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**Rough Draft: do not cite** Heteronomy and Autonomy in Nietzsche and Kant Shannon M. Nason Loyola Marymount University “What does your conscience say?—‘you shall become the person you are’”1 “What is the seal of liberation?—No longer being ashamed in front of oneself.”2 Introduction: While Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy has been recognized to be one of the most important forays into the enlightenment project, I want to argue in this paper that we find at the end of the nineteenth century a renewed enlightenment spirit in Nietzsche’s own critical writings. We can see Nietzsche’s philosophy as simultaneously a continuation and a critique of the Enlightenment, namely the situation in which Kant finds himself, and to which Nietzsche himself is inextricably bound. However, Kant’s own understanding of the enlightenment is two fold. The Enlightenment can be understood, plainly, as the age of reason, which is an historical epoch whose general spirit is identified with, and whose concern is, a general liberation of the human mind from the chains of religious dogma and superstition. Furthermore, both Kant and Nietzsche recognized that not all who lived in the Enlightenment were enlightened. Here, then, enlightenment involves self-­‐emancipation and liberation from uncritical prejudices. In the case of Kant’s moral philosophy, we see a move from heteronomy to autonomy, from an empirical and selfish will to one that is subject to the self-­‐legislation of reason, which 1
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), 270. Ibid., 275. 2
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is universal insofar as all human beings are rational beings. For Nietzsche, the situation is similar. Enlightenment involves turning from a will that finds its purpose and end outside of itself—which Nietzsche will, generally speaking, call nihilism, to that which human beings principally are: a multiplicity of active and reactive forces, whose principle is the will to power. The central place, then, to find Nietzsche’s views on heteronomy and autonomy is in his concept of will. It will become apparent that his views on the will are complex to say the least; however, Nietzsche has a “doctrine” of the will, one that accounts for heteronomy and autonomy. It is in this context that I believe Nietzsche is an “enlightenment” philosopher. However, Nietzsche’s answer to what constitutes enlightenment is quite different than Kant’s, and it is in this difference that one sees Nietzsche’s ongoing polemic against Kant’s philosophy. Nietzsche’s criticisms of Kant suggest that because Kant thought that autonomy is moral autonomy, Kant favored one heteronomous will for another. When Kant calls for a move from “material practical principles”3—grounds for morality that reside outside of oneself—to self-­‐determining laws which are based on a rational and autonomous will, he is, according to Nietzsche, grounding morality in something that is other than what human beings are. It will become clear that Nietzsche resists Kant’s philosophy, especially his practical philosophy, thinks it to be decadent and thus an expression of ressentiment, bad conscience, and the ascetic ideal. There is a difficulty, as one can imagine, in attempting to align their projects due to these significant differences. 3
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 5:22. 2
Such a project, though, is unoriginal to say the least. Indeed, Deleuze’s own reading of Nietzsche seeks to show that Nietzsche was highly engaged in critique, especially a critique in the Kantian spirit.4 It is in terms of Nietzsche’s own critical project that I would like to show that he is both responding to and strengthening Kant’s philosophy. My suspicion is that Kant’s critique of knowledge and morality, which inevitably involves a critique of cultural and individual morality and truth-­‐claims, is precisely what Nietzsche, as a “social” philosopher is invested in. Nietzsche, however, will surpass Kant by putting into question the limits Kant (maybe arbitrarily) drew for knowledge and morality, showing that even though Kant was critical of these domains, he nevertheless uncritically accepted as fact that morality and reason are basic to all human beings as such. In other words, Kant’s critical project, as it takes form in his moral philosophy, merely reproduces an inventory of already existing and ingrained values which, in turn, are used to criticize other values. One such assumption, is evident, for example, in Kant’s claim that all rational beings seek the highest good, whereby the highest good is virtue in proportion to happiness. Taking it to be fundamental that our aim is the highest good, Kant goes onto criticize eudaimonstic accounts of morality, drawing the boundaries and limitations that eudaimonistic ethics prescribes. A striking difference between Kant and Nietzsche, as will become evident, is that whereas Kant merely critiqued these domains—exposing their limits and, through deduction, 4
