Written by leading Nietzsche scholars from Europe and North America, the essays in this book explore topics such as: the kind of freedom practiced by the free spirit; the free spirit's relation to truth; the play between laughter and seriousness in the free spirit period texts; integrity and the free spirit; health and the free spirit; the free spirit and cosmopolitanism; and the figure of the free spirit in Nietzsche's later writings. This book fills a significant gap in the available literature and will set the agenda for future research in Nietzsche Studies.
Written by leading Nietzsche scholars from Europe and North America, the essays in this book explore topics such as: the kind of freedom practiced by the free spirit; the free spirit's relation to truth; the play between laughter and seriousness in the free spirit period texts; integrity and the free spirit; health and the free spirit; the free spirit and cosmopolitanism; and the figure of the free spirit in Nietzsche's later writings. This book fills a significant gap in the available literature and will set the agenda for future research in Nietzsche Studies.
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Overview
Written by leading Nietzsche scholars from Europe and North America, the essays in this book explore topics such as: the kind of freedom practiced by the free spirit; the free spirit's relation to truth; the play between laughter and seriousness in the free spirit period texts; integrity and the free spirit; health and the free spirit; the free spirit and cosmopolitanism; and the figure of the free spirit in Nietzsche's later writings. This book fills a significant gap in the available literature and will set the agenda for future research in Nietzsche Studies.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783482191 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Dutton Penguin Group USA |
| Publication date: | 09/29/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 941 KB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Contributors:
Ruth Abbey, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Notre Dame, USA; Christa Davis Acampora, Professor of Philosophy, Hunter College CUNY, USA; Paul Bishop, William Jacks Chair in Modern Languages, University of Glasgow, UK; Marcus Born, Researcher in Modern German Literature, Heidelberg University, Germany; Daniel Conway, Professor of Philosophy, Texas A&M University, USA; Christine Daigle, Professor of Philosophy, Brock University, Canada; Katia Hay, Post-doctoral researcher in Philosophy, University of Lisbon, Portugal; Duncan Large, Professor of Languages, Translation and Communication, Swansea University, UK; Katrina Mitcheson, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of the West of England, UK; Martine Prange, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Leiden; the Netherlands; Herman Siemens, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Leiden, the Netherlands; Andreas Urs Sommer, Professor of Philosophy, University of Freiburg, Germany
Rebecca Bamford is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Quinnipiac University.
Read an Excerpt
Nietzsche's Free Spirit Philosophy
By Rebecca Bamford
Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd.
Copyright © 2015 Rebecca Bamford and contributorsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78348-219-1
CHAPTER 1
Skilled Marksman and Strict Self-Examination
Ruth Abbey
Nietzsche on La Rochefoucauld
Nietzsche's writings, both published and unpublished, contain thirty-nine references to the seventeenth-century French moralist, La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680). Twenty of these occur during the years he was composing and publishing his middle period works (1876–1882). Twelve of those twenty middle-period mentions appear in published writings, with nine of the dozen being clustered in HH. After the middle period, the vast bulk of the references to La Rochefoucauld appear in unpublished manuscripts. Based on the published works, it is easy to see why Brendan Donnellan finds that 'La Rochefoucauld's influence upon the German ... was at its height, in the middle or aphoristic period'. Robert Pippin, however, argues that the impact of the French moralist tradition, which includes Montaigne and Pascal along with La Rochefoucauld and others, persists beyond the middle period through its effect on Nietzsche's conception of himself as a psychologist. Pippin even argues that the best way to understand Nietzsche is 'as one of the great "French moralists" ... that is how he sees himself ... [and] what he is trying "to do" with his work'.
This chapter is based on an exhaustive survey of Nietzsche's remarks about La Rochefoucauld across his corpus. There are, of course, influences and engagements that such name counting cannot capture: Nietzsche could easily have La Rochefoucauld in mind without mentioning him, just as he could have been affected by the moralist in ways that he himself was unaware of. So we must exercise caution in inferring too much from explicit references. However, these numbers do usefully suggest two things: first, that although Nietzsche had, according to Donnellan, been familiar with the moralist's work since his student days, his direct invocation of La Rochefoucauld is one of the things that separates the middle-period writings from the earlier works. Secondly, even though he continued to think with, about, and against La Rochefoucauld, Nietzsche grew less willing to make this engagement as explicit as he had in the middle period.
