Nietzche, Freedom and Power

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European Journal of Social Theory

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DOI: 10.1177/1368431003006002003

2003 6: 191European Journal of Social TheoryJohn Mandalios

Nietzsche, Freedom and Power

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animations of the soul and the drive to affirm life: namely the constitution ofhuman subjectivity. Contrary to Habermass account, we shall find Nietzsche notto be a proto-postmodern figure of taste but rather someone who affirms the

value of freedom in human existence. Moreover, we will find that Nietzschesaffirmation does not rest, as Habermas maintains, on an aesthetic recuperationof essentially outmoded archaic myth-content. Furthermore, this complexconstellation may be regarded as an issue for social and political theory todaysince much of Nietzsches work is often unnecessarily reduced to variants of thewill-to-power thesis either of the weak or strong type. Deleuze, for instance, ina highly influential work written over three decades ago presented an anti-Hegelian interpretation of Nietzsche which failed to accomplish this theoreticallinkage between freedom, will and power; he, moreover, committed Nietzsche toa double reduction. First, Nietzsches philosophy of the overman being the theoryof being and human culturepar excellenceis nothing but a genealogical philos-ophy (Deleuze, 1983: 145) that remains untainted by any Platonic, Christianand Hegelian metaphysical baggage. This reduction to the genealogical is no lessspurious than Heideggers reduction of Nietzsches philosophical stance to thewill to power, a position not too far from Deleuzes. Second, as the will to poweris the central organizing concept underscoring all of Nietzsches other philo-sophical postulates, it is understood incorrectly as exclusive of desire and aspira-tion; that is, the will to power is thought not to desire, seek, aspire nor even desirepower itself because essentially itgivesand is creative argued Deleuze (1983: 85).

Contrarily, it is possible to approach this complex issue of freedom in a demon-strablefashion; namely, to undertake a hermeneutical exegesis that demonstrateshow a quite different concept of freedom issues immanently from Nietzschescritical valuation of will and power as commonly conceived. In particular, thestudy of forms of power, will, domination and moral valuations in the itineraryof the soul and its metaphysical correlates feature prominently in his work. Thisis almost always allied to the capacity for a critical discernment which itself givesevidence to a kind of quasi-transcendental intellectual and philologicalcompetence in drawing fundamental distinctions between mere manifestations

of will or power and their actuality in historical life. Of considerable importanceto Nietzsches own work and, in particular, an understanding of his conceptionof freedom, is the fundamental distinction he drew between will (and its epi-phenomena) and power. To discern properly what Nietzsches concept of freedomentailed it will be necessary first to outline what he conceived will to be and thenhow it ought to be distinguished from power. Nietzsche linked his concept offreedom both to will and resistance, arguing that it always comes at a cost:freedom has a cost because it is part of a more general economy of forces andexpenditures. Its purchase only comes with forms of resistance and the defeat of

anothers resistance itself embodies a form of expenditure. To give over somethingnecessitates power but it also requires a particular kind of expenditure. As we shallsee, to will to be free, to be freefrom some constraint or limit is merely an illusion a modern humanist misunderstanding of human existence and the operationsof power quanta. Furthermore, rather than propounding some anarchical notion

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precursors to what Manfred Frank called, with Habermas following suit, a neo-structuralism (Frank, 1989). Hence Habermas set out explicitly to distance theessentially dialectical (HegelianMarxist) conception of concrete life of his Frank-

furt colleagues from the structuralist-informed analyses of Foucault, Deleuze andLyotard who liquidate the subject altogether. To perform this task, Habermasidentifies Nietzsche as the linchpin in both cases because Nietzsche is consideredto be the penultimate critic of both cultural modernity and the philosophy of thesubject. However, I wish to argue that because Habermas fails to identify thisimportant motif in Nietzsches philosophy of life freedom and expenditure he unnecessarily overlooks the natural afffinity which exists between Nietzscheand Adorno and Horkheimer on this plane. This of course also overlooks anotherimportant distinction worth preserving: namely, that the neo-structuralists(including neo-Heideggerians as well) abandoned any understanding ofNietzsche as a serious thinker of freedom being a problem and task for futurehuman beings. Thus we can say that although Adorno and Horkheimer similarlymaintain a suspicion concerning the Kantian notion of the autonomous subject,they share with Nietzsche but not his so-called heirs a normative and intel-lectual commitment to the problem of freedom.