Deleuze sates, “Nietzsche made no secret of the fact that the philosophy of sense and values had to be a critique. One of the principal motifs of Nietzsche’s work is that Kant had not carried out a true critique because he was not able to pose the problem of critique in terms of values.” Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), p. 1. 3
establishing their legitimacy—Nietzsche pursues a more fundamental critique by putting into question the very value of morality itself. In what follows, I will first give a brief analysis of Kant’s project by honing in on what he means by autonomy and heteronomy. To do this I will briefly look at his article “What is Enlightenment,” as well as the Critique of Practical Reason. Secondly, I will show that in On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche’s main concern is to delineate three moments of heteronomy: ressentiment, bad conscience, and the ascetic ideal, especially as it is embodied in the priest. Thirdly, I will consider in what sense Nietzsche may be demanding autonomy and to what extent it drastically differs from Kant’s demand. Setting the Context of Enlightenment: Heteronomy and Autonomy in Kant The pinnacle of Enlightenment philosophy has often been considered to be Immanuel Kant’s critical project. Indeed, Kant utilized the concept of Enlightenment, and devoted much time and effort in delineating its meaning. If one were to simplify the complexity of Enlightenment thought, one could point to its attempt to veer the mind away from traditional lines of knowledge and morality to itself as the governing principle and condition of knowledge and moral action in the world. This move, as Kant would say, is from heteronomy to autonomy. In his famous and oft quoted work, “What is Enlightenment?,” Kant claims that Enlightenment “is man’s emergence from his self-­‐incurred immaturity,” whereby immaturity means “the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of 4
another.”5 Kant locates the cause of this self-­‐subjection of immaturity to a lack of courage and resolve to use one’s own understanding without the help of others, and one’s own tradition. Here, then, the state of immaturity is to direct one’s mind and will toward determining grounds which are other than oneself—that is, to heteronomous grounds. Kant’s admonition, his solution and motto for enlightenment, results in what sounds like the Socratic maxim, know thyself: “Sapere aude! Have courage to use you own understanding.”6 Kant’s motto is echoed throughout his critical works, which attempt to draw the boundaries of knowledge and morality. In both cases, knowledge and morality are found to be illegitimate when they seek grounds outside of the limits of reason. In order for enlightenment to be achieved, what is needed, according to Kant, is freedom. The condition of such freedom involves creating a public environment whereby human beings are free to use their reason. Kant says, “The public use of man’s reason must always be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among men.”7 While freedom in the public sphere is a condition for one’s movement out of immaturity to autonomy, in the Critique of Practical Reason we see the demand of autonomy in one’s basic practical moral decisions in the world. For Kant, what makes someone moral is autonomy and only autonomy. This is no doubt derived from what Kant thinks is fundamental about the rational, self-­‐legislating will—that it is a good one; and not only that, but that a good will is the only thing one can consider to be “good 5
Immanuel Kant, “What is Enlightenment?,” in Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss, trans. H.B Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 54. 6
Ibid. 7
Ibid., 55. 5
without limitation.”8 External inclinations of the will, heteronomous directives that lead to some proposed course of action are not moral or good actions of the will. The good will, without limitation, is the will that answers the call of reason. It acts upon duties and laws that reason gives it, and not upon external principles of action. Thus, truly moral actions are done out of duty to the moral law to which, by virtue of reason, the will is subject. Here, reason legislates and determines the ground for morality. The other alternative for moral action involves subjecting desire to external stimuli, whereby the determining ground for morality is empirical. In this case, Kant claims, there is no morality because the will has directed itself away from what reason legislates to empirical conditions of one’s own happiness. Nietzsche and Heteronomy Nietzsche’s account of heteronomy takes, at first sight, a very different form than Kant’s, especially since his account is genealogical and, thus, does not proceed by an analysis of concepts. However, if one takes Nietzsche’s project as a critical one, as one that seeks the legitimate grounds and limits of reason and morality, then it becomes clear that Nietzsche’s project is not inimical to Kant’s, at least in spirit. Furthermore, as regards the content of his critical project, the problem of heteronomy is not entirely disengaged from Kant’s own delineation of the concept. In On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche attempts to uncover the history of nihilism, which can be seen as a history of 8
