives” – and, instead, engage in the multiplication of the number of our perspectival affects, then we have a gain in “objectivity”: our new overall perspective can be said to be “more objective” than our previous one. As Nietzsche famously puts it, “the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our ‘concept’ of this thing, our ‘objectivity’, be” (GM III:). Or, as he puts it in the Nachlass: “Task: to see things as they are! Means: to be able to see them with one hundred eyes, from the point of view of many people” (KSA :[], my translation). I have tried to show elsewhere at some length how this conception of “objectivity” and other related aspects of Nietzsche’s perspectivism should make us understand his conception of taste in the light of Kant’s conception of a reflective taste, of a “free play” of the imagination and the understanding, a sensus communis, and other basic notions of Kantian aesthetics (and I have also tried to show how the parallel between the Nietzsche’s and Kant’s conception of taste breaks at a few crucial points). Here, I should limit myself as much as possible to the metaphilosophical point involved in using the Kantian notion of reflective taste to interpret Nietzsche’s conception of taste. This point is that, if Nietzsche understands “taste” in the sense of a (post-Kantian) “reflective taste” – or, in other words, if “good taste,” for him, is what results from the reflective effort to use one’s imagination to multiply the number of one’s “eyes” or affective perspectives – then the fact that he sees philosophical judgments as  

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 See Janaway (: ). See also KSA :[] and Z:II “Of immaculate Perception.” See Branco and Constâncio () and Constâncio ().

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judgments of taste does not necessarily entail that he sees philosophy as a matter of mere idiosyncrasy or subjective preference, or arbitrary “decision.” The point of Kant’s distinction between “sensorial taste” and “reflective taste” is precisely to distinguish between preferences that are unreflective, merely sensorial, therefore physiologically idiosyncratic (e.g., “I like the taste of wasabi”) and preferences (e.g., “I like reading Proust, he writes beautifully”) that can claim to transcend the merely idiosyncratic and address other human subjects because they arise from “reflection” – that is, from the reflective use, and indeed the “free play,” of human faculties such as the imagination and the understanding. In the latter case, it remains true that the judgment of taste cannot claim to be objectively valid in the cognitive sense of the word. It is still an individual’s judgment, it is still a judgment that depends in that individual’s affects, and it is still a judgment about what he feels, so that it does not necessarily bind or constrain others to accept it as true. It is not “knowledge,” let alone “science.” But because it is a reflective judgment it addresses all other human subjects, and claims their approval by inviting them to use their own cognitive faculties to reflect and agree with it. As Kant puts it, reflective taste cannot be disputed, and yet it can be discussed: although one cannot ever demonstrate (in a cognitive disputatio) that an aesthetic judgment is true or false, one can nevertheless discuss an aesthetic judgment in an intersubjectively meaningful way (cf. CJ §). All of this depends, of course, from Kant’s concept of “reflection.” In the third Critique, reflection is opposed to determination (CJ Intro). Judgment “in general” is “the ability to think the particular as contained in the universal” (CJ Intro). But there are two specific ways to “think the particular as contained in the universal”: either in a “determinative judgment,” or in a “reflective judgment.” In the former case, the particular is simply “subsumed” under the universal – that is, under a determinate concept, rule, principle, law, or norm. Thus, the understanding gives the law to nature by subsuming this whole domain under its concepts (the categories), and practical reason gives the law to the domain of human action by subsuming the domain of freedom (or the 

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Note that, although Nietzsche avoids thinking in terms of “faculties” and does not try to distinguish the imagination from the understanding, it should be clear that the imagination is a major theme in his writings. He often expresses the view that even our most basic drives and sensations are “inventive,” and he often describes the imagination as a “force,” an inventing, fabulating, “artistic,” “poetic” force (eine dichtende Kraft) that comes from the unconscious depths of our inner life and plays a crucial role not only in perception, but also in the development of language and thought: see, for example, “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense,” D  and D  with BGE  and BGE ; see Siemens () and Lupo ().

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“faculty of desire”) under its moral principles, even though the validity of such a law is “merely practical” (cf. CJ Preface; Intro). But, in the case of a reflective judgment, “only the particular is given and judgment has to find the universal for it” (CJ Intro). Reflection in this sense is a search for concepts, an attempt to form concepts in cases where “only the particular is given” and no “determination” is possible. Reflective judgments of taste allow us to think about something, but not to determine what that something is (and teleological judgments are “reflective” or “regulative” in this same sense). Given that searching for concepts involves searching for rules that not only oneself, but also all others can understand, reflection involves trying to think “from the standpoint of everyone else” (CJ §), and the more one engages in the habit of thinking “from the standpoint of everyone else” the more one acquires a “broad mind,” an “enlarged way of thinking” (CJ §); even if, in the strict sense of the word, our knowledge (i.e., our scientific knowledge of space–time reality) does not advance even one tiny bit by means of such an “enlargement” of our mind. Now, we can see that there are two crucial points in which this Kantian notion of a reflective taste and the “affective plurality claim” involved in Nietzsche’s perspectivism intersect. The first one is the claim that one’s affective perspective can be “enlarged” or “multiplied” in a way that makes it transcend the merely idiosyncratic and become more “objective” (or more impartial) without eliminating its affective nature. The second is that this kind of enlargement involves the formation of concepts, but does not lead to conceptual knowledge or, in other words, does not close the interpretation of what is conceptualized by subsuming it under a definitive, determining concept. As we just saw, for Kant, a reflective judgment of taste is a thought, but a thought formed on the basis of an “undetermined concept” (e.g., CJ –) And, for Nietzsche, too, what is achieved by means of the multiplication of affective perspectives is a “more complete” (GM III:) concept of something – but not really a complete concept, not really a concept that might simply tell us what that something is. This connects amazingly well with GS . For what does Nietzsche call “good taste” there? It is a taste that makes demands – one single demand, in fact, namely: the demand of “reverence for everything that lies beyond your horizon,” which Nietzsche explains as the demand that one do not take one’s interpretation of the world for “the only rightful interpretation of the world” (GS ). Good taste involves understanding that something “lies beyond our horizon,” and therefore it must certainly result from a great amount of reflection! What else besides reflection could make us have something like “reverence” (Ehrfurcht) for the unknown – that is, for what

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we cannot understand because it “lies beyond our horizon”? Moreover, if the effect of the kind of reflection at stake here is to make one understand that one’s interpretation of the world is not “the only rightful interpretation of the world,” then such reflection must indeed consist in an imaginative, experimental multiplication of affective perspectives. For nothing else has that effect. Taste, as Kant argued, consists in broadening our minds by using our imagination, understanding, and reason to think about what we feel; good taste, for Nietzsche, seems to consist in taking this kind of reflective thinking to such an extreme that, ultimately, one discovers “the perspectival character of existence,” the possibility that the world “includes infinite interpretations” (GS ), or that our concepts are never “complete” (GM III:), and hence “things” have “the character of question marks” (GS ). “Good taste” makes us crave to interrogate “the whole marvellous uncertainty and ambiguity of existence” (GS ) – it makes us want to acknowledge and marvel at its “ambiguous [vieldeutig] character” (GS ).

. Meaning and Value in the World Let us now consider the end of The Gay Science : Would it not be quite probable, conversely, that precisely the most superficial and external aspect of existence – what is most apparent; its skin and its sensualization – would be grasped first and might even be the only thing that let itself be grasped? Thus, a “scientific” interpretation of the world, as you understand it, might still be one of the stupidest of all possible interpretations of the world, i.e. one of the poorest in meaning. This to the ear and conscience of Mr Mechanic, who nowadays likes to pass as a philosopher and insists that mechanics is the doctrine of the first and final laws on which existence may be built, as on a ground floor. But an essentially mechanistic world would be an essentially meaningless world! Suppose one judged the value of a piece of music according to how much of it could be counted, calculated, and expressed in formulas – how absurd such a “scientific” evaluation of music would be! What would one have comprehended, understood, recognized? Nothing, really nothing of what is “music” in it! (GS , translation slightly modified)

In this final section, Nietzsche seems to convey three main ideas – which are intimately connected, but which we can try to separate for the sake of clarity. () There is the idea that every “Mr. Mechanic” in the world is deceived about what can be “grasped.” () There is the idea that the mechanistic worldview may be “one of the stupidest of all possible

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interpretations of the world” because it erases from “existence” something that “existence” intrinsically has, namely “meaning” (Sinn) or “value” (Werth). () There is the crucial metaphilosophical idea that when Mr. Mechanic makes use of his mechanistic worldview to philosophize he fails to understand that philosophizing is like listening to music and forming a judgment about “the value of a piece of music” (GS ). Let us start with the second idea, for it seems to be in flat-out contradiction with a thesis that is often attributed to Nietzsche: the thesis that meaning and value – as well as purposiveness (Zweckmässigkeit) – are mere human “projections,” and do not really “exist.” This is supposed to be “nihilism,” or at least one of the meanings of that word in Nietzsche’s writings. But the first book of Thus Spoke Zarathustra gives one of many examples of the fact that Nietzsche sees no contradiction where there seems to be one. In the chapter titled “On a Thousand and One Goals,” Zarathustra says that “humans first placed values into things, they first created meaning for things, a human meaning,” and that “only through esteeming is there value” – which accords with the idea that value and meaning are mere human “projections,” all the more so because Zarathustra emphasizes that “esteeming is creating,” and so every “table of goods” is merely “created” by our own “esteeming” (Schätzen). But, in this same passage, he also says that “without esteeming the nut of existence would be hollow.” For human beings, living is esteeming: “human,” he claims, just means “the esteemer” (Z:I “On a Thousand and One Goals”). And this is precisely the idea of GS . Mr. Mechanic thinks that everything in the world can be conceived in mechanistic terms – but “an essentially mechanistic world would be an essentially meaningless world,” and this is not compatible with the fact there is “the human,” “the esteemer.” “Existence” – or, in other words, the world as given in our first-person experience of it – involves meaning, or placing values into things. (Recall that, according to the Genealogy, the “basic fact of the human the will” is its inexorable need to give meaning to its suffering [GM III:, ].) It is interesting to note that this thesis – the thesis that without the human being the world would indeed be a mechanistic world, and hence a world without meaning or value – is one of the main lessons of Kant’s Critique of Judgment: “without man all of creation would be a mere wasteland” (CJ §), without the human being the world “would have no value whatever, because there would exist in it no being that had the slightest concept of a value” (CJ §). This “concept” is, however, not a category. There is no knowledge of values, only reflection. When this reflection is about purposes in nature, it forms teleological judgments.

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When it is a contemplative reflection about how we feel toward the world (or, at least, toward one of its parts, e.g., a beautiful form), then it is aesthetic reflection – or, in other words, it is a reflective taste, which forms aesthetic judgments. And this should give us the cue that we need to understand the other two main ideas of the final section of GS . Feeling – human feeling, the affective life of “the esteemer” – is part of what Mr. Mechanic fails to understand. He thinks that what can be “grasped” – and hence proven to be real – is what can be counted and calculated – that is, matter moving in a homogeneous space and a homogeneous time according to Newton’s laws of mechanics. But it may well be that “skin and its sensualization” are actually “the only thing that lets itself be grasped” (GS ), or that “our world of desires and passions is the only thing ‘given’ as real” (BGE ). The world of our subjective and intersubjective experience as “esteemers” is not the world of mechanics. If two people “go for a walk,” this “walk” can certainly be well described and understood according to the laws of physics, but their “going for a walk” cannot be reduced to what appears in that description. First, what they can touch or “grasp” in their walk is only “the most superficial and external aspect of existence” (GS ), and not the “extension” or the “mass” of a Cartesian-Newtonian world. Second, their grasping will be different from the pushing and shoving of billiard balls or the rotation of planets, as it will involve a whole “world of desires and passions,” which shall be indeed “the only thing ‘given’ as real” to them. And now, finally, music. The example that Nietzsche uses to expose the “stupidity” of Mr. Mechanic is music, and this example evokes two previous aphorisms of The Gay Science. First, GS , the wonderful aphorism in which Nietzsche tells us that love is like music, because we have to learn to love, and this happens to us in music, too: we learn to hear a melody before we come to like it and find it beautiful. This suggests that a taste for music is not a matter of passive sensation, but must involve something like Kant’s free play of the imagination and the understanding. Taste is not a sensorial faculty, taste is reflective taste. The other aphorism is GS , where Nietzsche uses the formula “Musik des Lebens,” and writes that “life is music.” For human beings, life, living, being alive is like being affected by a piece of music and learning its melodies, rhythms, harmonies and disharmonies. Put differently, human beings are esteemers because, for them, existence consists in being exposed to “the music of life” (GS ), and this means at least two things: first, that everything 

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in their lives is rooted in their bodies and their bodies are sentient and desiring bodies: they feel their engagements with the world and with other bodies; second, human beings are esteemers also because everything in their lives is fraught with reflections about the value or meaning of what they experience and can experience in their bodily engagements with the world. Everything in their lives is fraught with reflections, but not fraught with knowledge. People can know mathematics and physics. But no one can know the value or meaning of a piece of music, and a fortiori no one can know the value or meaning of “the music of life” (GS ), not even of a single melody of this music, not even of a single note. That is what it means that, for us, things are in fact question marks, and we are at all moments in life confronted with the polysemic value of what we experience – with the “ambiguous character” of existence. So, what do philosophers do when they don’t have “‘science’ as prejudice” and, on the contrary, are moved by “the great love” for the “truly great problems and questions marks”? A proper answer to this question would have to consider many other texts and many other metaphilosophical notions in Nietzsche’s writings. One major metaphilosophical theme in his writings is the idea that, besides reflecting about values and “the problem of values,” philosophers are “free spirits” who “transvaluate values” and “create new values.” This is, again, an aspect of a fundamentally aesthetic notion of philosophy. In terms of the Kantian and postKantian tradition in aesthetics, it implies that philosophers combine taste with “genius,” or that, far from being mere spectators of life, philosophers are rather like artists who create life – create new forms of life. Moreover, a more extensive investigation into Nietzsche’s conception of philosophy would have to bring us back to the question of nihilism and how Nietzsche sees the role of philosophers in the age of the death of God. But let us leave all of that aside and end this article with one last thought that follows from our analysis of GS . Nietzsche often emphasizes that philosophers are a rare, special type of person. Philosophy is something that only a few people do, or can do. But, on the other hand, we have seen that, for Nietzsche, philosophy is basically an exploration of life itself, of what life is for human beings. We are all “esteemers,” and we are all always already in the “space of reflection” in which value appears and turns all things into question marks. But maybe that is why philosophers are, on the one hand, the “incomprehensible ones” who have the “dark fate” of inhabiting a “height” that no else understands – but, on the other, they belong to the collective fate of mankind: they are “no longer free to do anything individual, to be anything individual” (GS ).

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Metaphilosophy and Metapolitics in Nietzsche and Heidegger Beatrix Himmelmann

This chapter discusses Nietzsche’s metaphilosophy along with Heidegger’s reflections on the nature and the aim of philosophy. As is well known, Heidegger’s thinking was deeply influenced by Nietzsche’s work. His seminal book entitled Nietzsche, which appeared in two volumes in , while drawing on lecture notes from the s, is but one instance testifying to this fact. Another, colorful piece of evidence has been provided by Hans-Georg Gadamer (Gadamer : ) who disclosed a comment that, he says, Heidegger repeatedly made during the very last months of his life: “Nietzsche destroyed me [Nietzsche hat mich kaputt gemacht].” As we will see, Nietzsche’s call for a “philosophy of the future” posed a profound challenge to Heidegger. It also served as a powerful incentive to surmount what Heidegger saw as Nietzsche’s limitations. For both thinkers, metaphilosophy is not an issue connected to their efforts on the surface, but a matter of intrinsic importance. Both came to understand that traditional ways of doing philosophy would not suffice when dealing with the specific problems of human existence in the modern age. Modernity, Nietzsche and Heidegger believe, implies crisis. Left with what they deem to be outdated tools for thinking through the situation, they both feel they are working at a turning point of human history. My chapter investigates four topic areas that, following Nietzsche and Heidegger, need to be addressed: () Metaphysics and the critique of metaphysics; () the project of a philosophy of finitude; () the metaphilosophical implications of Nietzsche’s concept of the will to power; and () the prospects of an ethics and politics of finitude.

 

See also Heidegger’s own assessment in Heidegger ( I: ). Consider, for instance, the subtitle of Beyond Good and Evil: “Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future.”



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 

. What Metaphysics Is All About and Why It Deserves Criticism Nietzsche as well as Heidegger reject a traditional way of doing philosophy that for most of its history virtually defined the discipline: they oppose metaphysics. Since it is not easy to say what metaphysics is, we will start out with two brief accounts, one provided by Heidegger and the other one supplied by Nietzsche. Heidegger explains metaphysics from the literal meaning of the word: metà tà physiká and with reference to Kant and Aristotle. While the expression can be taken to be merely descriptive, serving as the collective name for those writings of Aristotle classified as following his treatises belonging to the Physics, Kant suggested that “it is not to be believed that it arose by chance because it fits so exactly with the science.” And he explains: “Since physis means nature, and since we can arrive at the concepts of nature only through experience, that science which follows it is called metaphysics (from metá, trans, and physica). It is a science which, being outside the domain of physics, as it were, lies beyond it.” According to Kant, metaphysics deals – in a theoretical as well as practical perspective – with principles not derived from experience, but stemming from pure reason. Whereas Kant, like Nietzsche, conceives of these principles as concepts or ideas, thus arguing against the background of the Platonic tradition, Heidegger frames the question of metaphysics in a different way. He consults Aristotle’s investigations into the matter. Metaphysics, for Aristotle protē philosophia (“first philosophy”), amounts to an “embarrassment [Verlegenheit]” in Heidegger’s understanding. What Aristotle and his successors discuss under this heading remains unclear (Heidegger : , : ). Heidegger summarizes what he takes to be the ambiguity of metaphysics as follows: Metaphysics is, first and foremost, the “fundamental knowledge of beings as such and as a whole [die grundsätzliche Erkenntnis des Seienden als solchen und im Ganzen].” Accordingly, Aristotle sought to understand on hē on, beings as beings (Heidegger : –, : ). Yet, as Heidegger points out, this definition of metaphysics should be regarded “as an indication of the problem, that is, of the questions” in need of being addressed concurrently: “Wherein lies the essence [Wesen] of the knowledge of the Being [Sein] of   

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Andronicus of Rhodes thus arranged Aristotle’s writings in his edition of Aristotle’s ‘esoteric’ work. Cf. Heidegger (:, :). Heidegger (: , : ); cf. Kant (ff: AA XXVIII, ). Cf. Kant (: A –/B –); cf. TI “Fable.”