In a seminal essay precisely on the question of how one might reaffirm thecritical ability to take a yes and no stand, to be able to distinguish between

what is valid and invalid, Habermas (1982: 18) takes aim at Nietzsche as theespouser of a cultural nihilism that is predicated on his view of Nietzsche as

fundamentally a man of discrimination: namely, Taste. Habermas findsNietzsche to be a most compelling advocate of cultural criticism as self-criticismbut charges him with an illusive form of self-referentiality. In the same way in

which he later would accuse Foucault of this kind of self-exemption from histori-cist discourses of power, Habermas wonders if Nietzsche cannot in fact escapehis own demystified logic. That is, whether Nietzsche simply repeated the failure:the revenge of the primordial powers upon those who tried to emancipate them-selves and yet could not escape (Habermas, 1982: 16). While the charge of mysti-cism is more strongly (and properly) levelled against Heidegger and his notion

of the call ofSein, Habermas also sees Nietzsche as seeking to revaluemodern lifethrough the primal originary force of Dionysus a kind of pre-reflective instinctof life that ultimately transcends culturalistic limits upon life. Myth andenlightenment, as Nietzsche and later on Adorno and Horkheimer showed, areinextricably bound up with one another; validity must then find a way to escapethe double bind of mythical powers on the one hand, and rationalized conscious-ness on the other. When Nietzsche is said to affirm values which might cutthrough the tenacious hold of nihilism without a necessaryAufhebung, however he is considered to be engaging in a philosophy of Taste or voluntaristic judge-

ment. For instance, since Habermas takes his forebears conclusion thatNietzsches radical critique consumes its own critical impulse as a valid premise,his argument proceeds to the reductive view that for Nietzsche interpretationmust go all the way down and since all interpretations are valuations, then claimsto truth are simply disguised preferences i.e. Wertschtzung, value-estimations




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that give rise to Yes and No, High and Low, etc. Habermas correctly under-stands that Nietzsche did not espouse a theory of modernity that simply propa-gated the call of wanting to be differentbut instead sought to demonstrate3 how

science and Christian or herd morality perversely dominate existence. However,since Habermas reduces Nietzsches critique to a theory of power a theorydevoid of the validation of freedom as a meaningful ideal or ideal of the futurenoble spirit he sees no way out of this interminable cul-de-sac. So even thoughNietzsches theory of power is intended to provide a way out of this aporia, ulti-mately he proves unable to overcome the limits of his own philosophy of taste(normative valuations). Habermas pessimistically renders the task of unmaskingpervasive ideologies as predicated, in Nietzsches final instance, only on thecriterion of the palate: its discriminatory Yes and No becomes (for Nietzsche)the sole organ of knowledge beyond Truth and Falsity, beyond Good and Evil(1982: 25). In more sublime language essentially that of Schopenhauer theform of validation (sic evaluation) which the judgement of taste provides is saidto be merely an expression of the excitement of the will by the beautiful (Habermas, 1982: 26). We know, however, that neither Kants notion of thebeautiful nor Platos to agathon are reducible to the dictates of the palate.Moreover, as we shall see below Habermas misrepresents Nietzsches work by wayof an unnecessary aestheticization of his uvrewhich fundamentally fails to takeaccount of Nietzsches own movement away from, as well as disaffection with,

Wagnerianism and Schopenhauerian and Romantic motifs most evident in his

early work. What is lost sight of then is the important conception of an ennobledspirit of modernity, one which no longer shuns suffering, struggle, willed action,resistance or loss through expenditure. Freedom is not only worth fighting for,talking about and valorizing in a distinctly post-nihilistic form, but it alsoremains an ongoing thematic of self-overcoming, including the overcoming ofmythical illusions whereby the truth of errors is worthy of examination as is alsothe transvaluation of slavish morality. Neither the first nor the second/thirdgeneration of critical theory would wish to disavow Nietzsches insight into theformation of herd consciousness or his proposal to transvaluate the banality of

mass culture or modern patriotism. Beyond the forementioned beautiful value-criterion, we will find that Nietzsche in certain respects goes even further than

Adorno and Horkheimer ever did in apprehending the necessary connectionbetween historical culture, freedom and responsibility. Responsibility thoughcentral to Nietzsches understanding of the noble spirit and a culture of health(well-being) is largely invisible in both the universal pragmatics of undistortedcommunication and in moral discourses predicated on mutual recognition.4 Itis, needless to say, altogether omitted in Foucauldian theories of governmental-ity, power regimes and disciplinary practices found in abundance in the social

science literature. The following section turns to an analysis of will or willing inrespect to Nietzsches work on freedom and how his conception of it differedfrom idealist precursors; this will be necessary as the will is ordinarily giveninordinate value in theories of morals that posit some notion of responsibility.Responsibilitys connection to freedom will emerge more immanently and

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become manifest in the latter part of our discussion. I raise it now mainly becausesocial theory is in need of such a concept (of human action), especially insofar asthe presence of the stranger-as-other in nation-states raises all kinds of questions

in relation to my freedom versus your right to cultural preservation. And thistakes on added salience due in part to the predominance of two species of theor-etical investigation which nevertheless fail to raise the question of responsibility:risk and globalization theories.