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, in Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy, trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 4:393. 6
heteronomy. He sees this history as involving at least three moments: (1) ressentiment, (2) bad conscience, and (3) the ascetic ideal. Each moment involves a reaction against life and the will to power, through positing a fictional and imaginary world. The Three Moments of Heteronomy: (1) Ressentiment: Ressentiment refers to when human beings project guilt upon others for life’s negative circumstances. Nietzsche characterizes this projection as a slave revolt in morality brought on by Judaism’s spiritual revenge, whereby a whole new set of values come to the fore, against and in spite of the values of noble morality. Whereas noble morality consisted of unreflectively saying “yes” to life and to oneself, the slave revolt issued in an “imaginary revenge” against the nobility, saying “no” to the hand that was dealt to them. This situation is more complex than immediately meets the eye, however. In order for the ressentiment to arise, in order for the slave morality to come into being, it must first posit something outside of itself only to deny it as not itself. Nietzsche writes, Whereas all noble morality grows out of a triumphant yes-­‐saying to oneself, from the outset slave morality says “no” to an “outside,” to a “different,” to a “not-­‐self”: and this is its creative deed. This reversal of the value-­‐establishing glance—this necessary direction toward the outside instead of back onto oneself—belongs to the very nature of ressentiment: in order to come into being, slave-­‐morality always needs an opposite and 7
external world; it needs, psychologically speaking, external stimuli in order to be able to act at all,-­‐-­‐its action is, from the ground up, reaction.9 Nietzsche, here, is accounting for what he thinks to be a major shift of attitude among human beings—the turn toward the external. What this amounts to, in matters of psychology for example, is the rise of reflection. The nobility’s morality and, concomitantly, the slave’s attitude toward the nobility prior to the slave’s revolt, consisted of a pre-­‐reflective consciousness, one that merely said yes to existence, affirming the relationship between one’s self and the world of which the self is a part. Through reflection, however, the priests were able to externalize their experience to the point of differentiating themselves from the conditions in which they found themselves. Nietzsche’s genealogical story tells us that the Jewish priestly people are “the most evil enemies”10 because of their powerlessness. Through their powerlessness, the Jews’ revenge against the noble morality resulted in a total inversion of the nobility’s “value equation (good = noble = powerful = beautiful = happy = beloved of God)”11 to a revalued equation of ressentiment: “the miserable alone are the good; the poor, powerless, lowly alone are the good; the suffering, deprived, sick, ugly, are also the only pious, the only blessed in God, for them alone is there blessedness.”12 The equation, according to Nietzsche, does not end here. Indeed, the reason why the priestly people are powerless and sick is due to the nobility’s power and cruelty. Thus, the sick and the lowly project guilt upon the noble, saying, “you noble and powerful ones, you are in all eternity the evil, 9
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, trans. Maudemarie Clark and Alan J. Swensen (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1998), 10:5-­‐14. Henceforth abbreviated as GM. 10
GM, I, 7. 11
Ibid. 12
Ibid. 8
the cruel, the lustful, the insatiable, the godless, you will eternally be the wretched, accursed, and damned.”13 Such a value judgment, on Nietzsche’s accounting, obtains in virtue of two closely related fictions the priestly caste concoct for themselves to explain the seeming meaninglessness of their existence: (a) the invention of a will and (b) the invention of a “real” world. These two inventions are conditions for projecting guilt upon their adversaries. With regard to a will, the lowly priestly class was able to account for their suffering, as previous slaves were unable to do, because the concept of will implies that people makes freely chosen decisions for which they are responsible. The nobility, then, through their own will have subjected the priestly people to cruelty and pain and, furthermore, are responsible and guilty for what they have done. The revenge and hatred the Jews project is also accounted for by the invention of a real world over and above their own meaningless existence. With the idea of eternity and a God that commands, the priestly caste was able to establish the notion that the noble have violated universal moral precepts. By doing so, they will be forever damned. As David Owen, in his book Maturity and Modernity, says, For Nietzsche, the consequence of this slave revolt in morality is expressed in the constitution of morality as a universal code in which the qualities characteristic of the noble (the natural qualities requisite for man’s 13