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beings [des Seienden]? In what respect does this knowledge necessarily open up into a knowledge of beings as a whole? Why does this [latter knowledge], again, add up to achieving a knowledge of Being [Seinserkenntnis]?” Heidegger concludes that metaphysics still causes serious difficulties for “philosophy as such” (Heidegger : , : ). His claim is that the nexus of and correlation between the questions mentioned have been forgotten in the course of the history of metaphysics, mainly because the question of Being (die Frage nach dem Sein) has fallen into oblivion. Metaphysics has been focusing on inquiries concerning the understanding of beings as beings. The tendency has been to consider the concept of ‘Being’ “self-evident.” After all, some use is made of it whenever we cognize anything or make an assertion or comport ourselves “towards entities [zu Seiendem], even towards (ourselves).” The concept of Being, therefore, is thought “to be intelligible ‘without further ado,’ just as everyone understands ‘The sky is blue,’ ‘I am merry,’ and the like.” But the very fact, Heidegger argues, that we obviously live “in an understanding of Being” already while, at the same time, “the meaning of Being [der Sinn von Sein] is still veiled in darkness,” amounts to an “enigma [Rätsel]” (Heidegger : , : ). From his point of view, this enigma poses the one and only question philosophy has to tackle. Yet this seems a position not widely held. In the short and prominent entrance paragraph to Being and Time, Heidegger makes a plea for retrieving the question of Being. Quoting from Plato’s Sophist, thereby testifying to the circumstance that there has been, at least, some awareness of its significance, Heidegger asks, in a rather rhetorical fashion: “But are we nowadays even perplexed at our inability to understand the expression ‘Being’? Not at all. So first of all we must reawaken an understanding for the meaning of this question” (Heidegger : , : ). Whereas Heidegger is interested in the “ontological difference” between Being and beings or entities (Sein und Seiendes), the disregard of which, in his view, has turned metaphysics into a nuisance, Nietzsche is occupied with the division between idea (Idee) and semblance (Schein). Introducing and maintaining this division, metaphysics has become a severe threat toward human flourishing. This is Nietzsche’s diagnosis and the reason why he rejects metaphysics. A clear and schematic picture of Nietzsche’s perception of metaphysics can be found in the piece “How the ‘True World’ Finally Became a Fable: The History of an Error” from Twilight of the Idols. The short text addresses six phases of this history, with Nietzsche himself launching its final stage, bringing it to completion. Its protagonist is the idea of an idea,

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the supposition that there are not only all those things, displaying change, imperfection and finitude, with which we are familiar in our world, but also the pure forms of things as they “truly” are or ought to be, exhibiting the qualities of immutability, perfection, and absoluteness. The latter constitute, as Nietzsche puts it, “the true world” and the former “the apparent one [die scheinbare]” (TI “Fable”). The difference in terms of ontological value is obvious: the true world is deemed superior to the apparent one. Nietzsche thinks of metaphysics in a Platonic tradition. Hence, its history begins with Plato’s version of it. Plato’s conception of an idea, being the epitome of what is “true” in contrast to what is mere semblance, is portrayed by Nietzsche as “relatively smart, simple, convincing [relativ klug, simpel, u¨berzeugend].” Further historical stages include Christian adaptations of the Platonic model, “progress of the idea: it gets trickier, more subtle, less comprehensible,” and Kant’s critical metaphysics. Following Nietzsche’s interpretation, Kant’s account, too, points toward a “true world” of ideas. But it does so in a rather “elusive, pale, Nordic, Konigsbergian” way as the true world is perceived as “unattainable, unprovable, unpromisable” – but nonetheless providing “consolation” as well as “an obligation” and, last but not least, “an imperative” (TI “Fable”). Nietzsche recommends that we dismiss all types of metaphysics. He considers them pernicious because he believes they undermine and devalue specifically human faculties. Human faculties form an iridescent whole indeed, as they pull in different directions. There is, for instance, human cognition guided by a “will to truth” as well as a strong propensity toward delusion and invention (Erdichtung) (BGE –). According to Nietzsche, metaphysics performs this work of devaluation by drafting misguided counter-images of human endowments. For example, against man’s disposition toward strife, in Nietzsche’s view the crucial driving force behind cultural development and individual self-enhancement, metaphysics advocates the ideas of harmony and stability. Philosophy spelled out in terms of metaphysics, Nietzsche contends, diminishes human achievements and discourages human ambition by confronting them with models that do



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Judith Norman, the translator of Twilight of the Idols (CW ), renders “die scheinbare (Welt)” (KSA : p. ) as “the illusory (world),” thereby diminishing the multifaceted meaning of “scheinbar” that includes hints toward both “appearance” (Erscheinung), a well-known term in the Kantian tradition, and “illusion” (Schein). For this reason, I chose to translate “scheinbar” into “apparent.” The following translations of Nietzsche’s writings are used: A (); BGE (); EH (); GM (); HH (); KSA (); SE (); WLN (); WP (); Z ().

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no justice to the antagonisms of human life. Human life does not know of any perfection or any absolute. Both Nietzsche and Heidegger seek to develop nonmetaphysical philosophical approaches. They both work on projects revolving around the idea of human finitude. Finitude seems to both of them the guiding theme, involving conceptual and methodological adjustments, of any nonmetaphysical thinking worthy of the name.

. Toward a Philosophy of Finitude Nietzsche argues that metaphysics is life-denying. The kind of philosophy he wants to advance, by contrast, is life-affirming. The sharp and, in fact, insurmountable dualism between the “true world” of ideas and the “apparent world” we inhabit has to be left behind. Yet this does not mean that Nietzsche advocates abandoning antagonism and tension. On the contrary, there will be no development, no flourishing with regard to any aspect of human life, without paying tribute to struggle and conflict. What distinguishes metaphysical approaches and Nietzsche’s idea of philosophy is the difference in conceiving of, and dealing with, opposites. Nietzsche dynamizes them. They become forces in a finite world – the world of experience familiar to us. They obtain determination and shape due to their relations to other forces or powers. Never can they be considered or assessed in isolation. There is always a “plurality” (Vielheit) of powers interacting with one another (WLN: –). At times, Nietzsche names them “power quanta.” When he introduces this term in one of his late notes, he makes it clear that they each have to be perceived as an instance of “will to power.” He writes: A quantum of power is characterized by the effect it exerts and the effect it resists. There is no adiaphoria, though in itself this would be conceivable. The quantum of power is essentially a will to violate and to defend oneself against being violated. Not self-preservation: every atom’s effect spreads out into the whole of being – if one thinks away this radiation of power-will, the atom itself is thought away. That’s why I call it a quantum of “will to power.” (WLN: –)

We might also speak of power centers. Nietzsche claims that all life, including human life, essentially is will to power (European Nihilism in WLN: ). It should be noted that Nietzsche conceives of power in a broad sense. He discusses power in its different physical, psychological, and intellectual facets, which are all

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interconnected in human beings. Whatever kind of power we are dealing with, it can never even be thought of as an isolated, absolute power. Rather, it is in need of an Other in order to be power at all. It would be an empty power without something to confront, swinging at nothingness, as it were. That is, it needs resistance, a counterforce against which it reveals and unfolds itself as a power. Consequently, where we speak sensibly of power, there is always already posited at least one further power, acting as an opposing force. Hence, Nietzsche states: “The will to power can only manifest itself against resistances; it seeks for that which stands against it” (KSA :[]). It is important to understand the dynamics inherent to life, which Nietzsche takes to be its main feature, grounding everything from rude fights to most refined cultural achievements. His philosophical conception is meant to bring these dynamics to the fore. Against metaphysical approaches, Nietzsche does not assume that there are separate spheres or dimensions dividing powers of the mind and physical or corporeal powers. In his view, there is but one force field binding together everything that exists. Thus, Nietzsche sets out to bring the “history of an error” to a close, turning the “true world” into a fable, indeed by getting rid of it along with “the apparent world,” the supposition of which only made sense as a counterpart and complementary to the “true one” (TI “Fable”). It is almost commonplace these days to say that Nietzsche’s philosophy is naturalistic (Leiter : –; Schacht ). This claim can be substantiated in so far as Nietzsche holds that human beings belong to nothing but nature throughout. None of their specific capacities and dispositions, he argues, transcend nature in any respect. There is nothing, according to Nietzsche, “which separates man from nature and is his mark of distinction.” There is “no such separation,” Nietzsche insists, because “‘natural’ characteristics and those called specifically ‘human’ have grown together inextricably” (Nietzsche : ). It is telling that Nietzsche retains metaphysical concepts such as will, freedom, justice, and right. Yet he interprets them anew (cf. Gemes & May ), viz. in terms of his philosophy of power. Following Nietzsche, there is nothing that is beyond transitory power relations. Ideas of right, of justice, of good and evil, of the will, and of freedom that are said to transcend power relations have to be seen as mere “fictions [Fiktionen]” (TI “Reason” ), as inventory of a metaphysical world “behind” the real world in which we live (Z:I “On the Hinterworldly”). They were 

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concocted, Nietzsche argues, for the purpose of eschewing the radical finitude (Endlichkeit) of our existence. Following the definition of the philosophical tradition, what is finite is what is relative to something else and not determined by itself, what is nonabsolute and provisional (Mahlmann ). According to Nietzsche, we should not perceive finitude as something we have to endure, but rather as something to embrace, thus affirming life as it is. This life-affirming stance involves accepting that values, such as goodness, justice, and right, are of an essentially finite nature. That is, we should not assume that concepts of what is good, just, and right can and ought to serve the purpose of providing a solid and permanent order putting constraints on the ways power relations between human beings unfold. The tradition represented by Kant and others, however, had argued that human beings in virtue of their freedom and the capacity for autonomy, which bestow worth and dignity upon them regardless of their power status, can lay claim to be treated accordingly. That is to say, their relations with one another, which naturally evolve in the guise of power relations, ought to be regulated by constraints that are apt to protect everybody’s freedom and autonomy: spheres of legal freedom and the duties and rights connected with moral freedom must be the same for all. Consequently, the rule of law, justice, and moral goodness function as constraints on the will to power. They transcend actual power relations between human beings. Thus understood, the rule of law, justice, and moral goodness possess universal validity. They are absolute values and at least as lasting as specifically human beings will last. Nietzsche does not accept this kind of metaphysical framework. It seems to him life-denying insofar as it betrays the essentially floating character of life, which is will to power. He claims that, depending on the constellation of powers in place, the respective meaning of right, justice, and goodness will differ: it supervenes on the actual power relations (see Himmelmann ). This is the idea behind Nietzsche’s concept of the “revaluation of all values” (GM III:). The revaluation has to be conceived of as an ongoing process, quite in line with the flow of life that takes shape according to ever-changing power constellations (GM II:–). Nietzsche feels vindicated by the results of his genealogical studies. They seem to reveal that there has been a premetaphysical perception of human life that has been suppressed and forgotten, a perception that, interestingly enough, seems to corroborate Nietzsche’s findings. Heidegger, too, dedicates his efforts to drafting a philosophy of finitude, implicitly and explicitly competing with Nietzsche. Even though he is

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

 

clearly inspired by Nietzsche, Heidegger takes a very different approach. As we saw, he believes that the question of Being has fallen into oblivion, wrongly and to the disfavor of human self-understanding. Yet, he chooses precisely human self-understanding as a starting point of his investigation. He points to the fact that for human beings their very Being (Sein) is always an issue; they care about their Being. This means, however, that the “constitutive state of their Being” (Seinsverfassung) implies a relationship toward their Being (Seinsverhältnis) already, a fact that suggests they also develop some kind of understanding of their Being (Seinsverständnis) (Heidegger : , : ). Therefore, each and every human exists, for the most part implicitly, in a way that itself is ontological – that is, involves an understanding of his or her Being. Philosophy just has to pick up on this general peculiarity of human existence. In this sense, philosophy makes explicit what human beings take for granted when they live their lives. What is seemingly “selfevident [selbstverständlich]” becomes the essential theme of philosophical inquiry (Heidegger : –, : ). Heidegger’s phenomenological analysis into everyday life reveals that we are predominantly, if not completely, concerned with those entities (Seiendes) we find out there in our world. We look out for what is of use to us insofar as it is “ready-to-hand [zuhanden]” or, by contrast, we put up with what is merely “present-at-hand [vorhanden]” – that is, not yet or no longer useful, or simply present as something indifferent here and now. Comporting ourselves not only toward things, but also toward our equals poses challenges of its own. Our relationship toward the latter unfolds in diverse guises, such as working together, helping one another or refusing to do so, engaging in relationships of conflict and dislike or affection and cooperation. Heidegger observes that we all tend to be completely absorbed in commitments like these; this attitude is constitutive of our “Being-in-the-world [In-der-Welt-sein].” As a result of this “falling [Verfallen]” (Heidegger : –, : –), we disregard Being (Sein) – even though we all do exist for the sake of our own Being (Heidegger : , : ). Heidegger advances a captivating explanation for the fact that we are prone to losing ourselves by exclusively focusing on all the things in our world that appear to mean everything to us while forgetting about Being (Sein), the genuine focal point of our existence. He argues that we want to flee our own Being because it is the epitome of transience. It turns out that, finally, we are nothing but time (Zeit), or, to be precise, temporality (Zeitlichkeit) (Heidegger : ff, : ff ), extending into an

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undetermined future and into a past that is marked by the facticity (Faktitzität) of our being “thrown [geworfen]” into the world (Heidegger : , : ). We exist toward an end, death, the particulars of which we cannot grasp, let alone control. We have emerged from a beginning the particulars of which are likewise opaque to us. In order to capture this fugacity, Heidegger addresses the human being as “Dasein,” which literally means “Being-there.” He avoids employing traditional terminology; for instance, he does not use the term “subject,” which could be taken to imply the idea of some kind of stable substance. Dasein, to the contrary, is “Being-towards-death [Sein zum Tode].” Beingtowards-death is “Dasein’s running ahead (Vorlaufen) to its past (Vorbei), to an extreme possibility of itself that stands before it in certainty and utter indeterminacy” (Heidegger : , : E). Understanding that, finally, its own Being points toward nothingness, toward its “past [Vorbei],” will “place Dasein, amid the glory of its everydayness [inmitten der Herrlichkeit seiner Alltäglichkeit], into uncanniness [in die Unheimlichkeit]” (Heidegger : , : E). Dasein delves into its everyday dealings to escape the inevitable sense of unease that any true and authentic involvement with its Being entails. It yields to being fully occupied with those everyday dealings, thus forgetting about its own Being. Yet this is not unnatural, as Heidegger (: –, : –) emphasizes time and again, but constitutive of Dasein. What is remarkable indeed is the fact that philosophy, when fleshed out in metaphysical terms, participates in this move and, what is more, confirms and consolidates the oblivion of Being. Hence, Heidegger insists that metaphysics has to be overcome. Following his interpretation, metaphysics has focused, ever since Plato and Aristotle, on analyzing the entities we know of within a framework that explores their correlations. Accordingly, the grand metaphysical systems developed an interpretation “of beings as such in their entirety [des Seienden als solchen im Ganzen]” (Heidegger : , : ). Heidegger claims that Nietzsche’s thinking belongs into the history of metaphysics, representing its final stage. Against Nietzsche’s own assertions, Heidegger considers Nietzsche’s philosophy metaphysical because it displays a clear perception “of beings as such in their entirety” in terms of the will to power.



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As usual, I will leave this term, which plays so important a role in Heidegger’s work, untranslated in what follows. For further explanation, see Heidegger (: n).

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

 

.

Metaphilosophical Disputes Concerning the Will to Power

Heidegger’s understanding of Nietzsche’s concept of the will to power is fairly idiosyncratic. It does not give due regard to the most important features of Nietzsche’s conception, especially the idea of a “plurality” of powers competing with one another, thus providing for vital resistance and essential struggle without which no living being could thrive according to Nietzsche. It is true, Nietzsche’s philosophical account of power and the will to power does not rule out the possibility of nonproductive but destructive conflict, a type of violent and unmeasured struggle to the death of adversaries that he calls “struggle-to-the-death [Vernichtungskampf]” (HC: ). Just like everything else that forms part of life, the will to power is thoroughly ambivalent. It is not per se good or bad, and in some sense it is beyond good and evil. Heidegger disregards the significance of challenge, opposition, and diversity coming along with the will to power and cherished by Nietzsche because of their life-enhancing effects. Heidegger interprets Nietzsche’s idea of the will to power in a way that focuses on the aspects of “preservation [Erhaltung]” and “increase [Steigerung]” of power. He ignores the circumstance that any particular instance of the will to power interrelates with other such instances and, thus, cannot be perceived as a somewhat isolated thing. Heidegger explains what he takes to be Nietzsche’s concept of the will to power by referring to both terms it involves, “will” and “power”: Will strives for what it wills not just as for something that it does not yet have. Will already has what it wills. For will wills its willing. Its will is what it has willed. Will wills itself. It exceeds itself. In this way will as will wills above and beyond itself [u¨ber sich hinaus], and therefore at the same time it must bring itself beneath and behind itself [hinter sich und unter sich]. This is why Nietzsche can say (The Will to Power, no. , from /): “To will at all amounts to the will to become stronger, the will to grow . . .” Here “stronger” indicates “more power,” and that means: only power. For the essence of power is to be master over the level of power attained at a particular time. Power is power only when and only for as long as it is an increase in power and commands for itself “more power.” To halt the increase of power only for a moment, merely to stand still at one level of power, is already the beginning of a decline in power. Part of the essence of power is the overpowering of itself [Zum Wesen der Macht gehört die Übermächtigung ihrer selbst]. (Heidegger : –, : )

In what follows, Heidegger integrates another of Nietzsche’s major themes into his picture of the will to power: the idea of the “eternal return of the same [ewige Wiederkunft des Gleichen].” Since the will, according to

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Heidegger’s interpretation, wants “the overpowering of itself [die Übermächtigung seiner selbst],” “no richness of life” will satisfy it. The will has and is power in “overabundance [im Überreichen]” (Heidegger : , : ). Thus, Heidegger concludes, the will, as the same, is constantly coming back unto itself as the Same. The mode in which beings [Seiendes] whose essentia is the will to power in their entirety exist, their existentia, is the “eternal return of the same.” The two fundamental terms of Nietzsche’s metaphysics, “will to power” and “eternal return of the same,” determine beings in their Being [Sein] in accordance with the perspectives which have guided metaphysics since antiquity, the ens qua ens in the sense of essentia and existentia. (Heidegger : –, : )

By (mis)representing Nietzsche’s idea of the will to power in the manner just analyzed, Heidegger manages to strip it of any traits of antagonism or contest which are, however, crucial to Nietzsche’s nonmetaphysical philosophical account revolving around this idea. Instead, Heidegger portrays it in ways designed to suggest that it is the final stage of the history of metaphysics. The will to power seems to be tantamount to a senseless strife for power aiming at “the securing of its own continued existence” (Heidegger : , : ). To preserve “the levels of power [die jeweils erreichte Machtstufe]” it has attained at particular times, Heidegger writes, “requires that the will surround itself with that which it can reliably and at any time fall back on and from which its security [Sicherheit] is to be guaranteed” (Heidegger : , : ). This understanding directly contradicts Nietzsche’s objectives. Time and again, he makes it clear that the will to power, on the contrary, does not find and does not need any stable pillars upon which it could rest (European Nihilism in WLN: , ). We can only point to “momentary power fixations [augenblickliche Macht-Feststellungen]” indicating the particular “power situation [Macht-Lage]” of a given unit (WLN: ). All living things, driven by will to power, are constantly in a state of flux – acting and reacting toward one another, thus forming one dynamically structured force field. As Nietzsche highlights, no security and no guarantees are available as regards the will to power, which is the epitome of twists and turns and the “revaluation of values [Umwerthung der Werthe]” depending on what the respective situation demands.



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The translation of “im Überreichen” is my own.