Will

Not unlike Heideggers lamentation over the too readily used and diluted conceptof being in philosophical discourse, Nietzsche lamented the over-extended useand hence encompassment of the word will. Philosophers have been prone bothto over-extending the usage of this small word and, not unrelated, over-simplifying this complex concept that is worthy of greater philosophical exegesisand elaboration. That there should be simply one word to express a number ofhuman actions and conditions bewildered Nietzsche. Compounding thisunhappy situation was the apparent fact that philosophers, to their discredit,historically presumed that we all somehow understand the will or at least what

we mean by will in our various utterances. Schopenhauer, as we see in BeyondGood and Evil, only took up what was in fact a popular prejudice and exagger-

ated it (BGE: 19) Through a whole series of false evaluations we have fabricatedthe belief that willing alone suffices for action which in turn produces the truthof its own false claim. While Nietzsche on numerous occasions makes it clear thathe believed there exists no will as such, the will as the thing in itself, he quiteunambiguously asserts the actuality of willing in civilized life. So while there isno transhistorical bad will versus good will, or free will versus slavish will, hecan discern forms of willing by means of examining in historico-genealogical

ways forms of domination, conquest, elevation, aesthetic expression, intellec-tualization and cultural fecundity. The will to power both gives evidence to this

and presupposes it simultaneously. Hence it is plausible to speak of life charac-terized by weak and strong wills (BGE: 21), each referring us back to the funda-mental life drive expressed as the will to power. Nietzsche determined there to bethree essential aspects to willing, regardless of the type of will. First, the plural-ity of sensations: that is, the sensation of the condition we leave, the sensationof the condition towards which wego, the sensation of this leaving and goingitself (BGE: 19). Second, just as a multitude of sensations belong to the will sodoes thinking itself: in every act of will there is a commanding thought, in whichthe thought is entwined with will itself. Third, apart from will constituting a

complex of feeling and thinking it is above all an affect more precisely, theaffect of command as Nietzsche puts it. Here we see that there exists acommanding thought and an affect of command. By affect, we understand toact on, to disclose a sensation, to show an effect or to produce an effect or changein something. The term freedom of the will denotes, more essentially, the affect




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of superiority in relation to him [or her] who must obey, giving rise not only tothe obeying person but a consciousness within oneself that gives testimony toones commanding position and its attendant sensations of effecting, transform-

ing and instituting. Commanding and willing as a result entwine: Freedom ofwill that is the expression for the complex state of delight of the person exer-cising volition, who commands and at the same time identifies himself with theexecutor of the order (BGE: 19). Contrary to what the synthetic concept Iconnotes, we are always simultaneously both commanding and obeying subjectsrather than exclusively one or the other. Overestimation of the will, however,leads us to the erroneous conclusion that any success of a commanding thoughtin soliciting obedience from another owes to the will itself and not the carryingout of the willing (BGE: 19). Overcoming various kinds of resistance in the actof instituting is thereby confused with the will itself not its concept but itsontology since the commander wrongly attributes the overcoming of resistancesto the will.

Causality and Freedom

For Nietzsche, we err in mistaking the will as both cause andeffect. Unlike thephysicalists, he argued that will only operates on another will (or set of wills), notupon matter. There is no free will as previously thought; now that man has no

such faculty as a will endowed from some higher order, the old word will onlyserves to designate a resultant, a kind of individual reaction which necessarilyfollows a host of partly contradictory, partly congruous stimuli (AN: 14). As longas we believe in causality, we also as a matter of course believe in unfreedom. Thisis because we condition freedom to mean the freedom to perform a thought asan action, identifying ourselves as the cause, and, the effect as the success of thecause, conceiving of the whole as an act of will. As with modern physics, resist-ance is integral to the phenomenon (or appearance) of causation. Forms of resist-ance are only overcome by will and action combined: a commanding thought

followed by an affect of command which itself requires strength of will. It is forthese reasons that the weak-willed identify unfreedoms in every causal connec-tion. Their continuance in this belief owes to their perception of freedom as afreedom to perform the original commanding thought; when they inevitably findresistances, such individuals have the sense of being unfree because their will isnot considered to be strong enough to produce the affect of command.Conversely, the sensation of power increases proportionate to the degree of resis-tances overcome, thereby elevating the feeling of freedom and the measure offreedom won. Of course, there is no doubting a thought is caused in some way;

if the ego does not cause thoughts, then how could one befreeto perform themand consequently be responsible for them? Nevertheless, it is a mistake to believethat all this refers us inextricably to some kind of inner world, an inner abode

where the will, ego and spirit reside. We seem to have generated an objectiveworld based upon a constitutive world of causes the world as will. However,




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the affects on the other hand is to be a slave, not a free spirit. A free subject isone whose spirit is free or higher and this of necessity negates our servitude tothe affects or other slavish morals, thus affirming mastery. In The Will to Power,

for instance, we find unsurprisingly Nietzsche arguing: Greatness of characterdoes not consist in not possessing these affects on the contrary, one possessesthem to the highest degree but in having them under control (WP: 928). Morecongruent with the vision of the aesthete, we can say the Apollonian spiritharnesses and directs Dionysian forces and impulses of life and growth. Obviat-ing the need for a denial of the affects on the one hand, and transvaluating thenaturalists reduction of human being to physio-organic drives of self-preservation.