Ibid. 9
prehistorical survival) are condemned as intrinsically evil and the qualities of the slave are lauded as intrinsically good.14 By composing the idea of a real world, where sins would be punished, and where their own existence is justified, the priestly caste were able to set up a system of good and evil, whereby this rule of law became the criterion for and account of ones actions and decisions. With these inventions, Nietzsche sees the first step of the history of nihilism. Such a moment ultimately involves a denial of life for another one which, in turn, becomes the rule and judge of existence. The move from a pre-­‐reflective understanding of oneself and the world to one that posits an external reality is the first moment of heteronomy within this history of nihilism. In a sense, one could say that the invention of a heteronomous will came from a pre-­‐reflective and blind autonomy that did not differentiate between a self and an external world. (2) Bad Conscience: The second moment of heteronomy within nihilism is the bad conscience. The rise of bad conscience—“the internalizing of man”15—comes at the heels of a long history of the evolution of consciousness and, more precisely, the rise of memory. Whereas the ability to forget is a “form of strong health,”16 the opposite faculty of memory produces a conscious will and desire to make promises—what Nietzsche calls a “true memory of the will.”17 This faculty of memory arises, according to Nietzsche, 14
David Owen, Maturity and Modernity: Nietzsche, Weber, Foucault and the Ambivalence of Reason (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 42-­‐3. 15
GM, II, 16. 16
GM, II, 1 17
Ibid. 10
through the creditor-­‐debtor relationship which demands that a debtor make promises of repayment. Not only memory, but also the forceful establishment of a “state,” is closely tied to the bad conscience, although it didn’t grow out of it. Nietzsche claims that, at the most primitive level, when “states” were being formed out of brute force and tyranny against unaffiliated occupiers of land, communities were unexpectedly formed for the reason that those inflicting force upon unformed peoples seemed to come out of nowhere. “With such beings one does not reckon, they come like fate, without basis, reason, consideration, pretext; they are like lightening is there: to terrible, too sudden, too convincing, too “different” even to be so much as hated.”18 Neither the few enacting tyranny nor the people that were bearing the brunt of the force had consciousness of guilt. Neither party felt like they owed the other anything. However, in the progression of historical circumstances, the creditor-­‐debtor relationship arises between a community and particular members of that community. When a member violates a law of the community, the creditor-­‐debtor relationship transposes into a series of punishments for repayment. The community seeks repayment through punishment of the member’s actions. Considered in this way, the member is considered guilty by the community, however, the member does not necessarily feel this guilt, and thus does not have the consciousness of guilt, but only that his debt has been forgiven through punishment. 18
GM, II, 17. 11
While all of these historical phenomena are not themselves bound up with bad conscience, they nevertheless aided in its birth. The consciousness of guilt—bad conscience—originally comes about, for Nietzsche, through the debt a people a feel toward their progenitors. When a clan feels some obligation to its earliest ancestors for their existence, they invent cultic practices, festivals, and sacrificial rites to the point of turning their ancestors into gods, out of fear. Their obligation toward their progenitors is so strong that they feel that if they were to halt their religious rites, their ancestors would punish them. It is in these kinds of circumstances that gods are born and, concomitantly, the feeling of guilt is engendered. As one might expect, for Nietzsche the history of the feeling and awareness of debt toward a deity found its highest expression in Christianity. Nietzsche writes, “The rise of the Christian God as the maximum God that has been attained thus far therefore also brought a maximum of feelings of guilt into appearance on earth.”19 The feeling of guilt in the Christian context appears when one reflects on the debt one owes to God, but cannot be repaid by the human debtor. The impossibility of repaying one’s debt, the guilt one feels, is due to the fact that there is nothing one can do to remedy the situation that human beings—through Adam—have created for themselves. Bad consciousness, beginning with memory and the establishment of a creditor-­‐