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

 

Eager to surpass Nietzsche in his ambition to advance a philosophy of finitude, Heidegger pushes his case even further. He insists that Nietzsche’s philosophy is about man who is due “to undertake mastery over being [die Herrschaft u¨ber das Seiende zu u¨bernehmen]” in order to satisfy the will to power, which figures as the “Being of beings [als Sein des Seienden].” At this stage of the history of metaphysics, Heidegger claims, the task of “undertaking mastery of the earth” is at stake (Heidegger : , : ). He builds his claim on a passage from Nietzsche’s posthumous notes where he says: “The time is coming when the battle for the mastery of the earth will be fought – and fought in the name of fundamental philosophical doctrines.” Heidegger is convinced that “the age of subjectivity,” which is the age of modernity and began with Descartes’s idea of the self-certainty (Selbst-Gewißheit) of subjectivity and the disposability (Verfu¨gbarkeit) of its objects, “presses to its completion” along with Nietzsche’s philosophy of the will to power (Heidegger : , , : , ). Nietzsche, though, did not see these implications, according to Heidegger, and he did not understand the true meaning of nihilism. Heidegger believes it is up to him to bring to mind what the state of affairs actually is concerning the crisis the modern world is facing. He also assumes he is assigned the responsibility of finding a way out. While Nietzsche, on this view, is occupied with what is being (seiend), valuing and revaluing its meaning in accordance with the will to power, Heidegger simply tries to “say what is and therefore happens” (Heidegger : , : ). At first glance, Heidegger’s ambition to “say what is and therefore happens” may look very unpretentious. Yet it enunciates the most intricate and, possibly, pretentious endeavor of articulating (sagen) the dimension of Being (Sein). As we saw before, at least any human being bears some sort of relation to Being all along. But now Heidegger insinuates that the oblivion of Being (Seinsvergessenheit) is not only to be overcome on the level of individual human life, with the effect that the elusiveness of our individual existence comes to the fore. What Heidegger, in his Letter on Humanism, famously addresses as “turning [Kehre]” (Heidegger : , : ) amounts to turning the focus of thinking Being away from the “fate [Schicksal]” of finite individual Dasein and toward thinking Being with respect to the “destiny [Geschick]” of an equally finite community (Gemeinschaft) of Dasein, of a people (Volk). This destiny, he argues, models our Being-withone-another (Miteinandersein). As early as in Being and Time, Heidegger 

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Heidegger : /:. KSA :[].

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states: “Dasein’s fateful destiny [schicksalhaftes Geschick] in and with its ‘generation’ goes to make up the full authentic occurrence [Geschehen] of Dasein” (Heidegger : , : –). The “destiny of Being [Geschick des Seins, Seinsgeschick]” is determined by temporality (Zeitlichkeit), as is the fate of individual Dasein. In contrast to space–time, which is measurable and, as such, has its place amid the routines of everyday life, temporality is primordial, authentic time according to Heidegger. It “stands out” – it is ekstatikón in the dimensions of the future (Zukunft), of having been (Gewesenheit), and of the present (Gegenwart) (Heidegger : , : ). Dasein essentially is primordial time. Following Heidegger, all history, understood as a succession of historical events, is rooted in the primordial temporality of the “destiny of Being” in its “historicality [Geschichtlichkeit].” Insofar as we think we can manage or make history on our own, we are mistaken. “The history of Being sustains and defines every condition et situation humaine,” Heidegger writes in his Letter on Humanism (Heidegger : , : ). In the same way as we cannot control our individual fate, being thrown into this world and being “toward death,” instances of temporality and facticity we cannot escape but have to accept, we are not able to rule over the “destiny of Being.” All we can do, Heidegger suggests, is trying to get a clue of what it holds, that is to “say what is and therefore happens.” As if dealing with the oracle in Delphi, Heidegger speaks of Being in terms of revelation and disclosure (Offenbarung) versus concealment (Verhu¨llung) and refusal (Versagung) (Heidegger : , –, : , –). Against the backdrop of this conception, Nietzsche’s philosophy of the will to power is portrayed as the final stage of metaphysics, obsessed with what is being (seiend) for the sake of pointless struggles for dominion and forgetting about the dimension of Being (Sein) in which, according to Heidegger, everything we experience, do, or fail to do in this world is grounded. Being (Sein), though, is exempt from man’s command, a claim put forward by Heidegger that entails ethical and political implications. Most recently, Heidegger’s ethics and his political statements have again been matters of heated controversy. Extensive debates have been fueled by the release of the so-called Black Notebooks, which are part of the Gesamtausgabe of Heidegger’s writings, concluding this edition. Heidegger himself ordered them to be published in that fashion (cf. Mehring ) – that is, forming the final volumes of the Gesamtausgabe.  

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The translation of “Geschehen” is my own. Cf. Heinz & Kellerer (); Gander & Striet (); Mitchell & Trawny ().

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

 

Heidegger as well as Nietzsche elaborate on ethical and political issues. We will be discussing their contributions in the following section. Once again, it will be interesting and telling to take notice of the extent to which Nietzsche is on Heidegger’s mind while, at the same time, he works on a completely different version of postmetaphysical philosophy. In fact, Heidegger engages in what he calls postphilosophical “thinking [Denken].”

. On Ethics and Politics of Finitude Whereas Nietzsche’s ethical and political thought builds on the actual powers given in the relevant circumstances, steering clear of presupposing any ideas of right, justice, or goodness that transcend the palpable reality of what is here and now, Heidegger advances an account that aims at rising above empirical constellations or contexts. In his understanding, overcoming metaphysics, a goal he shares with Nietzsche, is tantamount to elevating oneself to the Being (Sein) of what is being (seiend). Getting absorbed in the affairs and concerns of everyday life, we inevitably will be forgetting about what primordially (urspru¨nglich) and authentically (eigentlich) founds and anchors all these involvements: Being (Sein) the meaning of which, Heidegger assumes, is of overriding importance to us and the lives we live. In contrast to Nietzsche, Heidegger is occupied with, maybe even fascinated by, opening up a nonempirical below-surface dimension that he calls Sein, which is supposed to ground everything empirical or, in Heidegger’s words, everything being (seiend). Heidegger’s endeavor, though, is not to be confused with Nietzsche’s undertaking of genealogical investigations into the depths of human experience (cf. GM ). Nietzsche pursues a truly historical project, tracing what we feel, think, and are accustomed to doing today back to age-old patterns of conduct we have inherited and incorporated without necessarily being aware of this fact. Genealogy thus serves human selfunderstanding. Heidegger’s venture, in comparison, is far more elusive. It does not essentially dig deeper into ourselves, despite the “analytic of Dasein [Daseinsanalytik]” advanced in Being and Time; it rather points beyond ourselves. This is true at least since Heidegger tried to perform the Kehre, reversing the direction of thinking. No longer is it merely the Being of Dasein that Heidegger takes into account; he rather concentrates his attention on the Being of communities and peoples in his later writings, with Being assuming normative potential. He sets out to counter a development he describes as “the human uprising into subjectivity [der menschliche Aufstand in die Subjektivität]”

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(Heidegger : , : ). Man who “has risen up into the I-hood [Ichheit] of the ego cogito,” induces, with this uprising, that “all beings become objects [alles Seiende [wird] zum Gegenstand].” Everything is supposed to center around human subjectivity. Alluding to Nietzsche’s aphorism (GS ) “The Madman” from The Gay Science, Heidegger notes: “The horizon no longer illuminates of itself [der Horizont leuchtet nicht mehr von sich aus]” (Heidegger : , : ). The task to which Heidegger feels committed as a philosopher is nothing less than reinvigorating a life horizon, the role of which consists in supplying the light that allows all beings to come into sight and flourish. What Nietzsche calls “horizon” in the aforementioned aphorism, which the murderers of God have dared “to wipe away,” Heidegger renders Sein. Both notions stand for the general framework holding things together and providing for a sense of meaning. Heidegger wants to go ahead with a way of thinking that helps enact Sein in its function of illuminating and informing human life in this world. Sein, however, is time or, to be precise: “temporality [Zeitlichkeit].” Heidegger retains the dynamics woven into the concept of Being (Sein), a trait he had emphasized ever since he began exploring Being. This leads him, along with the authoritative position into which he moves Sein, to ascribe to it a kind of “truth [Wahrheit]” that is charged with dynamics as well. It is “truth” that is supposed to change in the course of time, truth to come in “abrupt epochs [in jähen Epochen]” and determine, as destiny (Geschick), the fate (Schicksal) of what is being (seiend) (Heidegger : , : –). Heidegger calls for attention and responsiveness toward the respective “truth of Being [Wahrheit des Seins].” Dynamics is a key feature that we also find in Nietzsche’s antimetaphysical account. Here it is spelled out in different ways, though, viz. in accordance with Nietzsche’s philosophy of power. Human life evolves, Nietzsche argues, in the shape of antagonism and conflict that we should embrace. Antagonism and conflict figure as the driving forces of life. There are no fixed values, nor is there a meaning of things that would transcend their significance in the context of the given situation. Correspondingly, philosophy in Nietzsche’s understanding is to be fleshed out in terms of relational thinking and along the lines of floating opposites. In what ways, however, do these divergent philosophical approaches play out in ethical and political thought? Nietzsche as well as Heidegger discuss ethical themes, even though neither of them elaborated on a wellrounded ethical theory as did Kant or Aristotle.

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

 

Nietzsche’s ethical thinking is twofold, strongly critical toward most of the traditional moral philosophies on the one hand, and constructive, at least to some extent, on the other hand. Nietzsche criticizes accounts of morality that rely on the idea of a static, invariable “moral order of things [moralische Ordnung der Dinge]” as contrasted with and “contradicted [widersprochen]” by the factual order of things in “nature and history [Natur und Geschichte]” (D P:). This is exactly the kind of metaphysical perspective Nietzsche rejects for the reasons discussed. He advances, instead, an ethical stance that surely does not advocate any sort of “laisser aller” or “letting go” (BGE ), but acknowledges demands, even though merely conditionally and hypothetically. It addresses, first and foremost, the individual whose thriving is at the center of its concern. “The sovereign individual . . . like only to itself, having freed itself from the morality of custom, an autonomous, supra-ethical individual (because ‘autonomous’ and ‘ethical’ are mutually exclusive),” this individual is, following Nietzsche, the upshot of the entire moral development of human beings so far, “the ripest fruit on its tree” (GM II:). Nietzsche employs metaphorical language, familiar since Plato, when he explains the conditions of the emergence of sovereign individuals and their flourishing in terms of health and sickness. The “medical formulation of morality [die medizinische Moralformel],” which reads in a Stoic version: “virtue is the health of the soul,” is being changed and adjusted by Nietzsche. He suggests giving an individualistic twist to the formula so that it finally sounds appropriate: “your virtue is the health of your soul” (GS , my emphasis). There is no health “as such,” Nietzsche argues, nor is there virtue “as such.” What counts as virtue or health has to be determined, at all times, in light of the specific conditions given in any particular case. Hence, “deciding what is health even for your body depends on your goal, your horizon, your powers, your impulses, your mistakes and above all on the ideals and phantasms of your soul” (GS ). If already corporeal health is ineluctably individual, how much more is the health of your soul? Nietzsche insists that moral claims are irreducibly individual. He goes so far as to inveigh against the idea of “the equality of men,” calling it a “dogma” (GS ). Nietzsche is not prepared to accept a solid, substantial notion of what it means to be human from which rights and duties binding on any human being could be derived. When it comes to the human species, which forms part of the realm of living beings, nothing can 

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Cf. Plato, Gorgias, a ff; Republic, c ff.

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Metaphilosophy and Metapolitics in Nietzsche and Heidegger



be firmly established according to Nietzsche; on the contrary, everything is in a state of flux (HH ). Nietzsche maintains that any conception of what is “normal” is misguided in view of the unforeseeable diversity of human unfolding, which goes hand in hand with human individuality. The idea of equality, however, seems to suggest precisely such standards of normality. Not least for this reason, Nietzsche is ready to reject it. Everyone is to develop “the virtue peculiar” to his or her individual health, “which of course could look in one person like the opposite of health in another” (GS ). Following this route, Nietzsche claims, will benefit the whole species, the enhancement of which depends on the emergence of “great” individuals who show in an exemplary manner the possibilities inherent to human life. Ideas of right and of a persistent rule of law, the institution of which Nietzsche surely acknowledges (GM II:), seem to him, nonetheless, questionable. Accepting and affirming conflict as a means of flourishing, objecting to the idea of equality, and advocating “orders of rank [Rangordnungen]” that reflect the power status of individuals and communities, Nietzsche is worried about restrictions, such as “states of legality [Rechtszustände],” that would limit the fluidity of power relations. They might hinder the “true will of life” (GM II:) and indicate a relapse into the pitfalls of life-denying metaphysical thinking that results in preventing humans’ most active forces from being productive. Like Nietzsche, Heidegger opposes ideas of right and morality that rely on presuppositions regarding “the most universal ‘essence’ of the human being [das allgemeinste ‘Wesen’ des Menschen]” (Heidegger : , : ). Unlike Nietzsche (cf. GM I:), Heidegger does not take the approach of understanding human beings as primarily living beings who share a variety of properties with other animals, apart from having developed intellectual and psychological capacities that turn them into very special, very exposed, and the most interesting living creatures. Heidegger is not much concerned with man’s animalitas. We are not on the right track if “we set him [the human being] off as one living creature among others in contrast to plants, beasts, and God” (Heidegger : , : ). Thereby, we would “locate [ansetzen]” the human being as one being (Seiendes) among others; and this is, Heidegger contends, tantamount to paying little or no heed to “the essence [Wesen] of the human being.” Paying due respect to it requires, in Heidegger’s view, to acknowledge – and understand – that “the ‘essence’ of Dasein lies in its existence” (Heidegger : , : ). Heidegger himself quotes this phrase from Being and Time and explains what it is meant to convey. It says,

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he expounds in his Letter on Humanism, that “the Being of the Da (dieses ‘Sein’ des Da), and only it, has the fundamental character of ek-sistence, that is, of an ecstatic inherence in the truth of Being [des ekstatischen Innestehens in der Wahrheit des Seins]” (Heidegger : , : ). What we can gather from this somewhat opaque account amounts, first, to an allusion to the Being of Dasein in terms of its temporality, its unfolding “in the unity of the ecstasies [Ekstasen] of the future [Zukunft], of having been [Gewesenheit] and of the present [Gegenwart].” In the passage quoted, Heidegger connects, second the Being of any individual Dasein to the destiny of Being (Seinsgeschick) and what it releases as its ever changing “truth,” the history of which determines the fates of human beings. Again, he “turns [kehren]” the focus from the occurrence (Geschehen) of Dasein in its Being to the occurrence of Being (Sein) as such. Existing in this way, standing out of our own Being and “within the truth of Being,” Heidegger argues, makes the “essential nature” [Wesen] of human beings unique and separates them from other living creatures “by an abyss [durch einen Abgrund]” (Heidegger : , : ). In stark contrast to Nietzsche who is opposed to any idea suggesting that there is “another world [Hinterwelt]” in addition to this earth in its very tangible texture (Z:I “On the Hinterworldly”), Heidegger seems to reintroduce some sort of transcendence. When he addresses the Being of individual Dasein, we might say he is occupied with investigating into the depth of human existence. When he speculates about Being as such, however, referring to the horizon or frame that holds together everything we are aware of and even more than that, he appears to engage in a presumptuous venture. What Heidegger has to reveal about ethical and political issues looks correspondingly bizarre. We are supposed to exercise a way of thinking (Denken) that operates in the fashion of extending “into the truth of Being [das in die Wahrheit des Seins denkt]” (Heidegger : , : ). Being, though, “gives itself [gibt sich]” or “refuses itself [versagt sich].” What evolves as the “history of the truth of Being” can only be taken up (aufnehmen) by human beings, it cannot be countered or cast aside by refutations (Heidegger : , : ). Paving paths of thinking, Heidegger launches what he labels “metapolitics” (Heidegger : , ). Nothing, though, in Heidegger’s adaptation of metapolitics reflects the implications the concept carried when it was introduced in eighteenth-century German philosophy. Gottlieb Hufeland 

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Hardly coincidentally, the title of one of Heidegger’s collections is Pathmarks (Wegmarken). Cf. Heidegger (, ).

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and August Ludwig von Schlözer made use of the notion in order to discuss man’s bond to the state within the framework of natural right, morality, and politics (Forschner & Hu¨gli ). In the aftermath of the “end of philosophy,” which Heidegger proclaims (Heidegger ), metapolitics in Heideggerian terms establishes thinking (Denken) as already described, superseding what had been philosophy. Notably, Heidegger identifies philosophy with metaphysics. Metapolitics informs the exoteric part of Heidegger’s texts advancing the thinking of Being, while writings such as Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event), traded as his second opus magnum following Being and Time, form the esoteric part (cf. Mehring : –). Thinking (Denken), in contrast to philosophy, only deals with what Heidegger deems essential: with Being. Revealingly, he ascribes dignity (Wu¨rde) rather to Being than to the human being (Heidegger : –, , : –, –). Merely in a derivative fashion, because of their intimate relation to Being, humans can lay claim to possessing dignity and demand to be treated accordingly (Heidegger : –, , : –, –). From the comments Heidegger wrote down in his Black Notebooks, it has become abundantly clear that his postphilosophical thinking entails not only intellectual extravagance, but also ethical and political consequences that are highly questionable. One sample may exemplify this assessment. In accordance with his account in Being and Time (Heidegger : –, : –), Heidegger regularly denigrates the public sphere (Öffentlichkeit) in his Notebooks. In this respect, he is quite in line with Nietzsche who often shows contempt for the public sphere (cf. HH I , II ). For Heidegger, it is a sphere in which unauthentic existence blossoms, a mode of Dasein’s Being-in-the-world (In-derWelt-sein) that is characterized by getting along with one’s life in ways as mediocre, easygoing, and indifferent as possible. Everybody proceeds as “they [man]” proceed. Nobody wants to stand out and make a difference. In the public sphere, Heidegger observes, “everything gets obscured,” even though everybody thinks he is dealing with what is transparent, familiar, and accessible without question (Heidegger : , : ). In one of the Black Notebooks, which includes “remarks [Anmerkungen]” written after the end of World War II, Heidegger picks up on these arguments from Being and Time. He refers, in a postwar remark, to the “world public [Weltöffentlichkeit],” distancing himself from its authority by putting quotation marks around the term (Heidegger : ). At a time when the United Nations was founded in response to the horrors of

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totalitarian dictatorship and a world war, Heidegger laments “the ‘world public’ and its tribunal,” considering them “the planetary organization of the oblivion of Being [die planetarische Organsisation der Seynsvergessenheit]” (Heidegger : ). In this vein, he also suggests that the Germans have let themselves be talked into buying Goethe (einen . . . “Goethe” . . . sich aufschwatzen lassen), representing “humanistic,” “classical,” and “international” occidental thought (Heidegger : , ), instead of relying on Hölderlin’s thinking of Being. Heidegger comments as follows: “How disgraceful is this helpless fawning [dies ratlose Kriechen] under the surveillance of the planetary terror of a world public, compared to which the massive brutality of the ahistorical ‘National Socialism’ is pure innocence [die reine Harmlosigkeit] – despite the obvious violence of the devastation it co-caused [trotz der unu¨bersehbaren Handgreiflichkeit der von ihm mitangerichteten Verwu¨stung]?” (Heidegger : ; my translation.) Obsessed with the oblivion of Being, Heidegger shrugs off the manifestations of what is merely being (seiend), life, and world and earth and everything that gives shape to them, ethically and politically. In contrast to Nietzsche, Heidegger ultimately betrays any substantial philosophy of finitude. It is true, both Heidegger as well as Nietzsche express skepticism toward universal standards of right, justice, and morality. Yet Nietzsche does so in the name of life, relying on productive conflict as a means of lifeenhancement, while Heidegger confides in the bloodless reality of Being. Accordingly, it seems appropriate to conclude with a quote from Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “Remain faithful to the earth and do not believe those who speak to you of extraterrestrial hopes! They are mixers of poisons whether they know it or not” (Z:I “Prologue” ).