The higher spirit in this sense is one which is not marked either by hubris orrenunciation but rather by the greatest responsibilityendurable. The noble or freebeing is one who can bear the greatest responsibility and so not collapse underits onerous weight, as exemplified by a Caesar, Napoleon or Venetian aristocrat.Similarly, the philosophers of the future ought to be those who will take thegreatest responsibilities instead of collapsing under their cognitive, moral andpsychic weightiness. It is for this reason that Nietzsche conceives of the ripestform of Wesen as when the individual achieves the ripest perfection, namely

freedom [his emphasis]. Only with such a full perfection is the classic type of thesovereign man attained, according to The Will to Power(WP: 770). There he alsosees responsibility for the whole training and permitting the individual to a

broad view, a stern and terrible hand, a circumspection and coolness, a grandeurof bearing and gesture, which he would [otherwise] not permit himself on hisown behalf (WP: 773). Similarly, when it comes to whole societies or species ofpeoples, the feebler they are or they become a corresponding weakness inresponsibility and will can be evinced (WP: 898). Conversely, Nietzscheconceived as a main precondition for the transvaluation of nihilistic values andthe cultivation of higher spirits an increase in the feeling of responsibility as wellas in courage, independence and insight (WP: 907). Flattened out social struc-tures and moralities those falsely founded on equality only serve to diminish

not only the most spiritual things of life but most importantly for us in thiscontext, the will to self-responsibility (WP: 936). The ennoblement of man cantherefore only occur with a counter-force or drive toward another more anti-thetical desire: that one instinctively seeks heavy responsibilities in life ratherthan lighter ones or none at all as is the mark of decadence. Modernity is shotthrough with decadence because our lives are lived irresponsibly: One lives fortoday, one lives very fast . . . whenever the word authority is so much as heardone believes oneself in danger of a new slavery (TI: 39).

Will to Power

Valuing freedom over organic life and over happiness is a very important step onthe way to power: What is happiness? Nietzsche asked, The feeling that power




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increases that a resistance is overcome (AN: 2). There must be freedom, truefreedom, in the will to power; in mythological existence by contrast, we are over-

whelmed by our sense of an illusion of unfreedom [see Figure 1]. Recall

Nietzsches question For what is freedom? elicited a threefold conception: Thatone has the will to self-responsibility. That one has become more indifferent tohardship, toil, privation; even to life. That one is ready to sacrifice men to onescause, oneself not exempted. Three prominent points are worthy of examinationhere: the will to self-responsibility, the willingness to sacrifice ones own life forpower, and third, gaining mastery over the instincts.

We have already looked at Nietzsches conception of responsibility and itsrelation to freedom. Turning to the willingness to sacrifice ones own life forpower, Nietzches Zarathustra states:

Indeed, the truth was not hit by him who shot at it with the word of the will toexistence: that will does not exist. For, what does not exist cannot will; but what is inexistence, how could that still want existence? Only where there is life is there also will:not will to life but thus I teach you will to power. There is much that life esteemsmore highly than life itself. (On Self-Overcoming, Z)

In The Gay ScienceNietzsche argued that the struggle for existence is only an

exception, a temporary restriction of the will of life; and wherever there is astruggle there is struggle for power. Therefore, the will to exist is only in accord-ance with the will to power. To wish to preserve oneself is the expression of a stateof distress, a limitation of the actual basic drive of life found here (see Figure1) in the resistances. It is clear that for Nietzsche the basic drive of life tendstowards an extension of power rather than any obedience to a will to self-preser-vation, thus calling Darwinian notions of self-preservation into question. Iargued earlier that freedom promotes strength that also allows us to conquer resis-tances resulting in the sensation of power. This process is referred to by Nietzsche

as self-overcoming. Our previous concepts of self-responsibility and the capacityto regulate the drives are very much bound up with the idea of self-overcomingin Nietzsches work. Life itself confided this secret to Zarathustra: Behold, it said,I am that which must always overcome itself. To overcome oneself means to movefrom a commanding thought by means of ones own resistances and weaknesses

FALSE REALITY

Will

Cause Resistance Effect

Unfreedom


Figure 1



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to the affect of command (see Figure 2). In the case of Figure 1, resistance is madeinto a material thing from the external world. By contrast, the will to power asindicated by Figure 2 shows the resistance to be expressed as the overcoming

of the self which is the ability to obey oneself. Zarathustra heard the speech onobedience; it read:

Whatever lives, obeys. And this is the second point: he or she who cannot obey himselfis commanded that is the nature of living. This, however, is the third point that Iheard: that commanding is harder than obeying; and not only because he whocommands must carry the burden of all who obey, and because this burden may easilycrush him. An experiment and hazard appeared to me to be in all commanding andwhenever the living commands, it hazards itself. Indeed even when it commands itselfit still must pay for its commanding. It must become the judge, the avenger, and thevictim of its own law. How does this happen? What persuades the living to obey and

command, and to practice obedience even when it commands . . . Where I found theliving, there I found the will to power; and even in the will of those who serve I foundthe will to be master. (On Self-Overcoming, Z)

In On the Way of the Creator (Z) Nietzsche explicitly refers to the problem of

the moral law, as Kant would call it:

Free from what? As if that mattered to Zarathrustra! But your eyes should tell mebrightly:free forwhat? Can you give yourself your own evil and your own good andhang your own will over yourself as a law? Can you be your own judge and avengerof your law? Terrible it is to be alone with a judge and avenger of ones own law.

Thus, like a star we are thrown into the void to find the icy breath of the ethicalcommand. This requires great strength since the overcoming of oneself takes usupon the path of affliction. Therefore, you could say that the will to power is a

way to affliction that remains inescapable for us. According to Nietzsche, thisprocess involves our striving for distinction or put differently, a striving fordominion. We value this domination over ourselves and others so much that even

when it hurts us we still can sense happiness, because happiness is the feeling thatpower increases, that a resistance is overcome. This is where we find the martyr

PURE CONCEPT

Will

Freedom

Commanding Self-overcoming Affect of Thought Command


Figure 2



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who feels the highest enjoyment by enduring himself. However, the martyr is atragedy of a drive for distinction in which there is only one character which burnsand consumes oneself. So in both cases where one inflicts ones will upon oneself

and upon others there is an implicit happiness at the sight of torment. Notdissimilar to the martyr Nietzsche refers to how self-overcoming involves adefiance of oneself in which one tyrannizes over oneself as does the martyr. Hedescribes this in Human, All Too Human, Ias a mockery of ones own nature:

Thus a person climbs on dangerous paths into the highest mountains in order to laughderisively at his fearfulness and his trembling knees . . . people have a genuine pleasurein violating themselves with excessive demands and then idolizing this tyrannicallydemanding something in their souls afterward. In every ascetic morality peopleworship a part of themselves as god and therefore need to diabolize the remaining part.(HH: 137)

This diabolic self is interposed between the gods and the animal that is itsfate:a tragic joyful wisdom.

The other part, according to Daybreak, can be glimpsed in relation to whatNietzsche said about praise and blame:

If a war proves unsuccessful one asks who was to blame for the war, if it ends invictory one praises its instigator. Guilt is always sought whenever there is failure; forfailure brings with it a depression of spirits against which the sole remedy is instinc-tively applied: a new excitation of thefeeling of power and this is to be discovered in

the condemnation of the guilty . . . To condemn oneself can also be a means ofrestoring the feeling of strength after a defeat. (D: 140)

In relation to self-overcoming, if we refer to Figure 2 we can see that the resis-tances are resistances that we ourselvescreate. Moreover, these may take the formof innumerable excuses for an unwillingness to take on self-responsibility and theunforeseen consequences of our commanding thoughts and actions. Hence,

whereas Figure 1 emphasizes resistances from without, Figure 2 shows these resis-tances to be inextricably bound up with the inner world that for Nietzsche isexplicitly linked to the symbol world of concepts. Nietzsche described the person

who has the fortitude to overcome oneself, embrace freedom and thus will to takeon self-responsibility as the bermensch (overman). It is the overman that is thetype of species of mankind whom we should be cultivating, promoting and

willing to emerge out of the twilight. This valuable species of human subjectshave hitherto been regarded as an exception, a lucky accident, not someone willedinto existence. This exceptional great human being has, unsurprisingly, beenfeared, which is why also the mark of modernity is that of feebleness and deca-dence. This mighty exception is also the reason why the opposite has been realizedin actuality, bred and willed the animal man, the domestic happy creature, the

herd, the Christian, and the juridical subject of rights. How has this come to behistorically? Nietzsche states in Beyond Good and Evil, Twilight of the Idols, TheAnti-Christ, and On the Genealogy of Morals that we owe this primarily to thedecadent values of Christianity, democratic politics and Platonism. While wecannot explore the complex interrelations between each of these here, it can be




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said that for Nietzsche this is because virtues have been manipulated for the sakeof power. Although this may appear prima faciecounter-intuitive sinceNietzsches discourse is commonly associated with the rhetorics of power

Nietzsche lamented the abuse rather than use of power for the vulgar pursuit ofself-interest and self-aggrandizement. Both of which, he noted, were crudely ondisplay with the crusades, the conquests of the high cultures of Peru and Mexico,the expulsion of the Jews and the burning of books. As is the case with thetyrannos, Nietzsche thought whoever possesses power over the ruling virtues thatthe masses generally abide by, has promoted those virtues that are harmful to theindividuals will to power. This is evident from his discourses in Daybreak in

which we find a condemnation of the lust for power expressed as power forpowers sake. That is to say,Machtpolitiks is an illogical conclusion to the will topower. Being bereft of both the value of self-responsibility and the ripest form offreedom makes it the furthest thing from his specific conception of the power of

willing and therefore the will to power.