debtor relationship has its determining ground in heteronomy. Like ressentiment, it comes about by positing an external, real world, only to turn back onto itself with the feeling of guilt and debt for something that was invented. 19
GM, 2, 19. 12
(3) Ascetic Ideal: The highest expression of the ascetic ideal is the ascetic priest who denies this life for another one. Whereas the nobility unreflectively affirms existence as it is, the ascetic priest acts conversely. Not only is the ascetic priest highly conscious, but he also negates life. Judging from the perspective and criterion of physiology, Nietzsche relays that the ascetic priest lives an absolute contradiction to the impulses of life, ones that the nobility acts in accordance with. He writes, “In an accounting that is physiological and no longer psychological, a contradiction such as the ascetic priest seems to represent ‘life against life,’ is—this much is immediately clear as day—simply nonsense.”20 The ascetic priest denies life for another one and, moreover, his vocation consists of taking care of those who have also denied existence, for the ones who have negated life for another suffer at the hands of existence—their physiological make-­‐up, from the point of their psychology, is seen as the source of all their pain. To have dominion over the sick, the ascetic priest must be sick himself because it is necessary that he be empathic. That is, he needs to understand the condition of suffering of his herd. Nietzsche says the ascetic priest “must be related to the sick and short-­‐changed from the ground up in order to understand them—in order to get a long with them.”21 However the condition for him having dominion over the sick requires that he also have a fair amount of power. For Nietzsche, the ascetic priest must also “be strong, lord over himself more than over others…so that he has the confidence and fear of the sick, so that for them he can be a foothold.”22 20
GM, III, 13. GM, III, 15. 22
Ibid. 21
13
Nietzsche’s account of the ascetic priest paints him as a magician of heteronomy, a shepherd of weak will, whose own will is weak. The ascetic priest, through dominion of the herd, teaches that in the face of suffering and sin no one is to blame but oneself for the conditions of their existence. Of course, guilt for sin and suffering, according to Nietzsche, is made possible only by positing a higher being who throws responsibility back on its believers. Nietzsche and Autonomy Given Nietzsche’s account of heteronomy, we can conclude that his concern, like Kant’s, is with one’s projection of an end or meaning that rests outside of oneself. In the case of ressentiment, the priestly class projects an external reality, only to determine that it is not coextensive with oneself. Whereas the nobility pre-­‐reflectively affirmed their existence without making the distinction between themselves and the world, the priestly class divides themselves from the world in order to account for their suffering, and the seeming meaninglessness of their existence. Bad conscience, moreover, further exacerbates the division between self and world in that through willing an external world into existence, slave morality internalizes guilt upon themselves vis-­‐à-­‐vis the reality they have created. The ascetic priest only intensifies this relation to an external reality both by affirming the external reality and by taking care of the “sick” souls that find themselves unable to measure up to it—that is, the ones who are indebted to that which they have created. 14
The Question of the Will In all three cases, heteronomy takes on the formal characteristics that Kant gives it; namely, the determining ground for action and morality is the external object of one’s desires and inclinations. Both Kant and Nietzsche will say that such actions are not “moral” in the strict sense of the term because these actions are not free. They are not free because one’s inclinations and desires rule the determination of one’s actions, or will. It is important to consider, however, that Nietzsche seems to espouse a number of doctrines regarding the “will,” and because “autonomy” is directly linked to the will, it is crucial to understand Nietzsche’s use of the term. His doctrine of the will is complex because he seems simultaneously to affirm and negate its existence. In the Will to Power, for example, Nietzsche states under the title “Weakness of the Will,” that “there is no will, and consequently neither a strong nor a weak will.”23 At first glance, this seems to upset the possibility of delineating autonomy in the thought of Nietzsche. Moreover, it also seems to dispel any attempt to show that ressentiment, bad conscience, and the ascetic ideal as expressed by the priest are heteronomous moments—that is, moments of weakness of will. However, Nietzsche does not merely claim the will doesn’t exist, he continues to give a description of what a weak and strong will looks like. He points out that a weak will lacks a systematic coherence of a multiplicity of impulses and that a strong will has an organizing of impulses under a single dominating impulse. Nietzsche writes, 23