On the basis of this survey, I question Donnellan's claim that the middle period marks the high point of La Rochefoucauld's influence on Nietzsche: it is simply then that it was most visible. And within the published works, Nietzsche's overt engagement was concentrated in, without being confined to, HH. But even during the middle period, he was ambivalent about the Duc de La Rochefoucauld, and remained so for most of his oeuvre. While Nietzsche admires the moralist's psychological perspicacity, he worries that La Rochefoucauld's approach is reductionist, that it sees only the bad in humans, and that it colludes with Christianity. For all his skepticism about human motivation then, La Rochefoucauld is ultimately insufficiently skeptical about how he evaluates that motivation. This concern is encapsulated in a notebook entry from the time between the publication of D and GS, which says that La Rochefoucauld
denies humans' good qualities but should also have been suspicious of the supposedly evil ones. When the skeptical moralist mistrusts morality, it still remains to him to be skeptical about his mistrust [leugnete die 'guten' Eigenschaften des Menschen — er hätte auch die "bösen' leugnen sollen. Wenn der moralische Skeptiker beim Mißtrauen gegen die Moral angelangt ist,so bleibt ihm noch ein Schritt zu thun — die Skepsis gegen sein Mißtrauen]. (NF-1882, 3[1])
Such persistent reservations give us pause before Pippin's claim, too: although Nietzsche strove to emulate this French moralist in some respects, there are others in which he did not model himself after La Rochefoucauld and, indeed, sought to avoid some of the pitfalls he sees the moralist as prey to.
It seems reasonable to infer that Nietzsche's relationship to Paul Rée is a major factor explaining his shifting willingness to cite La Rochefoucauld in his published writings. Nietzsche and Rée met in 1873 and went on to become firm friends and close collaborators. Rée is said to have carried a copy of La Rochefoucauld's major work, the Maxims, with him at all times and strove to emulate the duke's pithy writing style. It cannot be a coincidence that only after encountering Rée does Nietzsche begin to cite La Rochefoucauld, despite his longer standing knowledge of and admiration for the duke's work. With the close of the middle period, Nietzsche and Rée's friendship was in disarray, never to be repaired and, from this time onward, references to La Rochefoucauld are largely consigned to the notebooks. There is no obvious reason why Nietzsche should minimize his presence in his published works other than that citing the duke is a reminder of his former close connection to Rée. A good illustration of the link between these two figures in Nietzsche's mind comes from the notebooks of 1883, right around the time of the rupture with Rée. Praising French writers such as Montaigne, Chamfort, Pascal and Stendahl, in addition to the duke, Nietzsche slides into a seemingly unrelated observation about Rée's personality (NF-1883, 7[17]). The Rée variable suggests that Nietzsche's references to La Rochefoucauld are rarely simply that, for in thinking with the duke, Nietzsche is also thinking with, about, and against Rée. This further implies that in praising or criticizing the moralist, Nietzsche may be also covertly praising or criticizing Rée.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
The first reference to La Rochefoucauld in Nietzsche's published works appears at the outset of book 2 of HH. HH 35 is an important passage within the middle period for a number of reasons. It contains the first direct reference to HH's title, opening with remarks about the effects of reflecting on the 'human, all too human'. Second, Nietzsche equates such reflection with 'psychological observation' [die psychologische Beobachtung] and in sodoing echoes the title of Rée's collection of aphorisms, Psychological Observations [Psychologische Beobachtungen], published in 1875. Third, the passage testifies in other ways to the impact of Rée on Nietzsche's thinking at this stage of his intellectual career. Book 2's title, 'On the History of the Moral Sensations' ['Zur Geschichte der moralischen Empfindungen'], alludes to a work published by Rée in the previous year, On the Origins of the Moral Sensations [Der Ursprung der moralischen Empfindungen] (Nietzsche cites this in HH 37 and HH 133). Finally, in addition to alluding to the aphorism via the reference to Rée's 1875 collection, this passage makes first explicit mention of the aphorism as a genre. Nietzsche points out that although short, sharp sentences that penetrate the heart and puncture the pride provide ideal vehicles for truths about human psychology, they are very difficult to compose. Those who have never attempted this craft — and that is the vast majority — fail to appreciate the challenge it poses. Although the passage ends by talking about readers of maxims, Nietzsche could have Rée in mind here, tacitly either applauding his success at the difficult task of composing aphorisms or excusing his failure at the same.