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 

Nietzsche’s Psychology of Metaphysics (or Metaphysics as Revenge) Scott Jenkins

Nietzsche often maintains that, while philosophers take their theoretical activity to be guided by reason alone, their work is best explained through appeal to the all-too-human needs, emotions, and desires that they have in common with every other human being. I want to consider one dimension of this psychological account of philosophical activity that appears in Nietzsche’s writings in – – his attempt to explain metaphysics through appeal to ressentiment. In an unpublished note from that period, he maintains that it is “the ressentiment of metaphysicians” that creates their distinctive beliefs (WP /KSA :[]). This is the same creative force that Nietzsche locates at the ground of moral thought in On the Genealogy of Morals: “The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values” (GM I:). By considering the roles played by ressentiment in creating metaphysical beliefs and moral values, I aim to bring some unity to Nietzsche’s disparate remarks on the psychology of metaphysics, and to demonstrate that Nietzsche regards metaphysical thought as evaluative thought, and, in particular, as moral thought. This element of Nietzsche’s metaphilosophy partially explains his antipathy toward much ancient and modern philosophy. Since I will devote considerable attention to a single unpublished note, I should emphasize that I do not take the note to reveal anything significant about Nietzsche’s thought that cannot be gleaned from his published writings. I focus on the note only because it presents in a direct, succinct manner the central psychological claim concerning metaphysical thought that also appears in Twilight of the Idols – that behind ‘reason’ in philosophy we find the need for revenge.  

See Berry () for a more general discussion of Nietzsche’s psychology of philosophy. The following translations are used: BGE (); BT (); EH () GM (); GS (); HH (); PTAG (); TI (); WP (); WS (); Z (). I also use WWR (with volume and section number and occasionally page numbers) for Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation () and PP for Parerga and Paralipomena ().

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The chapter is divided as follows: In Section . I discuss the beginning of the note and make some preliminary points concerning Nietzsche’s conception of metaphysics and his notion of ressentiment. In Section . I consider how metaphysics satisfies ressentiment. In Section . I consider in greater detail the creative activity of the ressentiment of metaphysicians, as well as the product of that activity.

. The Creative Ressentiment of Metaphysicians In order to reconstruct Nietzsche’s psychology of metaphysics, it is necessary first to explicate his notion of metaphysics. The opening paragraphs of the  note in which Nietzsche identifies ressentiment as the ground of metaphysical thought is a useful starting point for this preliminary task. “On the Psychology of Metaphysics” This world is apparent – consequently there is a true world. This world is conditioned – consequently there is an unconditioned world. This world is contradictory – consequently there is a world free from contradiction. This world is a world of becoming – consequently there is a world of being. Nothing but spurious inferences (blind trust in reason: if A exists, then the opposite concept B must also exist). Suffering inspires us to these inferences: fundamentally they are wishes that such a world might exist. Likewise, hatred towards a world that creates suffering expresses itself when another world is imagined, one that is valuable: the ressentiment of metaphysicians towards the real is creative here. (KSA :[])

Nietzsche’s claim that metaphysical thinking is the expression of suffering and hatred – or equivalently (as I will maintain), that it is the expression of ressentiment – can sound wildly implausible if we have in mind a broad, twenty-first–century notion of metaphysics. That Nietzsche has in mind a narrower notion should be evident from the metaphysical inferences he offers as paradigmatic, all of which postulate a world numerically different from the one we (presently) experience. Metaphysics, in this narrow sense, has as its sole subject matter entities that cannot be objects of human sensibility. Such entities constitute what Nietzsche, in Twilight of the Idols, calls a “true world,” a collection of unobservables that underlie, explain, and determine the value of sensible objects. Plato’s realm of forms, the ‘next world’ of Christian faith, and Kant’s thing-in-itself are all examples of a true world in this sense. This narrow notion of metaphysics is not at all idiosyncratic. Kant describes metaphysics as concerned with the unconditioned – that is, that which transcends possible experience – and

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Schopenhauer has the same notion: “By metaphysics I understand all so-called knowledge that goes beyond the possibility of experience, and so beyond nature or the given phenomenal appearance of things, in order to give information about that by which, in some sense or other, this experience or nature is conditioned, or in popular language, about that which is hidden behind nature, and renders nature possible.” Metaphysics is a concern with the supersensible realm. The objects of metaphysical knowledge are also supposed to be qualitatively different from sensible objects. Nietzsche often describes these two realms of objects as ‘opposites,’ by which he means (roughly) that they possess incompatible essential properties. Kantian appearances, for example, are the opposites of things-in-themselves insofar as the former are spatial and the latter are nonspatial. Nietzsche sometimes uses this talk of opposites to announce his allegiance to a Heraclitean ‘unity of opposites’ ontology. For example, when he asserts that we should refrain from thinking that death is opposed to life since “the living is only a form of what is dead, and a very rare form” (GS ), he is both agreeing with Heraclitus that the living and the dead are “the same thing” and disagreeing with Socrates’ position, in the Phaedo, that life and death involve an imperishable soul and a perishable body. For Nietzsche there exist no opposites, only differences in degree or rank (KSA :[]). Much more could be said about this ontological position, but the issues that interest Nietzsche in the previous passage are not ontological, but psychological. He aims to explain belief in another world through appeal to () our possession of opposite concepts, and () our arational tendency to endorse spurious inferences involving these concepts. Nietzsche’s claim that these inferences express a wish or desire (Wunsch) tells us very little about their psychological ground. All kinds of psychological states can motivate wishful thinking. Nietzsche mentions suffering, hatred, and ressentiment when describing the metaphysician’s motivation, but it would be a mistake to read Nietzsche as appealing to three distinct states. As I have argued elsewhere, suffering and hatred are actually

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WWR II : p. . We might distinguish between metaphysics in this narrow sense and metaphysics as a broader concern with the nature of subjects, objects, causes, and so on. Nietzsche sometimes targets the broader notion as well, especially when he is under the influence of the neo-Kantian position that only a “chaos of sensations” exists (KSA :[]). See Green (: ch. ) and Hussain () for more on this strand of Nietzsche’s thinking. Heraclitus (: Fr. ); Plato (), Phaedo d.

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components of the distinctively human vengefulness he terms ‘ressentiment.’ This new terminology, first introduced into the published works in the Genealogy, emphasizes the connection between vengefulness and memory. A person who has been made to suffer yearns to strike back at the hated cause of that suffering only because he feels that original suffering again and again (re-sentir) – that is, he remembers it. While we may not be conscious of this connection to the past, it is because a past harm continues to weigh on us in feeling that we cannot simply ‘let it go.’ Ressentiment is just this disposition to hate, and wish to harm, whatever we take to be the cause our suffering. Talk of “hatred towards a world that creates suffering” thus designates one element of the ressentiment of metaphysicians. Nietzsche is maintaining that contemplative people who experience suffering hate the world that causes their suffering and yearn to take revenge against it. And this vengefulness is expressed, he claims, when the contemplative who is unable to take revenge endorses the inferences in question and imagines another world opposed to this one. The similarity between the metaphysical and ethical cases of creative ressentiment should now be evident. In the Genealogy, Nietzsche locates creative ressentiment in Jewish priests who are oppressed by Roman military might during the Roman occupation of Judea: “The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values; the ressentiment of natures that are denied the proper reaction, that of deeds, and compensate themselves with an imaginary revenge” (GM I:). The priests hate their oppressors, cannot retaliate against them through physical deeds, and must make do with a merely imaginary revenge employing new values produced by their ressentiment. As in the case of the metaphysician, ressentiment that cannot be satisfied becomes creative through an imaginative act that answers to the need for revenge. The main difference between these cases concerns the entity to which the vengeful person reacts, or as Nietzsche puts it, says ‘No’ (GM I:). While the moralist of the Genealogy targets a particular group of people, or type of person, the metaphysician targets the world as a whole.  

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See Jenkins (). The term “ressentiment” first appears in Nietzsche’s writing in his notes on Du¨hring (); see KSA :[]. In the appendix to that work, Du¨hring argues that metaphysical systems such as Schopenhauer’s satisfy ressentiment. Here I set aside questions about the originality of Nietzsche’s notion of ressentiment and his psychology of metaphysics. On the identification of priests as possessors of creative ressentiment, see Anderson () and Jenkins ().

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The final preliminary point to be made concerns the aspects of reality that cause suffering in the philosopher. Nietzsche has little to say, in Twilight or in the note, on the topic of why ‘this’ world inevitably creates suffering in contemplative people, but other writings suggest that we suffer from (a) the inevitable loss of what we value, and (b) our inability to get what we want. To begin with the first point, the ‘becoming’ characteristic of this world ensures that whatever we hold dear – a positive experience, a product of our labor, or our moment in history – is inevitably destroyed by the passing of time (see Z:II “Redemption”). The actual or anticipated loss of what we value thus produces suffering and (via ressentiment) hatred toward a world of becoming. The second point concerns the goal of the typical philosopher – the secure possession of the truth (see BGE ). As we all know from surveying the history of philosophy, philosophical progress is exceedingly difficult and results not in secure knowledge, but in new questions and problems. The frustration and anxiety that result from this process can produce a revaluation of the world. Schopenhauer, for example, maintains: “If the world were not something that, practically expressed, ought not to be, it would also not be theoretically a problem.” The Nietzschean diagnosis: Schopenhauer suffers and compensates himself with this vengeful thought about the world. He even provides himself with the semblance of getting what he wants by advocating a metaphysics of Will that is grounded in immediate intuition and (bizarrely) makes room for engagement with Platonic forms. But, according to Nietzsche, this metaphysics simply expresses hatred toward becoming.

.

How Does Metaphysics Satisfy Ressentiment?

The first question I want to consider is how imagining another world satisfies the ressentiment of metaphysicians. This imaginative act clearly enables us to make new value judgments about this world – for example, that it is completely lacking in value or at least that it is worth less than the other world. But noting this fact just pushes back the question because we must ask how, exactly, a value judgment concerning this world satisfies ressentiment. One answer suggested by Nietzsche’s late writings is that making this new value judgment is itself a vengeful act that satisfies ressentiment. Consider a remark from Twilight. 

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  Third proposition. To invent fables about a world ‘other’ than this one has no meaning at all, unless an instinct of slander [Verleumdung], detraction, and suspicion against life has gained the upper hand in us: in that case, we avenge ourselves against life with a phantasmagoria of ‘another,’ a ‘better’ life. (TI “Reason” )

Here it seems that by slandering life with the judgment that ‘this’ world is not as good as the imaginary next world one thereby takes revenge against life. And Nietzsche will later remark: “The concept of the ‘beyond,’ the ‘true world’ invented in order to devalue [entwerten] the only world there is” (EH “Destiny” ). Here again the devaluation of this world appears to be the ultimate end of the person who imagines a world different from this one. If we read Nietzsche in this way, his account of how value judgments satisfy the ressentiment of metaphysicians would resemble one popular (but ultimately untenable) interpretation of the relation between moral judgment and ressentiment. According to that interpretation, a person who judges that what the other does is evil, and that what he himself does is morally good, satisfies his ressentiment toward the other by representing himself as morally superior to that other. The judgment itself is the vengeful act. Another passage concerned with the imaginary revenge of a person who has “turned out badly” is frequently offered in support of this reading. What do you think he finds necessary, absolutely necessary, to give himself in his own eyes the appearance of superiority over more spiritual people and to obtain the pleasure of an accomplished revenge at least in his own imagination? Always morality; you can bet on that. Always big moral words. Always the boom-boom of justice, wisdom, holiness, virtue. (GS )

Notice, however, that Nietzsche does not actually say that the “appearance of superiority” itself generates the pleasure of an accomplished revenge. Rather, “big moral words” seem to facilitate two different things, a feeling of superiority and an imaginary revenge. These two benefits of moral judgment are separated more neatly in the Genealogy, where Nietzsche remarks that vengeful moralizers who demand justice for evildoers, wish to make them pay, crave the position of the hangman, and so on also take great pleasure in regarding themselves as morally superior to others (and thereby prove themselves to be “moral masturbators and ‘selfgratifiers’”) (GM III:). Furthermore, no passage from Nietzsche’s 

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Examples of this interpretation include Reginster (b: –), Poellner (: –), and Bittner (: ). Anderson (: ) also affirms this interpretation but supplements it by postulating an act of actual revenge. See especially Reginster (b: ).

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published works clearly supports the interpretation under consideration. And it is hard to see how a feeling of moral superiority could by itself satisfy ressentiment. Revenge requires only harm to the other. As Nietzsche himself notes in an earlier work, the vengeful person engages in “reflection over the other’s vulnerability and capacity for suffering: one wants to hurt” (WS , emphasis added). Since taking oneself to be morally superior to another and aiming to hurt the other are two very different acts – the former comparative and focused on oneself, the latter noncomparative and focused on the other – this reading of the relation between ressentiment and moral judgment is untenable. The same sort of problem arises in the case of the metaphysician’s valuation of the world. It is not at all clear how judging that this world is less valuable than a merely imagined true world constitutes revenge against this world. That judgment clearly expresses a negative attitude toward the world considered as a realm of becoming, but it does not itself satisfy a desire to inflict harm. A second answer to the question of how belief in a true world satisfies ressentiment maintains that the devaluation of this world is not in itself a vengeful act, and is merely one component of an imaginary revenge more closely related to the physical act of retaliation. This position is also suggested by Twilight. When the Christian condemns, slanders [verleumdet], and besmirches ‘the world,’ his instinct is the same as that which prompts the socialist worker to condemn, slander, and besmirch society. The ‘last judgment’ is the sweet 

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Consider as well that the moralist takes himself to be noting an objective fact when he judges that he is morally superior to the other – that is, not doing anything to the other. Admittedly, if the moralist indulges in the narcissistic thought that his negative evaluation of the other actually makes the other worse off, then the evaluation could satisfy a desire to harm. But I see no evidence that Nietzsche is interested in this sort of narcissism. I am grateful to Ken Gemes for pressing me on this point. Scholars who regard the comparative value judgment – for example, ‘I am morally superior to her,’ ‘The next world is more valuable than this one’ – as itself an act of revenge often supplement their readings by noting additional psychological advantages of these judgments. For example, the moral judgment might rationalize hatred of the other and vindicate one’s lack of a response to harm, while the metaphysical judgment might rationalize hatred toward ‘this’ world and vindicate one’s lack of engagement with the world. Thus, both sorts of judgment provide comfort by undermining or obscuring negative self-evaluations (see Gemes : ; Reginster : –, b: ; Schacht : ; and Wallace : –). I do not deny that these advantages exist, or that Nietzsche regards them as significant. But in this context, such advantages are of secondary importance because they do not figure in the original creative activity of ressentiment. As Nietzsche makes clear, that creative activity is fueled by “hatred towards [the] world” (KSA : []), or hatred of one’s enemy (GM I:). Feeling good about oneself just isn’t relevant to vengeful hatred – although vengeance itself does have a positive effect on the way the vengeful person feels (see GM III:).

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  comfort of revenge – the revolution, which the socialist worker also awaits, but conceived as a little farther off. The ‘beyond’ – why a beyond, if not as a means [Mittel] for besmirching this world? (TI “Skirmishes” )

Talk of the ‘beyond’ serving as a means could suggest that besmirching this world is the vengeful Christian’s ultimate end – the interpretation that was just considered and rejected. But this reading of the passage cannot be correct if it is the last judgment that provides the “sweet comfort of revenge.” The last judgment, after all, does not only evaluate everything in ‘this’ world; it also, crucially, metes out punishment (and reward) on the basis of those evaluations. Only in this way does it satisfy vengefulness. If we suppose that slander of ‘this’ world plays the same role in the metaphysician’s imaginary revenge that the slander and besmirching of ‘this’ world play in the Christian’s fantasy of a last judgment – a reasonable supposition given Nietzsche’s proclamation that Christianity is Platonism for ‘the people’ (BGE P) – we may draw on Nietzsche’s genealogy of Judeo-Christian moral thought in interpreting his note on the psychology of metaphysics. That is how I plan to proceed. The first essay of the Genealogy describes two cases of moral judgment facilitating an imaginary revenge that compensates for an inability to retaliate against one’s enemy. In the case of the vengeful first-century Jewish priests who lack military might, the judgment that their Roman oppressors are evil is a crucial component of their fantasy of divine vengeance – an imaginary revenge by proxy. By regarding the martial traits and deeds of Roman soldiers as marks of evil, the priest both explains why God would target this small group of people and enhances his revenge fantasy by imagining divine wrath as intense and focused (GM I:). This revenge fantasy is later made available to all through the transformation of the original Jewish value ‘evil’ into one half of the Christian moral opposition ‘good’ vs. ‘evil.’ These universal values now apply to a person’s actions, and judgments employing these values enable any vengeful person of faith to imagine his tormenter as tormented by God. As Tertullian explains (in the long passage quoted by Nietzsche), Christians who wish for the suffering of their enemies “in a measure have them by faith in the picturings of imagination” (GM I:). In both cases, the wishful thinking that satisfies ressentiment essentially involves imagining the presently unobservable suffering of one’s enemy.

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I provide more detailed accounts of these instances of imaginary revenge in Jenkins ().

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These examples of imaginary revenge by proxy suggest one way of understanding how a negative value judgment concerning ‘this’ world would satisfy the metaphysician’s ressentiment. Just as the Christian’s moral judgment enables him to imagine divine vengeance focused on whomever he regards as responsible for his suffering, the metaphysician’s devaluation of ‘this’ world would enable him to imagine the suffering of “a world that creates suffering.” While the sensible world clearly cannot suffer as a person does, it can be destroyed, either gradually (through the steady perishing of all things in time) or suddenly (through a cataclysmic event). By fantasizing that such perishing occurs through an act other than his own, and endorsing that act as an instance of punishment, the metaphysician would secure for himself an imaginary revenge by proxy. While this metaphysical fantasy may sound odd, it is central to the philosophical pessimism that shaped Nietzsche’s thought from his earliest philosophical writings until the end of his life. The famous proclamation of Goethe’s Mephistopheles is perhaps the best-known instance of this sort of pessimism. I am the spirit that always denies [verneint]! And justly so; for all which is wrought [entsteht] Deserves that it should come to naught [zugrunde geht].

Mephistopheles presents his negative attitude toward all that exists as justified by a deep normative fact concerning coming into being and passing away. This view has predecessors in the ancient world. Consider Nietzsche’s presentation of Anaximander’s fragment: “Where the source of things is [Woher Dinge ihre Entstehung haben], to that place they must also pass away [zu Grunde gehen], according to necessity; for they must pay penance and be judged for their injustices, in accordance with the ordinance of time” (PTAG ). Nietzsche describes this as an “enigmatic proclamation of a true pessimist,” and in later notes for lectures on the ‘pre-Platonic’ philosophers he describes Anaximander as “the first pessimistic philosopher” (PPP p. ). Pessimism, in this sense, is just the judgment that everything that comes into being deserves to perish. By imagining the perishing of all things as an active punishment, and endorsing that punishment, the metaphysician partially satisfies his ressentiment toward the world.  