Freedoms Higher Spirit

The importance of soulful activity for an understanding of Nietzsches concep-tion of freedom as inclusive of an ethic of responsibility cannot be underesti-mated. That is to say, the activity of the soul including the spirituality of our

culture is explicitly linked to the vitalism of the drives as well as the drive tolabour over the souls multiple constitutive forces. Analogous to Nietzschesnumerous denunciations of the will, his denunciations of the traditional soul-concept of Platonized Christianity belie the otherwise paramount importanceaccorded to the moral and spiritual status of the soul. The later Nietzsche, inparticular, was most emphatic of the need to take account of the soul of the higher(and lowly) spirits when criticizing decadent civilizational forms or imagininghow higher spirits could surpass prevailing forms of unfreedom. In fact, anydisregard of soulful activity or labour which finds a person taking it upon himself

or herself to not only acknowledge the operations of the soul but to, morespecifically, recognize the need for one to continually labour over ones soul andits multifarious sentiments and states, runs the risk of lacking insightand a properdiagnosis of our times. Any physio-psychological diagnostic attitude toward self,

world and morals one that significantly is bound up with the Platonic thematicof well versus ill-being would exemplify this; however, it always awaits ourinterpretation. Such interpretation beckons forth from the psycho-physician ofthe soul of Man not simply the German or French or European soul.

Although Nietzsche goes to great lengths to dissect the body of ideas which form

his soul superstition hypothesis especially in his Beyond Good and Eviland Onthe Genealogy of Morals his diagnosis of European nihilism and herd thinkingis most centrally concerned with the impoverishment of the human spirit orspirituality of an age and peoples (i.e. Volkgeist). The critical distinction falls backupon an intention to decisively steer clear of neo-Platonic and psychologistic




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hypostatizations of the soul that have promulgated (a) egological doctrines ofhuman nature/existence and (b) superordinate beliefs in a disembodied, half-godbeing that remains wholly otherwise than instinctual.

Eschewing both of these problematic understandings of the soul, Nietzscheventured the idea of a genuine spirituality of the soul with all its attendanthistorical vicissitudes (BGE: Preface). True or genuine conceptions of anepoches spirit or, alternatively, a cultures spirit are inextricably linked to theprimary quasi-idealist6 metaphysics of being, that is, being well or being physio-psychologically un well, or, sickly decadent i.e. nihilistic. Much earlier thanBeyond Good and Evil, when Nietzsche most enthusiastically took to a closeexamination of modern chemistry and a distinctly Goethe-like study of the formsand shapes of natures fecund living beings, we find the pronouncement (contrathe English naturalists and physiologists): Even the determination of what ishealthy for your bodydepends on your goal, your horizon, your energies, yourimpulses, your errors, and above all on the ideals and phantasms of your soul(GS: 120, emphasis added). Beyond any vulgar physicalism therefore lies a recog-nition of the efficacy of the Seele(soul) as a correlate of the human spirit: yourvirtue is the health of your soul (GS: 120). Hence the necessity or advantagesof psychological observation: reflection upon what is human, all too human . . .psychological observation is among the means by which we can lighten theburden of life (HH: 35). Our depressively burdensome being of life owes to aparticular kind of lack; namely, the art of psychological dissection and combi-

nation [which] is lacking in all ranks of society, where people speak about humanbeings, to be sure, but not at all about humanity (HH: 35). European decadencealong with its nihilistic soul is both evidence of and cause for the prevalentabsence of mature psychological dissection: Why do they no longer read the greatmasters of the psychological maxims? asked Nietzsche when writing his bookmost attributed to his own corporeal sickness (HH: 35). Unsurprisingly, thiscritical dimension of Nietzsches thought is borne out once again when hispersonal physio-psychological suffering later in life produced a trenching critiqueof moral and epistemic idols developed from the point of view of not merely a

hammering philosopher but a psychologist of leisure.7 Moreover, it is in this latterwork that Nietzsche the anti-moralist-educator-psychologist most explicitly refersto the importance of self-responsibility already discussed. Indeed, a commitmentto self-responsibility can been seen to be a sign of a vigorous, taut and thereforehealthy soul, i.e. an affirmative soul-structure, one that is both well structuredand governed a healthy body-politic of the soul.