Friedrich Nietzsche, Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Random House, 1968), § 46. Henceforth abbreviated as WP. 15
The multitude and disgregation of impulses and the lack of any systematic order among them result in a ‘weak will’; their coordination under a single predominate impulse results in a ‘strong will’: in the first place it is the oscillation and the lack of gravity; in the latter, the precision and clarity of the direction. Given his polemic against the tradition’s understanding of the will, we might conclude that the “will” he says does not exist is the so called unity of the will, which rests in the transcendental subject. This is the “will” that Nietzsche criticizes in Beyond Good and Evil § 19. There he says that the popular prejudice among philosophers is that the will is one of the “best known” things. Instead, Nietzsche relays that “willing seems to [him] to be above all something complicated, something that is a unit only as a word.”24 The will, traditionally understood, is a fiction. It simply doesn’t exist, according to Nietzsche. This does not mean, though, that one cannot find a concept of the will or even a free will in Nietzsche’s thought. Indeed, initially, it is evident that Nietzsche was very concerned about the status of the will as a philosophical concept and its cultural expression. After having claimed that the will is just a word in Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche continues to relay that when approaching the concept of the will one must be cautious, as though philosophers before him merely jumped to conclusions about the will too quickly. Furthermore, it is evident that Nietzsche’s polemic against Schopenhauer in Will to Power is based on a normative 24
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 2000), § 19. 16
concept of will when he claims that Schopenhauer’s philosophy is characteristic of an “absence of all genuine willing.”25 He further criticizes the nineteenth century as having a “weak will,” and this is indicative, for Nietzsche, of its one sided conviction in the rule of cravings, without the equal balance of “awe and reverence for either ‘reason’ or ‘heart.’”26 Nietzsche writes that Schopenhauer’s understanding of the will is typical: lowering the value of the will to the point of making a real mistake. Also hatred against willing; attempt to see something higher, indeed that which is higher and valuable, in willing no more, in “being a subject without aim and purpose” (in the “pure subject free of will”). Great symptom of exhaustion or the weakness of the will: for the will is precisely that which treats cravings as their master and appoints to them their way and measure.27 Here, weakness of will can be seen as a heteronomous will insofar as it (1) seeks something higher than its own value; (2) desires to be a subject without a will and, concomitantly, a subject without aim or purpose. The weakness of the will consists, for Nietzsche, of allowing the inclinations and cravings to rule the will, which results in the lack of aim and direction in willing. Here, Nietzsche’s critique of Schopenhauer is much like his polemic against the heteronomy of slave morality. There is no internal coherence to a weak will. If there is no coherence of impulses—that is, no organizing impulse—then one is a slave to the multiplicity of impulses. 25
WP, § 95. Emphasis mine. WP, § 95. 27
WP, § 84. 26
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It is here that we get a glimpse into what, at least initially, an autonomous or strong will is for Nietzsche. It is at least immanent to itself—that is, it doesn’t seek something higher than itself to justify its actions. Consequently, it is not something whose sole essence consists of cravings or impulses. Even though Nietzsche will emphasize the centrality of the impulses in thought, Nietzsche does not claim that the will is merely made up of these impulses. Instead, the autonomous will has an aim or purpose, where the impulses and instincts are organized by a dominant impulse which is antecedent to reason. Autonomy and Freedom of the Will For Nietzsche, the strength of the will is measured by its inner duality, between thought and instinct, between commanding and obeying. Like Kant, Nietzsche’s understanding of the strong will is connected to his idea of freedom. However, Nietzsche’s understanding of freedom is sharply distinct from Kant’s, even though freedom is a necessary and sufficient condition for autonomy for both of them. Consequently, Nietzsche’s concept of will is in contrast to Kant’s account of will, especially since Kant’s use of it assumes a metaphysical posture. The will, if it is free, acts against one’s desires and inclinations, which are multiplicitous. The will, for Kant, becomes an ingredient of the synthetic character of the “I,” and is thus a unity over the plurality of sensations. For Nietzsche, though, what makes a will free, as opposed to heteronomous, consists of at least three elements: (1) a plurality of sensations and drives which are antecedent to the will, 18