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Goethe (), –, translation modified. See Z:II “Redemption” for Nietzsche’s only extended discussion of perishing as punishment.

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In a well-known passage, Nietzsche also describes Socrates of the Phaedo as a vengeful pessimist. “O Crito, I owe Asclepius a rooster.” This ridiculous and terrible ‘last word’ means for those who have ears, “O Crito, life is a disease.” Is it possible that a man like him, who had lived cheerfully and like a soldier in plain view of everyone, was a pessimist? He had merely kept a cheerful demeanor while all his life hiding his ultimate judgment, his inmost feeling! Socrates, Socrates suffered from life! And then he still avenged himself – with this veiled, gruesome, pious, and blasphemous saying. Did a Socrates really need revenge? Was there one ounce too little magnanimity in his overabundant virtue? (GS )

According to Nietzsche, these last words concerning the god of healing express Socrates’s belief that all of life ought to pass away (just as a disease ought to come to an end). And he understands these last words as an expression of vengefulness. Socrates suffers, comes to hate the general character of existence, and yearns for revenge. But the only revenge open to him is an imaginary revenge by proxy in which the sensible world suffers through its connection with a supersensible realm of being. Nietzsche’s account of metaphysics as revenge also targets nineteenthcentury German pessimism. According to Schopenhauer, knowledge of the metaphysical character of existence yields the insight that the sensible world (the world ‘as’ representation) is something contradictory that ought not to be. This is so because the world as representation is a distortion of the world in itself: “The characteristic of things of this world and especially of the world of men is not exactly imperfection, as has often been said, but rather distortion [Verzerrung], in everything, in what is moral, intellectual, or physical.” This metaphysical claim grounds Schopenhauer’s valuation of human life, which he expresses in a manner that recalls both Anaximander and modern Christianity: “When judging a human individual, we should always keep to the point of view that the basis of such is something that ought not to be at all, something sinful, perverse, and absurd, that which has been understood as original sin, that on account of which he is doomed to die.” Similar positions appear in the work of nineteenth-century pessimists such as Mainländer, Plu¨macher, Bahnsen, and especially Hartmann, who regards sensible existence as   

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See Beiser () for a useful account of this movement that unfortunately has little to say about Nietzsche. WWR II : p. . In this chapter Schopenhauer discusses additional ancient and modern pessimists.  PP a. See Gardner () for further discussion of this point. WWR II : p. .

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something that the world in-itself has produced poorly or in error (schlecht gemacht hat). The important point for Nietzsche’s late psychology of metaphysics is that many different metaphysical systems can satisfy the need for revenge. Anaximander’s apeiron, Plato’s realm of forms, Kant’s thing-in-itself, and Schopenhauer’s primal Will are quite different positions on the nature of the supersensible, and they make possible different negative value judgments concerning the sensible world and its denizens. But Nietzsche wants us to see these systems as functionally identical insofar as they make possible the same sort of imaginary revenge. This functional identity of diverse metaphysical positions could also give us reason to believe that they all answer the same subjective need. That is to say, an analysis of the history of metaphysics might justify Nietzsche’s implicit identification of ressentiment as the foundation of what Schopenhauer terms the ‘metaphysical need’ – humanity’s nearly universal need for religious or philosophical belief concerning the supersensible. Since my aim here is only to explain how metaphysical thought satisfies ressentiment, I will set aside the task of justifying Nietzsche’s psychology of metaphysics and conclude this section by emphasizing an important feature of my interpretation – the primacy of a negative value judgment within the metaphysician’s imagination of a true world. Belief in another world typically involves two value judgments: the negative judgment concerning this world of change and suffering that makes possible a pessimistic revenge fantasy, and the positive judgment concerning the other world that makes possible a fantasy of escape to a better place. In tracing belief in a true world back to a creative act of ressentiment (and not to a self-interested wish to escape to a true world) Nietzsche is maintaining that the negative value judgment is primary. As we know from the Genealogy, the creative ressentiment that begins the slave revolt engages in a reactive negation of something that has caused suffering: “This No is its creative deed [ihre schöpferische That]” (GM I:). Thus, while the metaphysician’s thought of escape is surely comforting, it is not for its sake that he first imagines a true world. Indeed, since Nietzsche maintains in the note that the fantasy of a true world is first produced by creative   

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Hartmann, Philosophy of the Unconscious III:–, quoted in Gardner (: ). WWR II . Compare Reginster (: ), “this invention of another world is motivated by the desire to escape the suffering that is inevitable in this one.” See also Schacht (: –). While Nietzsche does maintain that ressentiment aims at deadening pain, this is a claim about its biological function (or “physiological causality” [GM III:]), not a claim about a subject’s intentions or values.

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(schöpferisch) ressentiment, the self-interested escape fantasy must be subsequent to the other-directed revenge fantasy. Nietzsche even maintains that a positive value judgment concerning the beyond originally answers only the need for revenge. Just as the Christian beyond (which Nietzsche calls a “phantasmagoria of anticipated future bliss” [GM I:]) is “invented in order to better slander the here-and-now” (BT “Attempt” ), we metaphysicians “avenge ourselves against life with a phantasmagoria of ‘another,’ a ‘better’ life” (TI “Reason” ).

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What Does the Ressentiment of Metaphysicians Create?

Nietzsche says, “the ressentiment of metaphysicians towards the real is creative here.” But what exactly does ressentiment create? At least two features of the metaphysician’s belief in a true world cry out for explanation – its content and its relation to the subject who forms the attitude. The metaphysician believes in a world of true, unconditioned, being free from contradiction, and he fails to recognize that this belief arises not through reason, but from ressentiment. Both aspects of the metaphysician’s belief could be illuminated through comparison with the vengeful moral subject of the Genealogy. Moral beliefs have a distinctive content insofar as they employ the new values ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ And, as Nietzsche repeatedly emphasizes, moral subjects cannot be honest with themselves concerning the grounds of those beliefs: “The man of ressentiment is neither upright nor naïve nor honest and straightforward with himself” (GM I:; see also GM I:). Nietzsche might say the same of philosophers who are “not honest enough in their work” (BGE ). This resemblance between the philosopher and the moralist is a major theme of the Genealogy, but I will set aside the topic of self-knowledge in order to focus on the other distinctive feature of metaphysical belief, its content. I aim to show that just as “ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values” in the ethical sphere, the ressentiment of metaphysicians toward the real produces values when it becomes creative. This may not be terribly surprising, given what has already been established. But tracing the emergence of metaphysical values will reveal further affinities between metaphysics and morality and raise some new questions concerning the revaluation of values that is fueled by ressentiment. I will begin my account of the content of metaphysical belief by considering additional passages from the note in which Nietzsche describes the creative activity of the ressentiment of metaphysicians. One feature of these passages is initially puzzling. Just after announcing that the suffering

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constitutive of ressentiment underlies our tendency to infer the existence of a true world, Nietzsche appears to present these inferences as innocent mistakes. The error in these inferences: two opposite concepts are formed, – because a reality corresponds to one of them, a reality ‘must’ also correspond to the other. ‘Otherwise, from where would we have acquired its concept?’ – Consequently, reason as a source of revelation concerning being-in-itself. But the origin of those opposites does not necessarily go back to a supernatural source of reason: it’s enough to oppose to this the true genesis of the concepts. This originates from the practical sphere, from the sphere of utility, and just for this reason has its strong faith (one would perish if one did not infer in accordance with this sort of reason: but that does not mean that what it claims is thereby proven). (KSA :[])

These remarks seem to describe an innocent mistake. While the metaphysician mistakenly assumes that reason connects us to being-in-itself because he sees no other way to explain our possession of a certain set of concepts, Nietzsche, living in the time of Darwin, can see that our conceptual capacities ought to be explained through appeal to the practical role they play in our lives as social animals. I will demonstrate that this innocent mistake is actually a step in Nietzsche’s account of belief in a true world, one located prior to the creative activity of ressentiment. That Nietzsche’s account of metaphysical belief involves both innocent mistakes and vengeful revaluations will underscore the affinity between metaphysical and moral thought. The first step in Nietzsche’s account of metaphysical thought is his claim that a tendency to see in the physical world entities that do not exist has great value for survival. According to Nietzsche, the world is manifest to us as a collection of objects instantiating a manageable set of kinds and linked by comprehensible logical and natural laws not because such things actually exist, but only because simplifying the testimony of the senses in just this way facilitates life-promoting interaction with the world. The content of our perceptual experience is thus a kind of shorthand that expresses the practical value of an environment for human beings, and not the truth of the matter. Here is a representative statement of Nietzsche’s position. Innumerable beings [that] drew inferences in a way different from that in which we do now perished; nonetheless, they might have been closer to the truth! He, for instance, who did not know how to find ‘identity’ often enough, both with regard to nourishment and hostile animals . . . had a slighter probability of survival than he who in all cases of similarity immediately guessed that they were identical. (GS )

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Of course, a being that simply sees identity without spending time and energy ‘guessing’ has an even better chance of survival. More generally, the greater our assurance that the world itself exhibits the distinctions useful to our survival, the more likely we are to survive. Nietzsche concludes, “the strength of knowledge lies not in its degree of truth, but in its age, its embeddedness, its character as condition of life” (GS ). His remark in the note concerning our “strong faith” in the existence of opposites makes the same point. Partial insight into this aspect of our conceptual capacities constitutes the second step in the emergence of belief in a true world. Consider a passage from Twilight that recalls Nietzsche’s remarks on reason in the note. Very much later, in a world which was in a thousand ways more enlightened, philosophers, to their great surprise, became aware of the sureness, the subjective certainty, in our handling of the categories of reason: they concluded that these categories could not be derived from anything empirical – for everything empirical plainly contradicted them. Whence, then, were they derived? (TI “Reason” )

Philosophers recognize that logical concepts such as ‘identity’ are not acquired from sense experience. But thanks to millennia of natural selection, there remains embedded in them a deep, life-promoting assurance in the objective reality of such concepts. Since they lack access to the evolutionary story that explains that assurance, it is almost inevitable that they make the mistake of assuming that these concepts relate them to something outside the sensible world. The passage continues with an answer to the philosopher’s question concerning origins: “And in India, as in Greece, the same mistake was made: ‘We must once have been at home in a higher world (instead of a very much lower one, which would have been the truth); we must have been divine, for we have reason!’” (TI “Reason” ). Assuming an original acquaintance with a more valuable realm of being both satisfies the philosopher’s faith in the reality of concepts of reason and makes possible the self-congratulatory judgment that we must have been divine (as well as the vengeful judgment that our bodies, and this world, are the opposite of divine). But this assumption is the original mistake of metaphysics. It is important to distinguish between two parts of this mistake, the postulation of a supersensible realm and the valuation of that realm. 

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As Green () and Hussain () demonstrate, neo-Kantianism also had a significant influence on Nietzsche’s view that human cognition always falsifies. Since this influence is not relevant to the explanation of metaphysical thought presented in Twilight and the note, I will not consider it here.

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Nietzsche sometimes distinguishes between these by using the valueneutral term ‘metaphysical world’ to designate any realm of entities outside of nature. In Human, All Too Human, for example, he states: It is true, there could be a metaphysical world; the absolute possibility of it is hardly to be disputed. We behold all things through the human head and cannot cut off this head; while the question remains what of the world would still be there if one had cut it off. This is a purely scientific problem and one not very well calculated to bother people overmuch. (HH )

It is not the metaphysical world itself that moves people, but rather that world interpreted and valued in accordance with our passions: “All that has hitherto made metaphysical assumptions valuable, terrible, delightful to them, all that has begotten these assumptions, is passion, error, and selfdeception; the worst of all methods of acquiring knowledge, not the best of all, have taught belief in them” (HH ). Belief in a metaphysical world is typically belief in a true world because that is the sort of metaphysical position that satisfies or stimulates a person’s passions. One could maintain, following Heraclitus, that the sensible world is the valuable world: “Whatsoever things [are] objects of sight, hearing, [and] experience – these things I hold in higher esteem.” And one could, in principle, postulate a metaphysical world while taking no position on its value. But metaphysical thought is typically evaluative thought because belief in supersensible entities frees wishful thinking from the constraints of empirical belief. And it is typically vengeful thought because our must urgent wishes are grounded in ressentiment. These aspects of metaphysical thought should be familiar from the Genealogy, which twice appeals to previously existing beliefs about the supersensible in its genealogy of moral values. First, the Jewish priests’ fantasy that evil Romans will be “in all eternity the unblessed, accursed, damned” (GM I:) clearly draws on their belief in a god who sits outside ‘this’ world, as well as their belief that horrible harms tend to befall wrongdoers in the valley of Gehenna. These beliefs, unified and reinterpreted by the priests’ unsatisfied ressentiment, make possible the fantasy of an unseen, eternal damnation. Second, the Pauline establishment of a single code of conduct as obligatory for all persons draws on a common human tendency to understand actions as effects of a subject outside the sensible, causal order: “Just as the popular mind separates the lightning from its flash and takes the latter for an action, for the operation of a subject called 

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For a later use of “metaphysical world,” see KSA :[].

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Heraclitus (: Fr. ).

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lightning, so popular morality also separates strength from expressions of strength, as if there were a neutral substratum behind the strong person, which was free to express strength or not to do so” (GM I:). These errors concerning lightning and the strong person arise from a single source. It is “only owing to the seduction of language (and of the fundamental errors of reason that are petrified in it)” that we tend to construe all events as the “doings” of a “doer” (GM I:). The belief about human subjects produced by this fitness-enhancing tendency is coopted and reinterpreted by the ressentiment of persons who want nothing more than to regard others as deserving of eternal damnation: “No wonder if the submerged, darkly glowering emotions of vengefulness and hatred exploit this belief for their own ends and . . . gain the right to make the bird of prey accountable for being a bird of prey” (GM I:). The metaphysician’s postulation of a true world closely resembles the second, ‘Christian’ stage in the genealogy of moral values. When Nietzsche explains why philosophers from India to Greece postulate a supersensible world, he again mentions the seduction of language. Nothing has yet possessed a more naïve power of persuasion than the error concerning being, as it has been formulated by the Eleatics, for example. After all, every word we say and every sentence speak in its favor. Even the opponents of the Eleatics still succumbed to the seduction of their concept of being . . . “Reason” in language – oh, what an old deceptive female she is! I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar. (TI “Reason” )

The main difference between the ethical and metaphysical cases concerns their scope. The popular mind hypostatizes the concept of a subject when it understands the sentence “lightning flashes [es blitzt]” as referring to the action of an agent, while the metaphysical mind hypostatizes a range of concepts when it posits a realm of being that lies beyond or beneath becoming: “Logical world-denial and nihilation [Nihilisirung] follow from the fact that we must oppose not-being with being, and that the concept ‘Becoming’ is denied (‘something becomes’ [‘etwas wird’])” (KSA :[]). Nietzsche does not bother to enumerate the concepts that are hypostatized and endowed with value when we imagine a true world. In the note he mentions ‘true,’ ‘identical,’ ‘free from contradiction,’ ‘unconditioned,’ and ‘being,’ while in Twilight he adds ‘unity,’ ‘permanence,’ ‘substance,’ ‘cause,’ and ‘thinghood’ (TI “Reason” ). In some contexts he refers to 

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See KSA :[] for talk of “Hypostasen” and additional examples of hypostatized concepts.

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these concepts simply as ‘concepts of reason’ or ‘opposite concepts’: “There are no opposites: only from those of logic do we derive the concept of opposites – and falsely transfer it into things” (KSA :[]). A reconstruction of the precise senses of metaphysical concepts (a project that lies outside the scope of Nietzsche’s concern) would presumably draw on the different roles these concepts play in our practical lives in order to delineate their places within pessimistic metaphysical systems. But the essential point of Nietzsche’s genealogy of the true world is that all of these metaphysical concepts contain the same evaluative content insofar as they arise through the same creative act of ressentiment. Belief in a metaphysical world (or perhaps the mere disposition to believe) is coopted and reinterpreted by the ressentiment of contemplatives who want nothing more than to regard the destruction of ‘this’ world as deserved, and perhaps inevitable. Just as in the ethical case, the value produced by metaphysicians can be explained through appeal to the revenge fantasy that would satisfy their ressentiment. Judging merely that ‘this’ world of becoming is worth less than the world of being does not support that fantasy; that value might still be sufficient to justify the world’s persistence. What the metaphysician needs is the thought that this world is a distortion or perversion of what truly is, something fallen, and therefore something that ought not to be. For Nietzsche, this thought finds its ultimate expression in the Christian-Schopenhauerian value judgment that existence is just worthless – unwerth an sich (BT “Attempt” ; GM II:). According to Schopenhauer, since nothing in this world is positively valuable (even the greatest pleasure), the smallest instance of negative value (e.g., pain) renders this world irredeemably bad, and thus unworthy of persisting. While Schopenhauer imagines that this pessimistic axiological position is grounded in his metaphysics, Nietzsche sees in this metaphysics only his suffering and need for revenge. The value that warrants the thought that the nonexistence of this world would be better than its existence, that it ought to ‘go under,’ is the original creation of the metaphysician’s ressentiment. It is the ethical value ‘evil’ writ large. While the moralist wishes to excise from the world all 

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It is significant that Nietzsche, in the note, describes the world the metaphysician imagines as a valuable world (“eine werthvolle”) (KSA :[]). He is suggesting that all value is projected into the next world, while ‘this’ world is taken to be completely lacking in value – worthless in the sense that we should regret its existence. This point goes missing in the Kaufmann-Hollingdale translation of the passage as part of WP : “to imagine another, more valuable world [eine werthvolle] is an expression of hatred.” WWR II : p. .

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potentially harmful human actions, and sees them as the guilty, punishable doings of a transcendent subject, the metaphysician wishes that all life would cease to exist and thus imagines all becoming as a guilty, punishable manifestation of being. Nietzsche often uses the opposite terms ‘apparent’ and ‘true’ to designate the metaphysician’s values (a tendency likely explained by the prominence of the notion of appearance within German Idealism). This opposition is the first one presented in the note, and it also structures the discussion of metaphysics in Twilight that culminates in the famous section “How the ‘True World’ Finally Became a Fable.” We can further illuminate the emergence of this new metaphysical notion of appearance, with its distinctive evaluative content, by considering Nietzsche’s claim in the Genealogy that new concepts, and, indeed, new values, can come to be associated with familiar words. Nietzsche notes that subsequent to the birth of the moral value ‘evil,’ the concept ‘good’ might appear to have two opposites – ‘bad’ and ‘evil.’ But this is not the case. But it is not the same concept ‘good’; one should ask rather precisely who is ‘evil’ in the sense of the morality of ressentiment. The answer, in all strictness, is: precisely the ‘good person’ of the other morality, precisely the noble, powerful person, the ruler, but dyed in another color, interpreted in another fashion, seen in another way by the venomous eye of ressentiment. (GM I:)

In the case of the metaphysician, ressentiment similarly coopts a familiar term and makes it ambiguous. Although Nietzsche never makes this point explicitly, ‘apparent’ comes to be opposed to both ‘real’ and ‘true’ in a manner that reproduces (with one minor difference) the relations between ‘good,’ ‘bad,’ and ‘evil’ presented in the Genealogy. Consider the following passages. (a) “The ‘apparent’ world is the only one: the ‘true’ world is merely added by a lie” (TI “Reason” ). (b) “The reasons for which ‘this’ world has been characterized as ‘apparent’ are the very reasons which indicate its reality” (TI “Reason” ). (c) “The ‘true world’ has been constructed out of contradiction to the actual world: indeed an apparent world, insofar as it is merely a moral-optical illusion” (TI “Reason” ). (d) “The ‘true world’ and the ‘apparent world’ – that means the mendaciously invented world and reality” (EH P:). 