This important passage also enumerates the benefits of psychological observation. Its practice affords relief from the burdens of living because when one is on the hunt for insights into the human psyche, any situation, no matter how awkward or dull, can turn a profit. The rewards that such observations bring have, however, been forgotten as Nietzsche laments that he lives in an age inept and inexperienced at generating psychological insights. Not only do his contemporaries fail to engage in psychological observation, they do not even know earlier experts in this art, such as La Rochefoucauld. Rare is it to find anyone who has read this 'great master of the psychological maxim' (HH 35), and even rarer to find someone who reads without reviling him. This is, of course, indirect praise for Rée as a rare individual. Like Rée, but unlike most of their contemporaries, Nietzsche also appreciates the maxim as a medium of psychological aperçus. In this way, he is continuing to present himself as an untimely thinker, but in the middle period, his influences and interests differ from those in the essays that comprise the Untimely Meditations.
But Nietzsche also insists on the timeliness of such untimely reflections, urging that close psychological observation is now necessary. It represents the way forward by freeing people of the errors and misjudgements of previous doctrines, based as they were on false psychological premises, such as the belief in unegoistic action (HH 37). Rée is 'one of the boldest and coldest of thinkers' [einer der kühnsten und kältesten Denker] (HH 37), and their age needs such cold intellects (HH 38). So although La Rochefoucauld's legacy is largely dormant in contemporary Europe, Nietzsche believes that he and Rée are in the process of reviving it, firm in the conviction that the present and the future need these unfashionable insights into the realities and complexities of human motivation.
La Rochefoucauld reappears in HH 36 as Nietzsche, in the interests of balance, weighs the disadvantages of psychological observation. The major disadvantage is that psychological insight corrodes belief in human goodness. Disabusing humans of their faith in benign human nature can diminish their happiness and can even reduce the amount of goodness in the world by making people mutually mistrustful. A suspicious approach to human motivation can, in this way, become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So there is a definite trade-off between illusion, happiness, trust in one's fellows, and 'philanthropy' [Menschenfreundlichkeit] on the one hand, versus truth and 'the spirit of science' [Geiste der Wissenschaft] on the other. The gain in truth was not listed in HH 35 as one of the advantages of psychological observation, where the focus fell instead on the comforts and consolations it provides in even 'the thorniest and most disagreeable stretches of one's own life' (HH 35). But now that such an increase has been introduced as a further benefit of psychological observation, La Rochefoucauld belongs on its side, with his tendency to deflate people's confidence in their own and others' virtuous motives. And Rée stands alongside La Rochefoucauld 'like skillful marksmen who again and again hit the bullseye ... of human nature' [zielenden Schützen, welche immer und immer wieder in's Schwarze treffen ... der menschlichen Natur] (HH 36).
Even though the marksmen's 'skill evokes amazement' (HH 36), Nietzsche worries that these 'masters of psychical examination' implant 'a sense of suspicion and reductionism into the souls of men' [den Sinn der Verkleinerung und Verdächtigung in die Seelen der Menschen]. This reference to La Rochefoucauld thus ends with a view of the archery team as seen from the concerned perspective of the philanthropist. In this regard, HH 36 effectively reproduces a section from the notebooks from the end of 1876 to summer 1877 where Nietzsche had coupled La Rochefoucauld and Rée as skillful marksmen, while also expressing doubts about the harmful effects of their arrows. He worries that human welfare might be damaged by the way they diminish human motives and engender suspicion about them. The italicized sections in this passage from the notebooks show the terminology they share with HH 36:
This is the effect of La Rochefoucauld and of the author of Psychological Observations: these sharply aimed shots always hit the bullseye, but in the interests of human welfare one might wish that they didn't have this effect of reductionism and suspicion. [Dies ist die Wirkung von La Rochefoucauld und vom Verfasser der psychologischen Beobachtungen: diese scharfzielenden Schützen treffen immer ins Schwarze, aber im Interesse der menschlichen Wohlfahrt möchte man wünschen, daß sie nicht diesen Sinn der Verkleinerung und Verdächtigung hätten]. (NF-1876, 23[41])
In notebook fragments after HH, Nietzsche cycles back to this concern that the moralist's hermeneutic of suspicion entails a worrisome belittling of humans. La Rochefoucauld seems to cast a misanthropic gaze upon his species, finding only a hateful sight [den Anblick des Menschen hässlich]. Nietzsche suggests that his own approach is different and, we are left to infer, more scientific, for it does not adopt such a judgemental stance. 'We however regard man as belonging to nature which is neither evil nor good' [Wir rechnen ihn zur Natur, die weder böse noch gut ist und finden ihn dort nicht immer häßlich] (NF-1880, 6[382]). A note from the following year likewise suggests that La Rochefoucauld errs by seeing only the lowest part of the human psyche and taking its measure from there (NF-1881, 11[4]). The perspicacious moralist and skilled marksman is now shown to have blinkered vision.