Namely, the sensation of the state ‘away from which,’ the sensation of the state ‘towards which,’ the sensations of this ‘from’ and ‘towards’ themselves, and then also an accompanying muscular sensation, which, even without our putting into motion ‘arms and legs,’ begins its action by force of habit as soon as we ‘will’ anything.28 Nietzsche, here, is claiming that the will is a consequent of a multiplicity of sensations, and expresses itself in conjunction with these sensations. (2) The will is also a thought which rules and commands other thoughts and, as such, is to be seen as coextensive with thinking.29 (3) The will is an affect of the ruling and commanding thought, and is expressed in obedience.30 Whereas Kant will say that a free will acts separate from the drives and inclinations, Nietzsche believes that the will is a consequent of drives, which accounts for his emphasis on the body as a primary starting point. His physiology leads him to claim that the body is composed of a multiplicity of souls, where the will is an expression of these souls. Nietzsche says, “Indeed, our body is but a social structure composed of many souls.”31 Nietzsche’s second account for freedom of the will takes very traditional lines in that it consists of the self-­‐legislation of thought and one’s obedience to this legislation. Insofar as the will is an affect of the command of thought, it is the “affect of superiority in relation to him who must obey.”32 In his article “Autonomy and Solitude,” Jay Bernstein identifies Nietzsche’s concept of the free will, which is autonomous, with 28
BGE, 19. Ibid. 30
Ibid. 31
Ibid. 32
Ibid. 29
19
Harry Frankfurt’s work on freedom of the will. Insofar as the will is coextensive with drives, thought, and affect, whereby the will’s “inner duality” consists of commanding and obeying, Nietzsche opposes the metaphysical accounts of the will which have dropped obedience and instead assume that the will is mere action. However, Bernstein sees Nietzsche’s concept of the will as “not merely doing what one wants to do [first order desires]…but having the will one wants to have [second order desires].”33 It may be helpful to look at Frankfurt’s own account of freedom of the will where he claims that a free will is one whose first order desires are aligned with the second order desires; or, whose will obeys its own commands. He writes, The enjoyment of a free will means the satisfaction of certain desires—
desires of the second or of higher orders—whereas its absence means their frustration. The satisfactions at stake are those which accrue to a person of whom it may be said that his will is his own. The corresponding frustrations are those suffered by a person of whom it may be said that he is estranged from himself, or that he finds himself a helpless or a passive bystander to the forces that move him.34 The freedom of the will, for Frankfurt, is measured by the commensurability of one’s first order desires with one’s second order desires. When such a will is achieved, one is autonomous and not subject to the frustration of being other than oneself. 33
Jay Bernstein, “Autonomy and Solitude,” in Nietzsche and Modern German Thought, ed. Keith Ansell-­‐
Pearson (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), pp.203-­‐204. 34
Harry Frankfurt, The Importance of What We Care About (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 22. Emphases mine. 20
For Nietzsche, also, the will is free only if the action of the will is adequate to the will one wants. Put another way, the free will, for Nietzsche, consists of being responsible for oneself and one’s desires. In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche explains that his own concept of freedom is “having the will to responsibility for oneself.”35 To have responsibility for oneself—to be free—according to Nietzsche, occurs when one’s actions are identified with one’s autonomous execution of volition. That is, freedom of the will involves legislation and obedience, whereby the command is recognized to be one’s own. Nietzsche relays that a free will “is the expression for the complex state of delight of the person exercising volition, who commands and at the same time identifies himself with the executor of the order.”36 Given this account of autonomy, the history of heteronomy has been a mistake, according to Nietzsche. Ressentiment, bad conscience, and the ascetic ideal are moments of weakness of will, whereby the will revokes itself in order to obey a higher legislation, all the while not recognizing that the very establishment of a higher will is an act of one’s own willing. 35
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, trans. Richard Polt (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), p. 74. 36
BGE, § 19. 21
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