The state of freedom, as contrasted with that of unfreedom, is one in whichthere is a livelypathos of distance, both in the social relations of individuals andof their drives. As distance signifies differentiation and multidimensionality, it

also denotes a particular sense of vitalism. With each of the drives seeking to gainprominence and inexorably undergoing constant change in their order of rankwithin the soul, life is continually affirmed. Necessity not denial determines theirforcefulness in life. However, as no particular priority or station is a prioriaccorded to these drives, their relative stability and therefore position is only




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determined by innumerable negations and spiritual wars. Their effects aremanifest in the morphologies of the soul, including the Christian conscience thatfor millennia was erroneously accorded spiritual qualities beyond Man and

history. Instead, we can think of Nietzsche as closer to Hegel when he conceivesof the spirit of the age and its concomitant form of the soul as the results ofhuman historical making and hence self-legislation. Any operations of the psycheare, therefore, expressly human in that they correspond to the order of rank estab-lished historically by any individual self or society. When the psycho-physicianof the soul pronounces the present age as sickly or decadent it frequently involvesdenunciations of poor spirituality. Moreover, this of necessity is always expressedby placing spiritual(ity) within inverted commas, so as to distinguish this highlydenoted (Christian) word from its more vulgar Christian popularization of it.Overcoming the pitfalls associated with both the traditional soul-concept andfree will concept, however, does not preclude us from taking up the alreadystated microscopic psychology that is integral to the art of transfigurationknown as philosophy (GS: 3). Higher spirits are not afforded the same delusionsas the (common) people, that is, philosophers or artists are not free to dividebody from soul as people do; we are even less free to divide the soul from spirit(GS: 3). The art of transfiguration as much as the transvaluation of all values istherefore especially marked by the reverberations of so many physio-psycho-logical travails and metamorphoses undergone by means of diverse human experi-ences of life. The disciplining metamorphoses of the human spirit (and hence

soul) can only be properly apprehended for Nietzsche by aphilosophical physicianwho is able to grasp the fact that a philosopher who has traversed many kinds ofhealth, and keeps traversing them, has passed through an equal number ofphilosophies: he simplycannotkeep from transposing his states every time intothe most spiritual form and distance (GS: 3). This imperative toward spiritualtransfiguration, entwined with contingent corporeal worldly existence(s), isphilosophizing itself: the movement, action and techneof philosophizing over thetorments, joys and expenditures ofbios, ofliving. Living self-responsibly is to havethe freedom to transfigure ones life anew continuously; hence the ripest form of

freedom is that which faces up to Nietzsches dare the dare to be honest byequally not foregoing the dare to be challenged by this brutal honesty of (philo-sophic) life, whether in sickness or in health or both. The consciousness of thisrare freedom otherwise referred to as a proud awareness of the extraordinaryprivilege ofresponsibility posits the sovereign individual who has his own inde-pendent, protracted will and the right to make promisessince [m]an himself mustfirst of all have become calculable, regular, necessary, even in his own image ofhimself, if he is to be able to stand security for his own future, which is what one

who promises does! (GM: II2). The emancipated individual as Nietzsche

himself described the ripest fruit of existence is therefore not one emancipatedfrom responsibilities but rather from their evasion.In the present discussion, it may be clear by now that variants of social theory

which are considered (incorrectly) postmodern whether Foucaldian orDerridean can be found wanting on both hermeneutical and normative




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grounds as a result of their misappropriation of Nietzsche. Fundamentally, acertain negative teleology even if in the guise of an anti-teleology pervadesmuch of this type of social theory; a negativity which, unlike Hegels, forgets that

Nietzsche himself presented us with an alternate vista of the nihilistic cul-de-sac.Since freedom is eclipsed by the totalizing critiques of power and subjectivityoffered to us by these eminently (French) negative thinkers, social theory in itsso-called deconstructive guise suffers from a tragic omission. By contrast, bothfirst and second generation critical theory comes closer to the spirit of Nietzsche

when it maintains the necessity to constantly think through and, concomitantly,rethink the possibility of freedom andthe conditions of its possibility in a decid-edly post-Kantian fashion. Habermas is therefore right to pursue ideology-critique as Selbstkritik (self-criticism) and to seek to identify strategies whichsuccessfully problematize the frozen constellations of power that impede anyfundamental advancement in human emancipation. However, for him to be ableto do so a particular corrective turn is required, one which does not, in the firstinstance, depict Nietzsche as simply a dark, irrational figure who eschews know-ledge and the knower. 8 In the second instance, it would need to realize thatNietzsche is an important part of the original and subsequent thesis of the dialec-tic of enlightenment; a realization which following the logic ofSelbstkritikwouldgive cause to reflect upon Habermass interpretation of Nietzsche as itself beinginexorably bound up with myth. That is to say, critical self-reflection would graspthe saliency of Nietzsches idea of freedom and thus posit the possibility of ruptur-

ing the tenacious hold of nihilistic instincts currently all pervasive in the disen-chanted West. Indeed, it further proffers a stronger thesis about an ethicalsubstance which sadly was missing from Adorno and Horkheimers critique ofinstrumental reason. Namely, that this so-called dark anarchistic thinker encom-passed a strong notion of responsibility within his analysis of the individual andits subjectivity of mourning the world-that-once was through a lost Father ourkilling of God the Father. In a world were the gods have been dispelled andconsciousness confronts its own limitations in and through the constructivequality of social phenomena, freedom appears to require an ethic of responsibility