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Nietzsche’s reflection on the Genealogy in A  brings out this affinity between the ethical and metaphysical creations of ressentiment.

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These passages indicate that the ressentiment of metaphysicians carries out a revaluation or inversion of values of the sort he describes in the Genealogy (GM I:–), and that the evaluative content of the metaphysical concept ‘apparent’ is moral content. The two cases of revaluation may be presented as follows.

Original, innocent values Inverted, moral values

Ethics

Metaphysics

good: bad evil: good

real: apparent apparent: true

Passage (a) employs the moral opposition ‘apparent: true.’ Passages (b) and (c) note, respectively, that the world devalued as apparent within the moral opposition is the one originally affirmed as real, while the world affirmed as true within the moral opposition was originally disparaged as merely apparent. And passage (d) links the two oppositions by noting which pairs of terms refer to the same entity. In all four passages, Nietzsche places moralized terms within scare quotes. The main difference between the ethical and metaphysical cases concerns the term that becomes ambiguous through the revaluation of existing values. In the ethical case, it’s the positive term ‘good,’ while in the metaphysical case it’s the negative term ‘apparent.’ What should we make of this difference? In connection with Nietzsche’s explanatory story – his attempt to explain the content of our concepts through appeal to the creative power of ressentiment – the answer, I think, is Nothing at all. The two inverted, moral oppositions are completely analogous despite this difference in the ambiguous term. In both cases, the moral opposition emerges for the sake of condemning (as evil, or apparent) what is originally held in high regard (as good, or real). In both cases, the affirmative moral judgment (‘I am good,’ ‘The other world is true’) is in service of the negative moral judgment that partially satisfies ressentiment. And, in both cases, the entity judged to be morally good (the soul, the other world) lies beyond human sensibility. The two sets of opposite values have the same psychological origin and function. This reconstruction of the creative activity of ressentiment leaves open one pressing question – does the metaphysician’s ressentiment actually create the moral content of the metaphysical terms ‘true’ and ‘apparent’? The postulation of a true world might involve simply combining these terms with preexisting moral content, say by fitting ‘true’ and ‘apparent’

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into a preexisting schema of opposite values already available in the form of ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ Or perhaps it is the metaphysician who originally creates the moral content that later attaches to the ethical terms ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ Or perhaps Nietzsche means to postulate independent instances of this act of creation. The texts do not point in a single direction, although a late remark on the historical Zarathustra (Zoroaster) does grant primacy to the ethical sphere: “Zarathustra was the first to consider the fight of good and evil the very wheel in the machinery of things: the transposition [Übersetzung] of morality into the metaphysical realm, as a force, cause, and end in itself, is his work” (EH “Destiny” ). If this is Nietzsche’s considered view, two interesting results would follow. First, the birth of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ during the Roman occupation of Judea, as recounted in the first essay of the Genealogy, would not be their first appearance in the world. And, second, the vengeful metaphysics common to Anaximander, the Jewish prophets, Socrates, Schopenhauer, and many others would similarly be mere transpositions of morality from the ethical sphere into the machinery of things. But however we understand the origin of moral content, it is clear that Nietzsche takes morality to permeate metaphysical thought from the preSocratics to Schopenhauer. As I have shown, he believes that metaphysical thought arises from ressentiment and answers to ressentiment. It thus has the same function as the morality of good and evil, although it is suited to a more contemplative type of person, as that type has existed so far in human history – the philosopher. 

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For their comments on earlier drafts of this paper, I am grateful to audiences at Birkbeck College, Dartmouth College, Reed College, the University of Kansas, and the Nietzsche in the Northeast conference at Providence College.

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“The Great Seriousness Begins” Nietzsche’s Tragic Philosophy and Philosophy’s Role in Creating Healthier Racialized Identities Jacqueline Scott Another ideal runs ahead of us, a strange, tempting [Versucherisches], dangerous ideal to which we should not wish to persuade anybody because we do not really concede the right to it to anyone: the ideal of a spirit who plays naively – that is, not deliberately but from overflowing power and abundance – with all that was hitherto called holy, good, untouchable, divine; for whom those supreme things that the people naturally accept as their value standards, signify danger, decay, debasement, or at least recreation, blindness, and temporary selfoblivion; the ideal of a human, superhuman well-being and benevolence that will appear inhuman – for example, when it confronts all earthly seriousness so far . . . and in spite of all of this, it is perhaps only with him that great seriousness really begins, that the real question mark is posed for the first time, that the destiny of the soul changes, the hand moves forward, the tragedy begins.

(GS )

In the epigraph for this chapter, Friedrich Nietzsche foretold of a potential philosophical ideal that would counter the reigning “holy, good” ideals of traditional philosophy and would signal a “great health” (the title of the section). This new ideal, its accompanying health, and the people who will embody both, portend the beginning of “the tragedy.” What is this “tragedy”? How is it related to Nietzsche’s criticisms of traditional philosophy, his philosophy of the future, and health in the late works? In this chapter, I will argue that “tragic philosophy” is a key component of Nietzsche’s metaphilosophical project in the late works – although he left the term underdeveloped in his published works. In particular, my focus will be less on the content of Nietzsche’s “tragic philosophy” and more on the role he assigned to it in helping us understand and move away from the “diseased” philosophical approach of the traditional philosophy that wills truth. In this sense, I will argue that Nietzsche’s tragic philosophy was 

The following translations are used: BGE (); BT (); GM (); GS (); TI ().

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meant to act as a counterpoint to the bad conscience and the ascetic ideal. As a result, it is meant to guide those who embrace it out of the ressentiment and world-weariness resulting from the “truths” of traditional philosophy to a more creative way of affirming life. In making this argument, I will argue that one of Nietzsche’s goals in the late works was to experiment with ways in which those of his time might rethink the aims and methods of philosophy so that the healthiest among them might affirm meaningful lives in the face of a tragic view of life. Nietzsche characterized this approach as a “pessimism of strength” in which the problematic nature of existence served as a stimulus for life affirmation (BT “Attempt” ; TI “Skirmishes” ). This metaphilosophical project, then, is not primarily focused on the traditional disinterested pursuit of knowledge, but instead on the subjective creation of values that are derived from an affirmation of the only “truth” we have about our lives (that they are, at root, meaningless). Nietzsche referred to this as “tragic wisdom” and he proclaimed himself as the “first tragic philosopher” because of a profound self-knowledge he had acquired as a sufferer of the diseased traditional philosophy (EH “Books” BT:, ). In the final section of the chapter, I will conclude by pointing toward the importance of this understanding of Nietzsche’s tragic approach for contemporary philosophy. In particular, I will argue that this tragic metaphilosophical approach is potentially quite fruitful for those of us looking for healthier ways of enacting race in our society. I will argue that we need to adopt a tragic view of our racialized lives: an acceptance of the endemic and chronic nature of racism in our society without falling victim to the bad conscience-induced resignation and resentment that plague so many people today. In doing so, I will contend that we should draw from aspects of Nietzsche’s tragic philosophy in order to aid us in affirming our lives as racialized subjects and as a racialized society. This is not solely an American cultural problem. It is also one that plagues our own discipline. I will argue that the discipline of philosophy itself needs to undergo this process of attaining tragic wisdom.

. Background Information: Nihilism and the Problem of Decadence In his reassessment of his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche emphasized the philosophical import of this book in its analysis of ancient Greek tragic pessimism as a sign of health and vitality. Nietzsche lauded the ancient tragic Greeks’ method for contending with the pessimism that

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plagues human existence. He characterized this pessimism in The Birth of Tragedy in terms of the Wisdom of Silenus: “What is best of all is utterly beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best for you is – to die soon” (BT ). Given this deeply gloomy view of our existence (avoid existing all together or exit it as soon as possible), Nietzsche marveled at how these Greeks understood this view of life, embraced it (by portraying it in their religion and tragic plays), and still managed to affirm their lives. Space limitations do not permit me to fully flesh out the relationship between nihilism, pessimism, and decadence in his late works. While it is well established in the scholarship that nihilism and pessimism are important technical terms in his arguments and that these terms played important roles throughout his writings, “decadence” is less universally acknowledged as a technical term. That being said, I, along with scholars such as Daniel Conway, Randall Havas, and Daniel Ahern, have argued that, in the late works, the terms “decadence” and “decadent” took on a technical status and were important for Nietzsche in terms of how he characterized his post-Zarathustra critical and positive projects as well as his own role in carrying them out. As Bernard Reginster has argued, Nietzsche often used the terms nihilism and pessimism interchangeably, and therefore it is difficult to settle on a rigid characterization of their relationship (: –). The same goes for decadence. For the purposes of this chapter, I suggest that we understand the relationship between these three terms in the following way. Nihilism is both the fact that the history of human existence is characterized by ceaseless and meaningless suffering and also our response to this suffering (GM III:). The fact of this meaningless suffering causes “disorientation,” and eventually suicidal despair in us when we realize that our highest values that would render this existence ultimately meaningful are not realizable (BGE ). The assumption here is that, in response to this meaningless suffering and to avoid the despair, we create a meaning in life as well as the values that are attendant to this meaning. For example, Christianity offers its followers a meaningful life by requiring that they accept Jesus Christ as their savior and devote their lives to following his teachings. 

 

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I develop my arguments about these connections in Scott (, ). In terms of the secondary literature, Conway (), Havas (), and Reginster () are book-length analyses of Nietzsche’s positive philosophy that place an importance on nihilism, pessimism, and decadence. As Paul Loeb () has argued, the Übermensch is meant to signal a break in this fact of human existence in that this type will give meaning to past and present existence. Reginster (: –).

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The meaning in a Christian’s life then is formed by organizing one’s life according to the established Christian values. Nietzsche also held that, although philosophy is generally regarded as a theoretical and rational activity, it is actually guided by instinctual drives that reflect an autocratic desire to impose our preferences on the world around us (BGE , , , ). In imposing these values (“I prefer this and do not prefer that”) to fashion a meaningful life, humans – particularly philosophers – utilize subconscious instincts and drives. As Reginster, Conway, Katsafanas, and I have claimed, Nietzsche’s argument is that this value creation emerges out of a particular physiological attunement. This attunement is Nietzsche’s will to power (BGE ; GM III:). As humans, we attempt to contend with this nihilistic disorientation by putting our stamp on the world, saying that certain things are more important than others (valuation), and thus rendering our lives meaningful (Loeb : ). An unhealthy organization of the drives and impulses engenders an unhealthy creation of values. While in the short term this philosophy has held off nihilism, Nietzsche argued that in the long term it introduced an additional set of problems for its adherents: any values that we create will eventually “decay.” In this sense, these values are organic. By this I mean that, due to changes in the individuals or external circumstances, values lose their efficacy in helping to make life meaningful for their believers. This is the problem of decadence: we must create values to hold off suicidal despair, but any values we create will decay. There is thus no permanent escape from the threat of suicide-inducing nihilism because there is no cure for the disease of decadence (TI “Socrates” ). Traditionally, philosophers have attempted to create a cure for decadence so as to end it as a problem altogether. I have argued that these philosophers can be divided into two groups and both exhibit a weakly decadent approach: optimists and weak pessimists. Optimists attempt to treat decadence using universal and unconditional values (like “good” and “evil”). Their claim is that there is an inherent meaning to life, they 

  

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In the preface to GS, Nietzsche describes philosophy in this way: “A philosopher who has traversed many kinds of health, and keeps traversing them, has passed through an equal number of philosophies; he simply cannot keep from transposing his states every time into the spiritual form and distance: this art of transfiguration is philosophy” (GS P:). See Katsafanas (: chs. –) for this relationship between the drives, instincts, and values. Katsafanas () has presented a careful and incisive analysis of this aspect of Nietzsche’s moral psychology. See also Havas () and Ahern (: ch. ).  See also Conway () and Scott (). See Scott ().

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have discovered it, and these values will render life meaningful for all who adhere to them. In the late works, Nietzsche charged Socrates and Plato with being such optimists. The weak decadent counterpart to the optimists is the weak pessimists. This group accepts that there can be no permanent cure for decadence in terms of our lives on earth – that suffering in life is inevitable. Their goal instead is to help their followers escape from our problematic existence on earth. In terms of value creation, then, these types teach a hatred of the animalistic instincts behind our expressions of the will to power and claim that it is these instincts that make life problematic (EH “Destiny” ; TI “Skirmishes” ). Christian values are an example of this type of treatment for decadence, in that Christianity claims that the suffering in our lives is caused by sinning. But if people are “good” and avoid the “evil” of acting on our instincts (expressing our individual will to power) while we are alive, then we will be rewarded with a life free of suffering in the after-life (GM III:–). Based on this view, our lives are made meaningful by dutifully following the dictates of the ascetic priest. Nietzsche likened this approach to that of a physician who offers a treatment that lessens the symptoms of the disease but leaves the underlying disease untreated (GM III:–). In this sense, decadence is the physiological underpinning (I refer to it as health) of the philosophical issue of nihilism (Scott : –). Pessimism is the emotional response to the fact of nihilism and the problem of decadence (Loeb : ). This emotional response, for most of human history, has been a weak pessimistic evaluation on the whole of life. Nietzsche argued that Greeks of the tragic age stood out because, while they acknowledged this nihilistic fact of human existence (marked by ceaseless and meaningless suffering), they still affirmed their lives. Nietzsche then characterized this as a pessimism of strength (BT “Attempt” ). Both types of weak decadence are characterized by a twofold denial of the necessity of creating values as well as of the ability of these values to help us affirm our lives on earth (GS ). As a result, they do not prepare their followers for either the inevitable decline of these values or for the necessary creation of new values needed to hold off nihilism. Nietzsche’s project, as described for example in GS , was to propose a healthier, more effective alternative to these two forms of decadence. I have characterized this approach as “strong decadence.” It is “decadent” in that it accepts the fact that there is no inherent meaning to life and so life is characterized by inexplicable suffering. But, it is “strong” in that it proposes an antidote to this disease of decadence that emphasizes the abilities of individuals to create values that aid them in affirming their own lives

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(BGE ). In this sense, this strong decadence acts as an antidote to the disease of decadence by strengthening the body to withstand the most pervasive symptoms of decadence. This strong decadence is characterized by what I call a “strong pessimist” view of life: life is meaningless, unpredictable, and rife with inexplicable suffering and this void in meaning offers individuals the opportunity to express their wills to power and affirm their lives (BT “Attempt” ). In this sense, the suffering brought about by the meaninglessness of life can act as a stimulus for growth and not merely serve as a burden to be endured in our earthly existence (GM III:; BGE ). As I will argue, Nietzsche’s personal role was to act as a philosophical physician for his time, and to foster a philosophical and cultural transition from weak pessimism to strong pessimism by cultivating future strong types who might be able to enact this transition. Returning to Gay Science , this transition requires “great health” both on the part of Nietzsche (the physician) and his future physician colleagues: “Another ideal runs ahead of us, a strange, tempting [versucherisches], dangerous ideal to which we should not wish to persuade anybody because we do not reality concede the right to it to anyone: the ideal of a spirit who plays naively – that is, not deliberately but from overflowing power and abundance – with all that was hitherto called holy, good, untouchable, divine.” Here Nietzsche wrote of a future alternative to the ideals of weak decadence, and this ideal will be “strange” in that it will be different from the dominant traditional approaches. Nietzsche used the term “versucherishes” to describe it, and the German verb versuchen can mean to attempt, to experiment, or to tempt (BGE ). This future ideal is versucherisches in that it attempts to push Nietzsche’s contemporaries to experiment with value creation, and it thereby tempts its followers to overcome the traditional approaches that those of his time considered to be “holy, good, untouchable, divine.” Note also that these future types are engaged in what Daniel Conway has called “the dangerous game” of the philosophers. Conway has argued that Nietzschean philosophers must attempt, and experiment with, the task of creating values that make life meaningful, and acknowledge that any values they create will eventually decay. They then are always tempting the specter of nihilism, and it was because of this temptation that Nietzsche called this ideal “dangerous” (Conway : –). Nietzsche’s future healthy types who will create strong decadent values are a select bunch because they will have the ability to create instinctively by using their will to power (“the ideal of a spirit who plays naively – that is, not deliberately but from overflowing power and abundance”). In other words,

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contrary to the ideals of weak decadence, it is the unconscious desires and instincts that will be most valued as opposed to an emphasis on conscious rational creation. Also note that these future types will see the weak decadent “value standards” that are “naturally accept[ed]” by most people as symptoms of “danger, decay, debasement, or at least recreation, blindness, and self-oblivion” (GS ). In other words, these future Nietzschean strong decadents will understand that the values of traditional philosophy “signal” a decay of values and thus the slide toward nihilism. Most importantly for my purposes in this chapter, these future types will signal the transition to a different approach for contending with the problem of decadence and the threat of nihilism. In this sense, these types will pose “the real question mark . . . for the first time” about the health of these traditional values and thus “[confront] all earthly seriousness so far.” For Nietzsche, this would signal the beginning of a “tragedy” that would necessitate a new type physiological health (“the ideal of a human, superhuman well-being and benevolence”) and would change the “destiny of the soul.” GS  thus epitomizes Nietzsche’s concept of “tragic philosophy” in the late works because in that section Nietzsche connected three aspects of “tragic philosophy”: first, as a response to weak decadence, second, as involving physiological and philosophical health, and, third, as the cultivation of a new type of philosopher. In other words, I am arguing that this section describes a future new type, a new goal, and also a new means for attaining that goal. In the rest of this chapter, I will argue that if one engages in a close analysis of GS  and connects it to other references in the late works to “tragedy” and “tragic,” then one will emerge with a fairly detailed sketch of this “tragic philosophy” and its role in Nietzsche’s positive philosophy of the late works as well as of Nietzsche’s own role in cultivating this “new ideal.” Now that I have provided some background information on my view of Nietzsche’s general positive philosophy in the late works, I will focus on this analysis of “tragic philosophy.”

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While I am focusing on GS , I also want to contend that of the forty sections that comprise book five of The Gay Science, nineteen sections discuss the role of art, the artist, and particular artistic media (acting, music, literature) in philosophical approaches to creating values and affirming life (both weak and strong decadent approaches). In particular, several of these sections are focused on describing Nietzsche’s future strong types (he consistently refers to these types using the pronoun “we”) as well as his relationship to them. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to make the argument for this claim, but it would seem that GS  is not unique in its description of what I am calling this tragic approach to philosophy. Instead, GS  can be read as an exemplar of Nietzsche’s attempt in the second edition of The Gay Science (the new preface and book five) to clarify the role

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.

Tragedy and the Tragic

In this analysis, I will delineate three characteristics of this tragic philosophy: () () ()

Harbinger for a healthier philosophy of the future. Artistic acceptance of the meaningless nature of human existence. Metaphor for Nietzsche’s own critical work in assessing weak decadent philosophy.