Nietzsche's earliest reference to La Rochefoucauld, in a different notebook entry from 1876, paired him with Christianity, for both are useful when you want to suspect humans' motives (NF-1876, 18[21]). This again betrays significant reservations about the value of La Rochefoucauld's approach, for throughout HH Nietzsche argues that Christian psychology 'served the end, not only of casting suspicion on everything human, but of oppressing, scourging and crucifying it' (141). Christianity 'crushed and shattered man completely and buried him as though in mud: into a feeling of total depravity' (HH 114). Nietzsche explains that 'It is easy to see how designating the ineluctably natural as bad, and then invariably finding it so, makes men worse then they need be' (HH 141). So once again, the danger is that this jaundiced perspective becomes self-fulfilling — it helps to shape what it claims to find.
This accusation that La Rochefoucauld is, perhaps unwittingly, performing psychology in the service of Christianity persists into the notebooks from the later period as well. One passage finds that the moralist's 'consciousness of the true motive springs of nobility of mind' has been 'darkened by Christianity' [christlich verdüsterte Beurtheilung] (NF-1884, 25[178]). This is echoed two years later with the reference to 'the Christian darkening in La Rochefoucauld' (Die christliche Verduüsterung in Larochefoucauld) (NF-1886, 7[65]). A notebook entry from 1887 suggests that Christianity has, on the one hand, advanced psychological insight — presumably by fostering strict self-examination. But by presupposing the sinful, fallen nature of human motivation, it has become an impediment to future psychological discoveries. La Rochefoucauld and Pascal are representatives of this double movement. [Das Christenthum bezeichnet damit einen Fortschritt in der psychologischen Verschärfung des Blicks: La Rochefoucauld und Pascal.] (NF-1887, 10[57]).
So when it comes to his legacy as a psychologist, Nietzsche offered a mixed assessment of La Rochefoucauld. On the one hand, the duke is a perspicacious penetrator of the psyche and, as such, a harbinger of a more scientific attitude towards human motivation. But on the other, he exaggerates the dark side of the psyche, and in doing so, holds himself hostage to a Christian evaluation of humans' sinful and fallen nature. Such ruminations on the risks and rewards of La Rochefoucauld's example pose pertinent questions for Nietzsche's own approach in the middle period and beyond. Why assume that psychological observation will find hearts of darkness as it scrutinizes human behavior? Or the primacy of self-love, self-interest or any other motive? A genuinely scientific approach would remain open-minded about what the close scrutiny of moral action and moral motivation will yield. Here it is worth noting that by the term science, Nietzsche simply means the careful, dispassionate quest for knowledge and the possibility of seeing the world as it really is, without wishful thinking or need imputing or imposing meaning and without religious and metaphysical beliefs dictating findings. Being genuinely suspicious in a scientific manner about the wellsprings of human action and the gaps and contradictions between professed and actual motivations should not presuppose that all motivations will prove to be problematic.
'TIS A PITY HE'S SO NAÏVE
La Rochefoucauld is also invoked in the middle period's first sustained discussion of pity. The value of pity is, of course, a topic that assumes great importance in the middle period as in Nietzsche's subsequent writings. HH 50 begins by endorsing La Rochefoucauld's views on this topic as expressed in his 'Self-Portrait'. The moralist distinguishes between those who are capable of reason and others, recommending that pity be the province of the latter. Not driven by reason, this group needs emotions like pity to spur them to help others. For the rational, pity is not only redundant but risky because it 'enfeebles the soul' [die Seele enkräfte] (HH 50). Although those who are protective of their soul's welfare should take care not to experience pity, they should nonetheless feign it when appropriate, because inferior types will be consoled by shows of pity in their direction. 'One should, to be sure, manifest pity, but take care not to possess it' (HH 50). The accuracy of Nietzsche's account of La Rochefoucauld's view here contrasts with one of the references to him in the published writings after the middle period. There La Rochefoucauld is again invoked as a critic of pity (GM Preface 5) but is said to hold pity in contempt or disdain [der Geringschätzung des Mitleidens]. This is, however, an exaggeration on Nietzsche's part. As we have just seen, the duke deems that pity can be a useful emotion for some people, either to motivate them to help others or to take consolation in expressions of sympathy from others.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Nietzsche's Free Spirit Philosophy by Rebecca Bamford. Copyright © 2015 Rebecca Bamford and contributors. Excerpted by permission of Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd..
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