that will abate a collapsing in upon ones own experience of the world. To re-read,dialectically, the moment of enlightenment therefore means to reconsider theessentially cognitivist-linguistic formulation of the problematic of better or free-er; it means having to think through freedom onto a plane of action which nolonger finds the drive to responsibility an onerous task, let alone an antithesis offreedom. It means, in particular, that European social theory of this kind can nolonger afford to make omissions of this type or tacitly sublimate such an ethico-political issue into a theory predicated on competent speech acts/actors. Even theGreeks after all well understood that their own Gods were held responsible, by

mortals and deities alike.




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Note on the text

References to Nietzsches texts are to section numbers unless otherwise stated (romannumerals in TIreferences refer to chapters ofTI). Standard abbreviations referring toNietzsches works are shown in parenthesis and stand in place of the title of a work.

Notes

1 Nietzsche, On Self-Overcoming, Second Part ofThus Spoke Zarathustra, 1978.2 Habermas (1982: 1330).3 This italicized word appears in the original essay by Habermas. The decidedly demon-

strative nature of Nietzsches working out of fundamental errors and illusions is

crucially apprehended here by Habermas (1982: 27).4 Honneth (1995).5 I have made limited use of Nietzsches posthumously published notebooks (i.e. WP)

consistent with renowned Nietzsche scholars such as Walter Kaufmann and RichardSchacht.

6 This argument, contrariwise to more recent materialist reinterpretations of Nietzscheswork, posits the centrality of Helleno-Germanic philosophic concerns with the funda-mental orientation to the world we take up and not simply the mind of Man aspromulgated by some analytic-mentalistic thinkers. Any proper physiologist andpsychologist, argued Nietzsche, takes care of both bodily and soul-ful symptoms,

effects, forces and morphein their diagnosis of individual and social forms of life.7 Twilight of the Idolswas originally titledA Psychologists Leisure or The Idle Hours of aPsychologistbefore Nietzsche was persuaded to change it prior to its publication into itspresent form. In Nietzsches revised notes to his much earlier work Human, All TooHuman, Ihe sets out the great importance of a microscopic psychology as no lessnecessary than his much valorized historical perspectivist optics in more recent litera-ture (Chapter1, note 1).

8 See Richard Schachts incisive treatment of Nietzsche as a thinker who is centrallyconcerned with forms of knowledge, types of knowers and the virtue of experimentalinvestigations, inMaking Sense of Nietzsche, Chapters 10 and 3.

References

Adorno, T. and Horkheimer, M. (1979) Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming.London: Verso.

Deleuze, G. (1983) Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson. New York:Columbia University Press.

Frank, M. (1989) What is Neo-Structuralism? trans. Sabine Wilke and Richard Gray.Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Habermas, J. (1982) The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment: Re-reading theDialectic of Enlightenment, New German Critique26: 1330. (1987) The Entry in Postmodernity: Nietzsche as Turning Point, in J. Habermas

The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. Frederick Laurence. Cambridge, MA:MIT Press.




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Honneth, A. (1995) The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts,trans. Joel Anderson. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.

Kant, I. (1933) Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, 2nd edn. Basing-stoke: Macmillan.

Nietzsche, F. (1967) On the Genealogy of Morals[GM], trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J.Hollingdale. New York: Vintage Books.

(1968a) The Anti-Christ[AN], trans. R.J. Hollingdale. Harmondsworth: Penguin. (1968b) The Will to Power[WP], trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Holllingdale.

New York: Vintage Books. (1968c) Twilight of the Idols [TI], trans. R.J. Hollingdale. Harmondsworth:

Penguin. (1974) The Gay Science[GS], trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books. (1978a) Thus Spoke Zarathustra [Z], trans. Walter Kaufmann. London: Penguin. (1989) Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future [BGE], trans.

Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books. (1995) Human, All Too Human, I [HH], trans. Gary Handwerk. Stanford, CA:

Stanford University Press (1997) Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality[D], trans. R.J. Hollingdale.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Schacht, R. (1995)Making Sense of Nietzsche: Reflections Timely and Untimely. Chicago:

University of Illinois Press.

John Mandalios teaches Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts, Griffith University.

He has written on social theory, history and philosophy of religion and science, andpolitical theory; contributed to The Blackwell Companion to Social Theory; and

authored a book on the constitution of human subjectivity, self and other and civi-

lizational analysis: Civilization and the Human Subject.Address: Griffith University,

Faculty of Arts, PMB 50 Mail Centre, 9726 Queensland, Australia. [email:

J.Mandalios@mailbox. gu.edu.au]


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Nietzche, Freedom and Power