Returning to Nietzsche’s “Attempt at a Self-Criticism,” in his preface to The Birth of Tragedy, he argued here that his call in for a rebirth of tragedy out of the spirit of Wagner’s music was wrong-headed. Instead, his emphasis should have been on understanding and replicating the tragic Greek “pessimism of strength [Stärke]” as a sign of their “intellectual predilection for the hard, gruesome, evil, problematic aspect of existence” as it derives from an overflowing health (BT “Attempt” ). In other words, fourteen years after publishing Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche wanted his readers to focus on his understanding of an aspect of the ancient Greek strong decadent approach to value creation. He considered it to be healthy because the Greeks did not deny the nihilistic foundational state of human existence (“the hard, gruesome, evil, problematic aspect of existence”), as did Nietzsche’s contemporaries, but instead cultivated an “intellectual predilection for it.” Nietzsche, then, was using his own value system of weak and strong decadence to engage in a retrospective diagnosis of the Greeks of the tragic period. In terms of the second characteristic of tragic philosophy, throughout the published late works, Nietzsche characterized this pessimism of strength as involving the ability to both accept the frightful and evil nature of existence and to use the pain involved in this acceptance as a stimulus to create values that allow one to affirm one’s present-day life. For Nietzsche, this way of contending with the “problematic aspect of existence” was something in which the artists of the tragic period excelled: The psychology of the orgy as an overflowing feeling of life and energy within which even pain acts as a stimulus provided me with the key to the concept of the tragic feeling, which was misunderstood as much by Aristotle

 

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of the tragic and tragedy (in terms of both its artistic and philosophical commitments) in Nietzsche’s positive philosophy. See Ahern (: ). See Hatab (: –) for a similar assessment of Nietzsche’s reading of the Greeks of the tragic era.

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as it especially was by our pessimists. Tragedy is so far from providing evidence for pessimism among the Hellenes in Schopenhauer’s sense that it has to be considered the decisive repudiation of that idea and the counterverdict to it. Affirmation of life even in its strangest and sternest problems, the will to life rejoicing in its own inexhaustibility through the sacrifice of its highest types – that is what I called Dionysian, that is what I recognized as the bridge to the psychology of the tragic poet. Not so as to get rid of the pity and terror, not in order to purify oneself of a dangerous emotion through its vehement discharge – it was thus Aristotle understood it –: but, beyond terror and pity, to realize in oneself the eternal joy of becoming – that joy which also encompasses joy in destruction. (TI “Ancients” )

Here Nietzsche contrasted the weak modern Schopenhaurean pessimism of his time that was characterized by resignation and weariness about the meaninglessness of human existence with the strong pessimism of the tragic poet. This latter pessimism was an expression of an “overflowing feeling of life and energy” that allowed suffering to be a stimulus to life affirmation as opposed to a reason for negating life. In the tragic plays, the Greeks affirmed life “even in its strangest and most sternest problems” and because of the “the sacrifice of its highest types.” These heroes played the “dangerous game,” and, while they usually perished because of the view of life they attempted to embody, this attempt or experiment with life affirmation should be viewed as a celebration of the creation of something out of the possibilities offered by life and of the “joy” they experienced while engaging in this project. Nietzsche was giving his readers the historic roots of his strong decadent approach and an interpretation of the ancient “tragic feeling” (as distinct from that offered by Aristotle) that could, if his future readers played their cards right, serve as “the bridge to the psychology of the tragic poet.” It could serve as the bridge to a future instantiation of this philosophical and psychological approach to life (BGE ). In a different section of Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche developed this psychological assessment of tragic artists. A psychologist asks on the other hand: what does all art do? does it not praise? does it not glorify? does it not select? does it not highlight? By doing all this it strengthens or weakens certain valuations . . . Is his basic instinct aimed toward art, or is it not rather directed towards the meaning of art, which is life? towards a desideratum of life? – Art is the great stimulus to life: how could it be thought purposeless, aimless, as l’art pour l’art? One question remains: art also brings to light much which is ugly, hard, and questionable in life – does it not thereby seem to suffer from life? . . . What does the tragic artist communicate of himself? Does he not display the condition of fearlessness in the face of the fearsome and questionable? – This

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  condition itself is a high desideratum: he knows it bestows on it the highest honours. He communicates it – he has to communicate it if he is an artist, a genius of communication. Bravery and composure in the face of a powerful enemy, great hardship, a problem that arouses aversion – it is this victorious condition which the tragic artist singles out, which he glorifies its Saturnalias; whoever is accustomed to suffering, whoever seeks out suffering, the heroic man extols his existence by means of tragedy – for him alone does the tragic poet pour this draught of sweetest cruelty. (TI “Skirmishes” )

Nietzsche described the tragic artist as one who displays “fearlessness in the face of the fearsome and questionable.” It is this artistic approach that involves knowledge of this “truth” of existence without being engulfed by the enormity of it. Also note here Nietzsche’s emphasis on the artistic aspect of this tragic approach. Art “strengthens or weakens certain valuations” in terms of the subject matters it attempts to portray. In terms of the psychology of this artistic type and its propensity to affirm life in this sense, art is “the great stimulus to life.” Tragic artists in particular portray the nihilistic state of human existence and affirm their ability to do so without fear. Like Nietzsche’s philosophers of the future, he described these tragic artists as having the “courage” to affirm life not only despite, but also because of its problematic nature. Beyond this artistic propensity to portray their fearlessness in face of the “fearful and questionable,” another characteristic of tragic artists that Nietzsche hoped his future philosophical colleagues would cultivate is the cheerfulness of artists who know how to be “superficial out of profundity” (GS P:). This cheerfulness is meant to distinguish them from weak decadents who favor the will to truth but who then blanch when they confront the basic “truth” of the nature of existence and either deny this “truth” in favor of their own truth that is meant to serve as a cure for decadence (optimists) or whose truth is despair about the terrible and questionable aspects of life (weak pessimists) (BGE ). Instead, Nietzsche says that, if convalescents still need art, then it is an art that portrays the artistic cheerfulness and are convalescents (Nietzsche calls them “we convalescents” and thus he includes himself in this group) in the sense that they had suffered from weak decadence, as well as from 

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In GM III:, Nietzsche remarks that artists do not create values on their own, and, as such, they are “mere valets” to philosophers. It is because of statements like this that I contend that Nietzsche’s tragic philosophy is not meant to be an art form itself and instead is meant to take on healthy characteristics exhibited by artists. Several scholars have presented important discussions of Nietzsche’s artist as a type and the role this type is to play in his positive philosophy as well as the role of the tragic artist. See Havas (: –), Gillespie (), Ridley (: ch. ), Reginster (: –), and Nehamas ().

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the “profound” knowledge that life is inherently meaningless and rife with senseless suffering, and have recovered from it. Now they approach the “truth” of life in a different way. They embrace the truth of “art for artists, for artists only.” This artistic truth requires a cheerful approach that involves forgetting and being “good at not knowing” (GS P:). I think what Nietzsche means by this is that it involves contending with the “profound” nihilistic truth of life but not drowning in the despair it inspires. Instead they consciously “paint” on this life their affirmative value systems and as such they are “superficial out of profundity.” The final characteristic is Nietzsche use of tragedy as a metaphor for the work in his own time period of putting an end to traditional, dogmatic philosophy – as evinced by my analysis of GS . In his Ecce Homo discussion of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche referred to himself as the “first tragic philosopher,” which means that he alone was able to transpose “the Dionysian into a philosophical pathos” because he had the requisite “tragic wisdom” (EH “Books” BT:). I understand this as Nietzsche’s boast that he had adopted the artistic approach to knowledge of the truth of life (tragic wisdom) and from that Dionysian rebirth of himself from a weak decadent follower of Schopenhauer and Wagner into a philosopher who could be the harbinger to a healthier philosopher. In the next section of his discussion of The Birth of Tragedy in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche then promised “a tragic age: the highest art in saying Yes to life, tragedy, will be reborn when humanity has weathered the consciousness of the hardest but most necessary wars without suffering from it” (EH “Books” BT:). In terms of tragedy as a metaphor, this age represents both a future period in time (a rebirth of the tragic age of the Greeks) as well as the rebirth of the physio-philosophical health of that time period (BGE ). In the penultimate section of On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche described this same historical event: 

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The subtitle of The Gay Science is “La gaya scienza,” and the title of GS  is “The Meaning of Our Cheerfulness.” In this section then, Nietzsche explains why those who engage in this new science he is introducing are happy, gay, and “cheerful.” These new philosophers are responding to the developing realization of the death of God that Nietzsche likens to the setting of the “sun” of this traditional ideal. While this event is still remote for the majority in the culture, for these “firstlings and premature births of the coming century,” this event is a pressing and inevitable one and in them it inspires a “kind of light, happiness, relief, exhilaration, encouragement, dawn.” This cheerfulness is occasioned by the hope that this coming event of the demise of these dominant weak decadent values signals the opportunity for new value creation: “At long last the horizon appears free to us again, even if it should not be bright; at long last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; perhaps there has never yet been such an ‘open sea’” – see also Havas (: ). See Reginster (: , –).

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  [H]ere I touch on my problem, on our problem, my unknown friends (for as yet I know no friend): what meaning would our whole being possess if it were not this, that in us the will to truth has become conscious of itself as a problem? As the will to truth thus gains self-consciousness – there can be no doubt of that – morality will gradually perish now: this is the great spectacle [Schauspiele] in a hundred acts reserved for the next two centuries in Europe – the most terrible, most questionable, and perhaps also the most hopeful of spectacles. (GM III:)

Note that that Nietzsche here likens the historical event of the overcoming of the weak decadent “will to truth” to a “spectacle” of great length that will play out over the next  years. So, not only did Nietzsche seem to be likening this epistemic event to a play, but the adjectives he used to describe this play (“the most terrible, most questionable”) are similar to the language that he used to describe the ancient Greek tragic view of life. In at least a metaphorical sense then, Nietzsche here used tragedy as a metaphor to describe his own as well as future time periods (GS , , , ).

. The Historical and Epistemic Meanings of Tragic Wisdom Now that I have highlighted many of the ways that Nietzsche used the terms “tragic” and “tragedy” in describing aspects of his positive philosophy, I want to focus on the historic and epistemological meanings of this “tragic wisdom.” Notice that, in the quotes from both the second edition of The Gay Science and Ecce Homo, the issue is about the psychological (and resulting philosophical) response to the “findings” of the will to truth (GS P:; EH “Books” BT:). In this sense, this historic tragedy and the resulting tragic wisdom are, at least in part, epistemic issues. Nietzsche thus intended tragic wisdom to be part of his healthier alternative to the weak decadent will to truth. It is, in part, these historic and epistemic understandings of tragic wisdom that I will argue our society and philosophy as a discipline should adopt in contending with the American disease of racism. In order to carry out this analysis, I will focus on Nietzsche’s argument in BGE . For the purposes of this chapter, one might read this section as a microcosm for the overarching historical and epistemic argument in the three essays of the Genealogy. In other words, just as Genealogy’s three essays trace the lineage of the contemporary will to truth, BGE  does 

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See Janaway (: –) for a comprehensive list of traits of Nietzsche’s positive philosophy (or more specifically, a list of negative traits of this positive philosophy).

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the same (GM P:, , ). There, Nietzsche also explicitly described his healthier alternative to that offered by Genealogy’s bad conscience and the ascetic ideal. On a close reading of Genealogy, one can see in each of these essays gestures to this Nietzschean healthier alternative, but they are more implicit than in the statement in BGE  (GM I:, , II:–, III:–). In BGE , Nietzsche divided human history into three periods: the “pre-moral” period in which the value of an action was determined by looking at its consequences. The second period he called the moral period and he argued that he and his contemporaries where still in it. This second period was a result of “the first attempt at self-knowledge [der Erste Versuch zur Selbst-Erkenntnis]” and the value of an action was determined by the intention driving it. Nietzsche then called for another “reversal and fundamental shift in values” that would be brought about by “another selfexamination of man, another growth in profundity [Vertiefung].” He called this third period the “extra-moral [aussermoralische]” period. In this time period in the future, the value of an action would be determined by what is unintentional in it. I recommend that we understand this move from one period to the next in terms of Nietzsche’s genealogy of morals. The premoral period seems to correspond to the time period of the nobles of essay one. The Erste Versuch zur Selbst-Erkenntnis seems to have come about as a result of the slave morality described in essay one during which “man first became an interesting animal, that only here did the human soul in a higher sense acquire depth [Tiefe] and become evil” (GM I:). As Nietzsche argued in the second essay of Genealogy, this new depth (Tiefe) in humans was brought about by the bad conscience in which expression of the instincts was turned inward and repressed. In this sense, the sufferers of bad conscience were expected to focus on their intentions and repress them. There was a resultant inward turn of the instincts – especially those instincts for hostility, cruelty, destruction, and joy in attacking (GM II:). With this depth, humans acquired a soul and also began to suffer from the “gravest and uncanniest illness” that also rendered humans “pregnant with a future” (GM II:). I contend that one should understand this pregnancy as the ability for those of us in the moral period to give a Dionysian birth to a different (healthier) type of human being via



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See Acampora (); Conway (); Hatab (); Janaway (); May (); Owen (); Ridley ().

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another self-examination and growth in profundity (Vertiefung). This growth in profundity was meant to come about through this “artists’ cruelty, this delight in imposing a form upon oneself as a hard, recalcitrant, suffering material” (GM II:). Here, then, I want to argue that this next historical growth in profundity of the third moral period is connected to Nietzsche’s tragic wisdom. This profundity is meant to come about by deepening our self-knowledge (“self-examination”) of our instincts and desires (the unintentional) with the aim of utilizing them. It is this aspect of our human selves that Nietzsche argues traditional philosophy had either denied or devalued out of shame at discovering our “animal,” beastly selves (GM III:) while at the same time prioritizing the rational “angel” side of ourselves. It is this hierarchy that has led to the cultivation of Nietzsche’s weak contemporaries, and this value system emerged out of a weak pessimistic approach to the knowledge of our human existence – that is, the animalistic part of our natures. On this reading, those suffering from bad conscience gained knowledge of this nonrational animalistic aspect of themselves and were ashamed of it. As a result, they were nauseated and frozen in inaction. The ascetic ideal of the ascetic priest rescued us from this potentially nihilistic sickness in the short term, but of course Nietzsche argued that in the long term it was leading straight to suicidal nihilism (GM III:). I am thus arguing that Nietzsche’s tragic philosophy, because of his own tragic wisdom, was meant to be a third alternative for dealing with the problem of our existence (beyond those offered by optimistic Socratism and the weak pessimism of the bad conscience and the ascetic ideal). Nietzsche’s particular tragic approach was meant to push us to accept this animalistic self and to use its powers to creatively shape our wills and to create healthier values. Note that in GM II: Nietzsche called this “active bad conscience” an expression of an artist’s “cruelty, this delight in imposing a form upon oneself as a hard, recalcitrant, suffering material.” I see this description of “active bad conscience” as a Nietzsche’s preferable alternative to the regular passive bad conscience because it is an expression of the strong pessimism of the tragic artist. These artists delight, as did the Greeks of the tragic age, in creating a system of values and imposing it on themselves.   

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Note here the Dionysian reference to rebirthing oneself. Acampora (: –); Hatab (: –); Janaway (: –, –); Loeb (: ); May (: –, –); Owen (: –); Reginster (: ). For more this artistic procreative cruelty to the self, see, for example, Ahern (: –); Richardson (: –).

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In short, in order to emerge out of the bad conscience of GM II, Nietzsche argued that we need to adopt a more artistic approach to value creation, self-formation, and self-procreation. But Nietzsche did not mean that one who engaged in this approach would simply be an artist or that the product of this engagement would be a work of art itself. Instead, Nietzsche emphasized that this approach is still philosophical. My claim, then, is that this aspect of Nietzsche’s positive philosophy involves revaluations of both art and philosophy and of their roles in engendering vibrant individuals and cultures (GM III:–, , ).

. Nietzsche’s Tragic Philosophy and the Philosophy of Race Given my arguments for understanding Nietzsche’s tragic metaphilosophical approach in the late works, I will briefly highlight ways in which it could (and should) be put into practice. In this concluding section, I will suggest ways in which a tragic philosophic approach could address and ameliorate the “disease” of American racism. We in the twenty-first century are still grappling with problematic racialized identities that can often leave us suffering from a Nietzschean ressentiment and worldweariness. In response, I will contend that we should draw from aspects of Nietzsche’s tragic philosophy in order for us to affirm our lives as racialized subjects and as a racialized society. We first need to learn to think and feel our racialized identities and racialized instincts and desires. This is akin to the self-knowledge that results from the bad conscience. We then need to engage in creative life-affirming racialized Versuche of the sort Nietzsche argued could result from the second Versuch in self-knowledge in BGE . I recommend that this might be a way to get ourselves out of the despair and resignation that plague our racist society, and into experimentations with racialized identities that are more mutually beneficial. Also, as Nietzsche, foretold, any such engagements are dangerous because we need to come to terms with the potential fact that racism might be like decadence, in the sense that there is no permanent escape from it. If this might be the case (as Derrick Bell and others have claimed), then I argue the Nietzsche’s “tragic philosophy” might be instructive. 

 

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It is beyond the scope of this chapter to delve fully into the relationship between art/artists and Nietzsche’s positive philosophy in the late works. See the following for informative discussions of this topic: Ahern (: , ); Gardner (: ); Hatab (: –, –); Owen (: –); Ridley (, : –,); Young (: –, , ). I have developed this argument more fully in Scott (, ). Bell (); Curry (); Scott ().

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Neither philosophy as a discipline nor our culture wants to actually deal with the “hard, gruesome, problematic aspect of” our racially imbued past and present. As a result, some reject the pessimistic view that racism was baked into the American foundation from the start, continues to exude its toxic gas, and infects all who breathe in this country or we optimistically claim that racism was all in the past and that we have since cured ourselves of it (optimism). Some other folks take a Nietzschean weak pessimistic approach and accept a pessimistic view of systemic racism (that it is incurable and infects us all), drown in this self-knowledge of themselves and/or the culture, and fall into world-weariness (bad conscience) or engage in ritualistic self-flagellation and hope that admissions of guilt will bring redemption in some far future time (ascetic ideal). I propose that we in philosophy try to be like Nietzsche’s future strong types and endeavor to adopt Nietzsche’s strong decadent approach: to engage in another “reversal and fundamental shift in values” that would be brought about by “another self-examination of man, another growth in profundity.” By this I mean that we should adopt a version of Nietzsche’s tragic approach by having the courage to understand our racialized selves (particularly our unconscious racialized instincts and habits) and not be sickened by them and thus frozen in inaction; by recognizing the role that we might play in supporting a racialized system of advantages and disadvantages; by having the courage to engage in open and honest attempts and experiments (Versuche) to revalue and redefine the racialized identities that characterize the racism of our time; and by adopting an artistic approach to crafting racialized identities at both the individual and group levels that express self-mastery of our racialized selves and help to affirm our lives. This is not solely an American cultural problem. It is also one that plagues the profession of philosophy. There are some who call for a revaluation of the type of discourse and content of philosophy so as potentially to open it up to groups who are underrepresented in the communities of philosophy majors, graduate students, and professors. Others have forcefully responded that such a change might signal the end of philosophy as we know it (philosophy will become too much like English, with its focus on gender and race, and more “touchy-feely, good-natured, friendly, mutually supportive”). What is at stake here in revaluing philosophy? Of what are we afraid if we were merely to become open to changing the style of the practice of  

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See, for example, Alcoff (); Davidson (); Medina (); and Zack (). Wilson ().

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philosophy, its content as well as its practitioners? What would happen if we were to experiment (versuchen) with a philosophy that is more focused on gender and race and more “mutually supportive”? We might lose a philosophy that has been combatively argumentative as well as hostile to groups of people, and we might also lose something that has historically been distinctive about philosophy and perhaps even has made it more successful in the past. In this sense, philosophy as a discipline is a microcosm for our larger society where protests against a rash of deadly shootings of African American men by police officers result in long discussions about the patriotism of the protesters, their method of protest, or the ramifications of the ability of all police officers to do their job and little about the subject of the protest itself. We in the United States, and in the American philosophical community in particular, are running away from the “fearsome and questionable” roles that a traditional understanding of race (as well as gender, class, sexual orientation, etc.) has played in weakening our culture. As Nietzsche instructed us through his tragic philosophy, I then want to charge those of us in philosophy who have the courage and the strength to play “naively – that is, not deliberately but from overflowing power and abundance – with all that was hitherto called holy, good, untouchable, divine; for whom those supreme things that the people naturally accept as their value standards” (like those values of white supremacy); to engage in Versuche with our racialized identities that are often understood as “untouchable,” god-given, and attached to unchanging or unchangeable value standards, and focus on cultivating a great racialized health (GS ). Elsewhere (Scott ), I presented a contemporary example of this sort of healthy racialized experiments. For example, Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres described the case of white prisoners on work-release, on one hand, and black and Latinx workers, on the other, who could have formed a coalition to improve their work conditions in a meat processing plant in North Carolina. They were unable to work in solidarity with one another because they did not see themselves as being part of the category of people who were being systematically disadvantaged in that work place. Using Guinier and Torres’ technical language, they needed to see themselves being treated as “politically black” (as a target of systemic power), and not solely according to traditional racial categories. In this example, a white 

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The American Philosophical Association () reports that, of its members in ,  percent were women, . percent were African American,  percent were Native American/Alaska Natives, . percent were Asian, and . percent were Latinx.

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prisoner who was assigned to work in the same area of the plant as Latinx workers “complained that the work stinks ‘but at least I ain’t a nigger. I’ll find work soon. I’m a white man.’ To which a black worker responded, ‘You might be white, but you came in wearing prison greens and that makes you as good as a nigger’” (Guinier & Torres : ). Because he was a prisoner, he was not working the same sort of jobs as unincarcerated white workers. He needs to experiment with his racial identity within the context of this workplace and see himself regarded as politically black not just in the plant, but also once he is released from prison and is categorized as an “ex-offender.” Once he thinks and feels himself as being part of this category (as being a target of power), he can then also draw from group solidarity and use this group identity to try to affect change (to see this identity as a vehicle for change) (Guinier & Torres : –, –). It is only with this sort of courageous racial experimentation will a “great seriousness” begin, will “the destiny of our [racialized collective] soul” change, and will the tragedy begin (GS ). As I have argued in this chapter, philosophy as a discipline can do this, if only we can cultivate the great health and tragic wisdom to undertake such a task.

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Primary Literature KGB = ff.: Friedrich Nietzsche: Briefewechsel. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, edition founded by G. Colli and M. Montinari, continued by N. Miller and A. Pieper. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter. KGW = ff.: Friedrich Nietzsche: Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, edition founded by G. Colli and M. Montinari, continued by V. Gerhardt, N. Miller, W. Mu¨ller-Lauter, and K. Pestalozzi. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter. KSA = : Friedrich Nietzsche: Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Studienausgabe, eds. G. Colli and M. Montinari,  vols. Munich: DTV; Berlin, New York: Walter de Grutyer. : “Twilight of the Idols.” In The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, eds. A. Ridley and J. Norman, trans. Judith Norman, –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. KSB = : Friedrich Nietzsche: Sämtliche Briefe. Kritische Studienausgabe, eds. G. Colli and M. Montinari,  vols. Berlin, Munich: Walter de Gruyter.

Translations of Published Works AOM = Vermischte Meinungen und Spru¨che (; ).* : “Assorted Opinions and Maxims.” In Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. BGE = Jenseits von Gut und Böse (). : “Beyond Good and Evil.” In Basic Writings of Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann, –. New York: Modern Library. : Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage. : Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Marion Faber. Oxford: Oxford University Press. : Beyond Good and Evil, eds. Ralf-Peter Horstmann and Judith Norman, trans. Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. * Dates are years of publication.

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BT = Die Geburt der Tragödie (; ; ). : “The Birth of Tragedy.” In The Birth of Tragedy and the Case of Wagner, trans. W. Kaufmann, –. New York: Vintage. : “The Birth of Tragedy.” In The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, eds. R. Geuss and R. Speirs, trans. Ronald Speirs, –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CW = Der Fall Wagner (). : “The Case of Wagner.” In The Birth of Tragedy and the Case of Wagner, trans. W. Kaufmann, –. New York: Vintage. : “The Case of Wagner.” In The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, eds. A. Ridley and J. Norman, trans. J. Norman, –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. D = Morgenröthe (; ). : Daybreak, eds. M. Clark and B. Leiter, trans. R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. : Dawn, trans. B. Smith. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. GM = Zur Genealogie der Moral (). : “On the Genealogy of Morals.” In Basic Writings of Nietzsche, ed. and trans. W. Kaufmann, –. New York: Modern Library. : “On the Genealogy of Morals.” In On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, trans. W. Kaufmann, –. New York: Random House. : On the Genealogy of Morality, ed. K. Ansell-Pearson, trans. C. Diethe, –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. : On the Genealogy of Morality, trans. M. Clark and A. J. Swensen. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. : On the Genealogy of Morals, ed. K. Ansell-Pearson, trans. C. Diethe, second edition, –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. GS = Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (; ). : The Gay Science, trans. W. Kaufmann. New York: Vintage. : The Gay Science, ed. B. Williams, trans. J. Nauckhoff. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. HH = Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (; ). : Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. HL = Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie fu¨r das Leben (Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen II) (). : “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life.” In Untimely Meditations, ed. D. Breazeale, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. RWB = Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen IV) (). : “Richard Wagner in Bayreuth.” In Untimely Meditations, ed. D. Breazeale, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. SE = Schopenhauer als Erzieher (Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen III) (). : “Schopenhauer as Educator.” In Untimely Meditations, ed. D. Breazeale, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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TI = Götzen-Dämmerung (). : “Twilight of the Idols.” In The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. W. Kaufmann, –. New York: Viking Press. : Twilight of the Idols, trans. R. J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin. : Twilight of the Idols, trans. D. Large. Oxford: Oxford University Press. : “Twilight of the Idols.” In The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, eds. A. Ridley and J. Norman, trans. J. Norman, –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. UM = Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen (–). : Untimely Meditations, ed. D. Breazeale, trans. R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. WS = Der Wanderer und sein Schatten (; D). : “The Wanderer and His Shadow.” In Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Z = Also sprach Zarathustra (–). : “Thus Spoke Zarathustra.” In The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. W. Kaufmann, –. New York: Viking Press. : Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin. : Thus Spoke Zarathustra, eds. A. del Caro and R. B. Pippin, trans. A. Del Caro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Forthcoming: “Thus Spoke Zarathustra.” In The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, eds. A. D. Schrift and D. Large, trans. P. S. Loeb and D. F. Tinsley, vol. . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Translations for Private Publications, Authorized Manuscripts, and Unpublished Works A = Der Antichrist ().* : “The Antichrist.” In The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. W. Kaufmann, –. New York: Viking Press. : “The Anti-Christ.” In The Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ, ed. M. Tanner, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, –. London: Penguin. : “The Anti-Christ.” In The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, eds. A. Ridley and J. Norman, trans. J. Norman, –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. EH = Ecce homo () : “Ecce Homo.” In Basic Writings of Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann, –. New York: Modern Library. : “Ecce Homo.” In On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann, –. New York: Random House. : Ecce Homo, trans. R. J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin. * Dates are years of composition.

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: “Ecce Homo.” In The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, eds. A. Ridley and J. Norman, trans. J. Norman, –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. HC = “Homer’s Wettkampf” () : “Homer’s Contest.” In On the Genealogy of Morals, second edition, ed. K. Ansell-Pearson, trans. C. Diethe, –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. PPP = “Die vorplatonischen Philosophen” (–) : The Pre-Platonic Philosophers, ed. and trans. G. Whitlock. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. PT = “Über das Pathos der Wahrheit” () : “On the Pathos of Truth.” In Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early ’s, ed. and trans. D. Breazeale, –. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. PTAG = “Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen” () : Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, trans. M. Cowan. Washington, DC: Gateway. TL = “Über Wahrheit und Lu¨ge im aussermoralischen Sinne” () : “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense.” In Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early ’s, ed. and trans. D. Breazeale, –. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.

Nietzsche’s Unpublished Notebooks and Translations of Notebook Material CWFN = The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche : “Unpublished Fragments from the Period of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Summer –Winter /), trans. P. S. Loeb and D. F. Tinsley.” In The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, eds. A. D. Schrift and D. Large, vol. . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. WLN = Friedrich Nietzsche: Writings from Late Notebooks : Writings from the Late Notebooks, ed. R. Bittner, trans. K. Sturge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. WP = Der Wille zur Macht : The Will to Power, ed. W. Kaufmann, trans. W. Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage.

Secondary Literature Abbey, Ruth (). Nietzsche’s Middle Period. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Acampora, Christa Davis (ed.) (). Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality: Critical Essays. Lanham, MA: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. (). “Forgetting the Subject.” In Reading Nietzsche at the Margins, eds. S. Hicks and A. Rosenberg, –. West Layfayette, IN: Purdue University Press.

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Index

Acampora, Christa Davis,  aestheticism, – aesthetics, ,  affect/affects, , –, ,  affective plurality claim, ,  Analytical Nietzsche, , – Anaximander, , ,  Ansell-Pearson, Keith,  Antichrist, The (A), , , , , ,  anxiety, – apostrophic address,  Aristotelians,  Aristotle, , ,  art, –, –, , ,  artists, , –,  ascetic ideal,  Assorted Opinions and Maxims (AOM), ,  astral metaphor, –

of the future, –, , – genuine, , , , –,  as laborers, ,  personal experience,  priestly type,  philosophy and science, – of the future, – religion, – ressentiment,  shame, – structure,  suffering,  tragic artists,  will to power, , –,  Bildungsroman,  Birth of Tragedy, The (BT) dogmatism,  metaphilosophy, – moral methodology,  pessimism, –,  Socrates, – tragedy,  truth, ,  Boscovich, R. J., 

Being (Sein), –, , –,  Bentham, Jeremy, ,  Berry, Jessica,  Beyond Good and Evil (BGE) aim of philosophy,  Christianity,  dogmatism,  esoteric character of philosophy, – experimentation,  free spirits, –,  human history,  masks,  metaphilosophy,  moral methodology, , ,  Nietzschean summoning, – perspectivism, , –,  philosophers,  astral metaphor,  entomological metaphor, –

Christianity, , ,  dogmatism,  revenge,  values, ,  Christian priestly values, , – Clark, Maudemarie, , –, , ,  coherentism, – considered judgments,  constructivism,  contemplative type,  Conway, Daniel,  Cox, Christoph,  culture, 



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Index Danto, Arthur, ,  Dawn/Daybreak (D) experimentation, – feelings,  free spirits, – metaphilosophy, – objectivity,  as part of a dialectical Bildungsroman, – slow reading,  decadence, –, –,  dialectical Bildungsroman, – dialectics, – digital humanities approach, – Dionysus,  dogmatic philosophy,  dogmatism, , – drive psychology, – drives, , – dualism, , – Dudrick, David, –, , ,  Ecce Homo (EH) genuine philosophers,  personal experience, – perspectivism,  philosophy of the future,  Protestantism,  religion,  tragic philosophy, ,  value-norms,  values, ,  emotional contagion, – emotions, , See also feelings entomological metaphor, – epistemology,  esoteric character of philosophy,  – eternal return of the same, ,  ethics, –, , See also moral methodology evaluative types, – evolution, ,  existence, – experimentation, –,  Faust (Goethe),  feelings, –, –, , See also emotions finitude philosophy of, – politics of, – flourishing life, –,  force, – Franco, Paul,  free spirit, natural history of, – free spirit project, –, 

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

free spirit works, –, –, , See also individual works free spirits, , , –, , – Gay Science, The (GS) absolute v. relative truths,  decadence,  dogmatism,  existence, – experimentation, , – God,  metaphilosophy, – metaphysical belief,  metaphysical faith, – Nietzschean summoning, – as part of a dialectical Bildungsroman, – perspectivism, ,  race,  science, , – Selbstaufhebung of morality,  Socrates,  Spencerian perspective, – taste, ,  tragedy,  tragic artists,  tragic philosophy,  value creation,  value judgments,  values, , , – will to power,  will to truth,  Gemes, Ken, –,  genuine philosophers, , , , – value creation, , , – will to power,  God, , –, , –,  illusion of,  Goethe, J. W. von,  good life See flourishing life Greek philosophy, –, –, –, , See also Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (PTAG) Greek religion,  guilt,  Guinier, Lani, – Heidegger, Martin,  ethics and politics of finitude, – metaphysics, –,  philosophy of finitude, – will to power, – Heraclitus, –, –,  herd perspective,  historical philosophy, , , , , 

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Index

 history, – homo natura,  Human, All Too Human (HH) astral metaphor, – experimentation, ,  free spirits, , ,  knowledge,  metaphilosophy, –, –,  historical philosophizing,  metaphysical world,  as part of a dialectical Bildungsroman,  perspectivism, ,  science, – Hume, David, ,  Humean Nietzsche,  hypertrophy (scrupulosity), –

metaphilosophy, –, –, – dialectics, – metaphysical belief, – metaphysical philosophy,  metaphysical world, – metaphysics, –, , –, – psychology of See ressentiment metapolitics,  method,  Meyer, Matthew,  Mill, John Stuart,  Mitcheson, Katrina,  monotheism,  moral beliefs,  moral methodology, –, – coherentism and reflexive equilibrium, – constraints of moral theory, – ethical foundations, – flourishing life, – higher values, – moral pathology, – skepticism and pure subjectivism, – moral pathologies, – morality, –, , , , , See also slave morality “Mr. Mechanic”, , – music, – myth, –

idea, – ideals,  illusion, – interpretation, – intra-action,  Janaway, Christopher,  Jensen, Anthony,  judgment, , , See also value judgment Kant, Immanuel, , ,  aesthetics,  Categorical Imperative, – meaning,  metaphysics, – morality,  as philosophical laborer,  reflective judgment,  reflective taste, –,  Katsafanas, Paul,  knowledge, , , , –,  Selbstaufhebung (self-overcoming),  Köselitz, Heinrich, 

natural history of the free spirit, –, See also free spirit natural science See science naturalism, –, –, , –,  beyond dualism, – values, – will to power thesis, – Nehamas, Alexander, –,  Nietzsche as Philosopher (Danto),  Nietzsche, Friedrich as aesthetic philosopher, – as analytic philosopher See Analytical Nietzsche contribution to contemporary debates,  criticism of Plato,  as herald of future philosophy, – Humean Nietzsche,  as naturalist, , See also naturalism as philosophical laborer,  Therapeutic Nietzsche,  Nietzschean summoning, – nihilism, , , , –, , , See also pessimism

laborers of philosophy, –, – language,  last men, – Leiter, Brian, , – life affirmation,  masks, –, ,  materialism,  McDowell, John, ,  mechanistic world-view, , ,  Megill, Allan,  men of science, , –, , , See also Spencer, Herbert mendacity, 

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Index objectivity, , – On the Genealogy of Morals (GM) affects,  ascetic ideal,  entomological metaphor,  evaluative types,  genuine philosophers,  metaphysical belief, – moral judgment, , – moral methodology, –, – nihilism,  objectivity, – perspectivism, , – philosophy and science, – ressentiment, , , –, –,  rumination,  Selbstaufhebung of morality,  value creation, , –, ,  values, –, –, –,  will to truth,  “On the Pathos of Truth”, – On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life (HL), – “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense”,  opposites,  optimism,  optimists, , – painterly metaphor,  pathology, , See also moral pathologies personal experience, – perspectivism, – affective plurality claim,  aim, – digital humanities approach, – rhetoric, – pessimism, , , –, –, –, , See also nihilism philosophers,  astral metaphor, – entomological metaphor, – of the future, –, , , See also philosophy: of the future genuine, , , , – value creation, , , – will to power,  as laborers, –, – personal experience, – priestly type, – shame, – philosophical knowledge, , – philosophical laborers, –, – philosophical legislation, –

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

philosophy See also tragic philosophy aim,  esoteric character of, , – of finitude, – of the future, –, –, See also philosophers:of the future Gay Science, The (GS),  Plato’s definition,  and science, –, , –, –, –, See also men of science affect, – experimentation, – free spirit project, – naturalism, – values, – of race, – Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (PTAG), –, – Plato, –, , , , – definition of philosophy,  politics of finitude, – polytheism,  power, –, See also will to power psychology, –, ,  drive psychlogy, – of metaphysics See ressentiment pure subjectivism,  race, – Rawls, John,  reflection, – reflective taste, –,  reflexive equilbrium, – religion, –, See also Christianity religiosity, –,  Remhof, Justin,  ressentiment, –,  creative activity, – creative ressentiment of the metaphysician, – satisfaction of ressentiment through metaphysics, – revenge, , , – rhetoric, – Richardson, John,  Rouse, Joseph, – Schacht, Richard,  Schopenhauer, Arthur, , , , ,  Schopenhauer as Educator (SE), –, –, – science See also men of science and naturalism,  and nihilism,  and philosophy, –, –, –, –, –

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 science (cont.) affect, – experimentation, – free spirit project, – naturalism, – values, – as prejudice, – scientific knowledge, , – scrupulosity (hypertrophy), – Selbstaufhebung (self-overcoming), –,  of morality, – self,  semblance, – sentimentalists, ,  shame, – skepticism, – slave morality,  Socrates, –, , ,  Socratic project,  Spencer, Herbert, –, , – subjectivity, , See also pure subjectivism suffering, –, ,  summoning, – superhumans, –

free spirits,  Human, All Too Human (HH), – perspectivism, – Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (PTAG),  philosophy of the future,  “On the Pathos of Truth”, – “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense”,  Twilight (T) decadence,  language,  reason,  ressentiment,  revenge, – tragedy, – tragic artists, – valuations, – value creation, , –, –, – genuine philosophers, , , –, – priestly philosophers,  value judgments, , –, – value-norms, – values, –, , – Christian priestly, , – dualism,  higher, – inversion of,  and naturalism,  naturalistic account, – philosophy and science, – philosophy of the future, ,  psychological drives,  ressentiment,  will-to-power thesis,  virtue, , 

taste, , , –,  temporality, ,  Therapeutic Nietzsche,  therapeutic project,  thought-action fusion,  Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Z), –, See also Zarathustra figure astral metaphor, – entomological metaphor,  last men, – value creation, – values, ,  will to power, – Torres, Gerald, – tragedy,  tragic artists, – tragic philosophy, – characteristics, – nihilism and decadence, – and the philosophy of race, – tragic wisdom, – truth See also will to truth absolute v. relative,  artistic,  Birth of Tragedy, The (BT), ,  Daybreak (D),  earliest writings, 

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Wanderer and His Shadow, The (WS), , ,  as part of a dialectical Bildungsroman, – will to power, –, , – flourishing life, – Martin Heidegger, – and values,  will-to-power thesis, – will to truth, , , –, , ,  Gay Science, The (GS), ,  Selbstaufhebung (self-overcoming),  wisdom See tragic wisdom Wissenschaft,  Zarathustra figure, 

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